The Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, Miguel Arias Cañete, explained today that the Empleaverde programme is “a good example of the orientation of the Government’s policies in the field of the environment: reconciling maximum protection with the creation of an environment favourable to economic development and job creation”.
The Minister of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, Miguel Arias Cañete, explained today that the Empleaverde programme is “a good example of the orientation of the Government’s policies in the field of the environment: reconciling maximum protection with the creation of an environment favourable to economic development and job creation”.
During the presentation of the collaboration agreements for the promotion of green employment, in which he was accompanied by the Minister of Employment and Social Security, Fátima Báñez, Arias Cañete expressed his satisfaction with the fact that the Empleaverde Programme has been included by the Ministry of Finance and Public Administration among the best practices included in its annual report on the application of the Cohesion Funds 2007-2013.
The Minister highlighted the interest shown in the 2012 call. “More than 600 projects have been submitted, three times more than in 2011. Today, 61 new collaboration agreements have been signed, dedicated to the promotion of green employment. Projects that seek to take advantage of the capacity of sectors linked to the environment, and that are aimed at workers in sectors in a situation of reconversion or restructuring,” he highlighted.
On the other hand, he stressed that the agreements “present very diverse environmental issues, such as tourism, energy efficiency, forest management, the energy use of biomass, sustainable rehabilitation or the use of biopesticides in agriculture. And the work does not end today, because in September we will sign another 30 collaboration agreements, this time for projects focused on entrepreneurship,” explained the minister.
For the head of Agriculture, Food and the Environment, “the fact that the environment encompasses a set of profitable, expanding activities with great potential for job creation is not something new, as endorsed by organizations such as the United Nations Environment Programme, the European Commission or the International Labour Organization, which estimates that “the green economy will be able to generate between 15 and 60 million jobs in the world in the next two decades.”
Empleaverde is an initiative co-financed by the European Social Fund, within the framework of the Adaptability and Employment Operational Programme, which has a global budget of more than forty million euros. The Programme promotes projects to promote and improve employment in general, and green employment, in particular. It seeks to increase the skills and qualifications of workers in environmental and sustainability issues, in addition to encouraging modernization and innovation in companies and promoting the creation of new businesses linked to the environment.
The projects it finances, he continued, are based on a training-action model, “aimed at achieving behavioural changes and achieving concrete and quantifiable results”. To this end, they rely on training actions, advice, conferences, awareness campaigns, studies and the creation of networks such as the Emprendeverde Network, of the Biodiversity Foundation, which has more than 4,000 members.
The Empleaverde Programme, including the projects that have been signed today, already reaches 900,000 people, of which more than 40,000 are receiving training. At the same time, the projects support the creation of more than 1,900 companies or new lines of green business in existing companies. In addition, more than 400 companies have developed environmental improvement plans or new tools, such as environmental management systems, carbon footprint analysis, or eco-innovation and eco-efficiency measures. All this, with the collaboration of nearly 140 entities that have generated 400 direct jobs for the management of these initiatives.
