could have been encouraged to add many millions of additional domestic green jobs.

Lack of support in nations like the U.S. for embracing methods to regulate and reduce emissions is widely viewed as a major factor in what prevented the establishment of binding agreements at the 2009 climate talks in Copenhagen. But the upcoming Rio conference is less about setting concrete plans of action and more about building a consensus for overarching goals to be realized by states on their own terms, as explained by Peter Poschen, Senior Policy Specialist for the ILO. Dr. Poschen is the lead author of the new report, titled “Working Towards Sustainable Development.” He described to PLANET that in stark contrast to the scarce progress seen in the U.S. and Europe, the developing world finds itself well positioned to capitalize and has already begun to act.

“Emerging countries have the opportunity to choose a different development path, to move straight into 21st Century technology and infrastructure and basically skip pollution-intensive development stages that we have known in industrialized countries and which are for us generating rather high costs of transitioning in terms of employment,” says Poschen.

The lead-time in creating new jobs by fostering a green economy would be longer for industrialized countries, according to the report’s authors. At the same time, they indicate that a large-scale shift to sustainable practices would be capable of setting the job market on a firmer footing in the long run, particularly given the uncertain effects of climate change. The number of workers employed by the industries responsible for most