Employment and Environment -The Transfer Project

Sustainable development means exploring ways to reconcile job creation, economic competitiveness and environmental protection.

From January 1998 to spring 2000, the Science Centre for the Social Sciences Berlin WZB, the German Institute for Economic Research DIW and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy collaborated in a project commissioned by the German trade unions’ Hans-Boeckler-Foundation to develop such strategies. It combines in depth analysis, scenario development, computer simulations and the identification of core sustainability strategies.

Results from the cross-section analyses and scenarios show that a sustainability policy that integrates environmental, economic and social objectives is possible. A socio-environmental reform strategy closely linking these three levels is therefore the right pathway to a sustainable economic and social order. The results clearly indicate that by 2020 it is possible to overcome mass unemployment (less than 3% left unemployed), reduce material flows by 30% and CO2 emissions by 60%, maintain competitiveness and stabilise the social security system as well as global and European development co-operation by ODA.

The most important message derived from the “Work & Environment” project is that a socio-environmental reform strategy linking together economic efficiency, resource-conserving production, environmentally friendly consumption and social justice, is actually possible. In all these respects, scenarios bound for sustainability provided better results than those going for mere cost reduction, following a simplified neo-liberal paradigm. A working hours policy with a reduction in working hours as its central focus proved to be a key element of an integrated sustainability concept.

SERI (together with WZB and DIW) has been entrusted with the transfer process, making the results (analysis and policy implications) available for the work of the trade unions and the civil society at large.

Besides SERI together with the iff is working on a project “The future of work and ecology in Austria”, where, starting from the experiences and results from the transfer project, sustainable paths for Austria in the area “work and ecology” are going to be developed.