Balance Development Goals

Evidence indicates that this building block is important because of the integrated nature of ecosystems, development, economic opportunities, and human well-being.¹ As part of the Millennium Ecosystem Assessment (MEA), Duraiappah and colleagues¹ explored different ways societies respond to or intervene in the management of their natural ecosystems, including legal, economic, behavioral, and technological, and further examined the impact and consequences of those responses on ecosystem services, well-being, and poverty reduction. Policies and practices implemented in any of these areas will have different benefits, risks, and burdens for different groups of people, and the impact may happen in the future and possibly not even in the immediate geographic location.

Assessments of the WealthWorks program — a program focused on building multiple forms of wealth/capital, including economic, social, and natural, that makes locally-informed, system-wide investments of resources, skill building, and policy work in rural communities and regions — point to the benefits of models that attend to both economic and environmental outcomes. Their work is focused on building value chains, or “a set of relationships among the people and businesses whose skills and contributions are essential to produce a good or service valued by buyers in the market”.^{2, p.7} An assessment of their capacity building efforts with multiple community and economic development organizations demonstrates positive economic and environmental outcomes through the development of value chains in energy efficiency retrofitting, biofuel production, local food producers’ access to wholesale buyers, grass-fed beef, and access to Forest Stewardship Council certification to support stewarding and sales of sustainably harvested trees.² 

Efforts are increasing to implement strategies aligned with a Just Transition – “the idea that justice and equity must form an integral part of the transition towards a low-carbon world” and that framing jobs versus the environment as a binary choice inhibits possibilities for “a more profound transition that could transform the economic and political structures that reproduce and exacerbate inequalities and power asymmetries”.^{3, p.3-4} The evidence for Just Transition efforts is emerging and mainly consists of case studies and descriptions of projects (for case study examples, see UNRISD 2018, Just Transition Initiative, Just Transition Centre 2017).^3-5 Studies of the work of the economic transition team of Alliance for Appalachia indicated that there were successful Just Transition initiatives happening across the region.^6,7 Active participants in those initiatives identify the need for more appropriate and useful policies and more multisectoral support, as they report feeling supported by community-based organizations but not by the government in their efforts.

With regard to understanding the impact of the green economy or green jobs, the sunsetting of the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Green Goods and Services survey (BLS GGS) has hampered the already challenging task of measuring the impact of the green economy in the US.⁸ Many analyses of the green economy still draw upon older data from the BLS project, combining them with other data sets. One estimate that draws from the Low Carbon and Environmental Goods and Services Sector (LCEGSS) and multiple other data sets found that the green economy represents $1.3 trillion in annual sales revenue and employs 9.5 million people on a full-time basis, which represents about 4% of working age adults.⁸

1. Duraiappah et al. 2005
2. Yellow Wood-WealthWorks 2015
3. UNRISD 2018
4. Just Transition Initiative
5. Just Transition Centre 2017
6. Tarus et al. 2017
7. Taylor et al. 2017
8. Georgeson & Maslen 2019