From Ecosystems to Employment: How Investing in Nature is a Job Creator

Jobs and the environment are deeply interconnected. The environment shapes livelihoods, productivity, and economic transformation. Labor markets determine how societies adapt to environmental conditions. Jobs are also central to prosperity and poverty reduction, providing income, hope, and dignity.

However, over the next 10 to 15 years, about 1.2 billion young people in developing countries will reach working age, while only around 400 million jobs are expected to be created. Compounding the jobs gap further, are environmental pressures that are already weighing heavily on livelihoods and economic potential. In many developing countries, degraded air, water, and land reduce productivity and limit opportunities for workers and businesses alike.

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Meet the Community Champions Shaping a Future with Nature

In national parks and ecological corridors globally, community champions are fostering harmony between people, wildlife, and other biodiversity, while creating jobs and other economic opportunities in their local areas.

The Global Wildlife Program (GWP) is one of the largest global partnerships created to support country-led initiatives that tackle illegal and unsustainable wildlife trade, mitigate human-wildlife conflict and zoonotic spillover risk, and promote wildlife-based livelihoods. With funding from the Global Environment Facility, the World Bank-led program works with community champions across 38 countries, including in South Africa, Indonesia, Mali, and Ecuador.

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5 ways the World Bank is leading by example on nature

We are emerging from decades of a “grow now, clean up later” mindset that deliveredshutterstock_1063413929_2.jpg development dividends, while hiding a host of social and environmental issues. In 2020, this paradigm hit headfirst into the realities of a global pandemic, worsening climate change, and conflict. Across poor countries and in poor communities, people who had only marginally benefited from development were the first to experience its shortcomings.

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Nature’s high returns

The mega-challenges engulfing the world today – from COVID-19 to climate change – have environment_hero.jpghighlighted the interdependencies between people, planet, and the economy.  As we chart a course to reignite global growth and drive green, resilient, and inclusive development, we must not ignore these interlinkages. Nature – meaning biodiversity and the services that healthy ecosystems provide – is central to this endeavor, especially in developing countries, where poor people in rural areas tend to rely heavily on nature’s services and are the most vulnerable to its depletion.

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On World Oceans Day, make a pledge to nurture nature so nature can nourish us

For centuries, humans have indulged their vast curiosity by exploring and asking questions. We focused our attention predominantly on the land as it is our home, and let our imaginations fly into the starlit sky. We have mapped and explored more of the moon’s surface – and that of Mars – than what lies beneath the waves, even though 70 percent of our planet is covered by our ocean. 

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Five ways to help nature help us

This week I was at the G7 meeting in France’s northern city of Metz, discussing World Bank, South Africa 2007.biodiversity with Environment Ministers from the Group of Seven countries (Britain, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan and the United States), along with delegations from countries such as Egypt, Fiji, India, Indonesia, Niger and Norway. Thanks to France’s leadership, the G7 meetings culminated in what is known as the Metz Charter on Biodiversity, elevating biodiversity on the global agenda.

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