China: Millions of Green Jobs

Millions of green jobs created in China... probably

28 July 2011 - China’s fast-growing green economy could provide millions of new jobs in the coming decade, according to a study from the Worldwatch Institute.

The environmental research group estimates that 4.5 million green jobs will be created in 2020 alone, in the energy, transportation and forestry sectors – but one of the report’s authors has warned that the country lacks many of the “basic and crucial” statistics to track its green economy, making estimates difficult.

“It’s fair to say that China has started tracking the green economy, but there is still a long way to go,” said Haibing Ma, China programme manager and co-author of the Green Economy and Green Jobs in China: Current Status and Potentials for 2020 report.

The Chinese government has made an initial effort to calculate the country’s “green GDP” but Ma said the methodology “remains largely unclear, nor is the calculation and reporting process transparent”.

In trying to calculate the potential for green jobs, Ma found inconsistent methodologies used by the Chinese national and regional governments, challenges tracking the many smaller businesses that likely have a significant impact on job creation, a lack of industry trade organizations to monitor employment growth, and difficulty in separating out green sub-sectors from larger, fast-growing industries. read more>>>