It has been within the framework of the 10th. edition of the National Congress of the Environment.

It has been within the framework of the 10th. edition of the National Congress of the Environment.

The director of the Biodiversity Foundation, Ana Leiva, participated, on Monday, November 22, in the Round Table “Where are the sites of ‘green employment’? The challenge of sustainability: job creation”, on the first day of the X National Congress of the Environment (CONAMA), which takes place at the Municipal Conference Center (Campo de las Naciones, Madrid), until next Friday 26.

In the last decade, jobs related to the environment in Spain have increased by 235 percent. This figure refers to those typically environmental jobs that already existed until now. It is expected, however, that in the coming years new types of jobs will be created linked to what are now called ‘green jobs’, in sectors such as integrated rehabilitation, sustainable tourism, or technologies that facilitate mitigation and adaptation to climate change.

The Round Table also included contributions from Carlos González López, director of the Local Agenda 21 Assistance Programme and Ferrán Vallespinós Riera, coordinator of the Environment Area, both from Barcelona Provincial Council; Luis Jiménez Herrero, executive director of the Observatory of Sustainability in Spain (OSE); Isabel Navarro, Secretary of Climate Change and Environment of UGT; Llorenc Serrano Giménez, Confederal Secretary of the Environment of CC.OO., representatives of organizations that carry out initiatives for the creation and employment and reconversion of economic activities towards sustainability, as well as representatives of the energy saving and efficiency sector and renewable energies, moderated by Sonia Castañeda, Director of the Empleaverde Program of the Biodiversity Foundation.

Stakeholders have spoken, with current data based on their own experiences on the ground, about the potential of green jobs. For their part, Luis Jiménez Herrero and Ana Leiva, have referred to the economic and social aspects addressed in the Report “Green Employment in a Sustainable Economy”, a joint publication of the FB and the SBI with the Secretary of State for Climate Change of the MARM.

The Director of the Biodiversity Foundation has maintained the importance of having a better knowledge of the approaches to job creation linked to environmental activities, and of updating the new opportunities that emerge to face the challenges of global change.

Leiva said that, based on this knowledge, emphasis must be placed on “emerging sectors, driven by the implementation of environmental policies and sustainability strategies, such as sustainable rehabilitation-building or activities related to mitigation and adaptation to climate change”. And he added: “The results of the Report are optimistic, the evolution of employment in the environmental sector in the last ten years has exceeded 200 percent, in 2009 it represented 2.62 percent of the employed population and the new sources of green employment can be the protagonists of the development of the sustainable economy”.

The Biodiversity Foundation has also been present at the “Entrepreneurship to conserve” Roundtable, on the challenges of sustainable rural development, so important in the current economic situation and as a brake on the rural exodus and the consequent loss of biodiversity that the phenomenon of depopulation entails.