Making progress towards a sustainable future requires that policymakers, social partners and civil society at large understand the challenges and opportunities, investments and costs of a just transition based on sound evidence. Different greening policy scenarios can lead to different outcomes, yielding business opportunities and green job creation in some economic sectors while downsizing or closing businesses and leading to layoffs in others. An understanding of key concepts and definitions helps inform policy and programme implementation and monitoring, supporting policy goals and strategies.
This technical paper presents the definitions of green jobs, green economy, just transition and related concepts. It provides insights on key elements of the concept definitions and, in the case of the green jobs definitions presented, discusses commonalities and differences.