The terms smart cities and sustainability are becoming intertwined.
Planning for smart cities involves implementing eco-friendly projects that can improve the quality of life within a space while also still respecting the environment.
A sustainable smart city is considered to be innovative.
It uses information communication technologies (ICT) to improve people’s quality of life, make urban services and operations more efficient and boost the city’s competitiveness. All this while ensuring the city meets present and future generations’ economic, social, environmental and cultural needs.
New green jobs form a big part of this sustainability drive in the quest to create smart cities that are responsive to the needs of their citizens.
Turns out, there is a positive payoff when investing in climate action at city level.
Research conducted by C40 Cities and the Circle Economy Foundation shows that public transport, waste, electricity, and construction are some of the highest-performing industries for green jobs.
Local governments play a key role in these sectors, supporting regulations, standards and cooperation with the industries.
For example, did you know that almost 30% of the jobs in the electricity and transport sectors can be considered green? And, add to that 25% of the jobs in the buildings and construction sectors.
Creating millions of green jobs across Africa
C40 mayors pledged to create 50 million green jobs by 2030 in October 2022 at a C40 World Mayor Summit. Since then, the cities have started driving green job creation and equitable workforce developments across sectors.
C40 Cities and Circle Economy Foundation have developed a methodology to measure green jobs globally across C40 Cities.
A newly released report focuses on the first baseline results and findings from the African cities in the C40 network.
The report Good green jobs in Africa Cities looks at the distribution of green jobs across various sectors.
Key findings of the green jobs report
- About 7.5% (1.4m) are considered direct green jobs. They operate in sectors such as renewable energy, waste collection or repair. Around 4.4% (830,000) are considered indirectly green. These provide goods and services required for green sectors to operate.
- Green employment varies, ranging from 3 to 29% total green employment. There is potential to grow this as urban sectors and services are greened, despite cities have unique sector and labour profiles for public action.
- Sectors with the highest green employment share (more than 20% of total employment in the sector) are water supply, sewerage waste management and remediation activities; transportation and storage; construction and electricity; steam, and air conditioning supply. These sectors are strongly influenced by local climate public policy measures.
- The services sector (transport, food, retail etc) is a top employer in C40 cities across Africa. These account for around 11.6m jobs. But only just more than 13% of these jobs are considered green. This raises the potential for green job creation through more energy-efficient practices, procurement from green sources and engagement with municipal governments to support green policy and labour-force development.
- More disaggregated demographic data around gender, race or age throughout all cities are critical if we are to address equity and make good, green jobs available for all.
The numbers show that cities can be hubs for green jobs. There is significant potential that can be leveraged for further sector growth.
“Climate investments not only create more jobs, but they can also drive transformative change way beyond city limits across the city’s supply chains, both creating green jobs and accelerating the transition away from fossil fuels,” reads the report.
Waste collection in Accra
The report cites some specific examples, such as Accra, Ghana, where a municipal waste source separation and compost project involves the community and informal waste sector.
In this example, more than 850 informal waste collectors, who include migrants, collect and separate waste.
This helps to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by diverting organic waste from landfills and increases waste collection coverage.
The Accra Metropolitan Assembly supports cooperatives, implements a social insurance scheme and offers capacity building programmes to improve the quality of life and jobs for informal waste works – ensuring a just transition.
Elizabeth Sackey, Accra Mayor, said the global analysis is important for cities as it shows the social and economic potential of climate action.
“The city of Accra is committed to addressing climate action and creating local jobs together, and ensuring the working conditions of all workers, including informal workers, are improved.
“This is why, as we have been implementing citywide municipal solid waste separation programmes in the past years, and are starting to work on the transport transition, we have been working closely with informal waste sector workers (including migrant workers) and initiated consultations with informal transport workers to ensure their jobs are protect and valued.
“They play a key role in the green economy and in creating healthier communities and should be engaged in the transition,” explained Sackey.
Working on smart cities in Africa<
The City of Cape Town in South Africa is investing in training building examiners and building control officers on the Net Zero Carbon Building Policy, which commits the city to net-zero carbon new buildings by 2030.
The skills training ensures a stronger understanding of the importance of enforcing compliance towards net-zero goals at the planning application stage.
All building control officers across the eight city districts in CoCT were trained in 2023.
The Nairobi CHOICE Innovation Hub in Kenya provides youth employment and entrepreneurship opportunities to migrants, refugees and displaced individuals.
Backed by the Mayors Migration Council’s Global Cities Fund for Migrants and Refugees, the centre wants to train more than 100 young people to enter the green jobs market and help to incubate ten green start-ups in the first few months of operation.
Since 2018, the #FreetownTheTreeTown initiative in Sierra Leone has planted more than 600,000 trees in more than 300 communities. This helps to tackle flooding and mudslides that result from deforestation in and around the city.
The initiative has improved water security and reduced flash flooding and landslides.
Find out more about how the programme interacts with businesses and what other cities around Africa are doing to provide green jobs and become smart cities in Good green jobs in Africa cities on the C40 website.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Theresa Smith
Quelle/Source: ESI Africa, 08.07.2024
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