Building Back Better should include green incentives, working locally and greater diversity: IEMA

Global sustainability organisation IEMA is offering support to the Chancellor to create the right green incentives and ensure that building back better means helping the environment sector to increase jobs and better reflect modern Britain.

IEMA’s Fellows, who are global sustainability decision makers in academia, business and the public sector around the world, have collaborated to write a position statement which provides the foundation for a green recovery. They point out that there are many achievable ways to make it simpler and easier for green jobs to become the central plank of the nation’s recovery, including:

• Making government support for industry contingent on ambitious targets to achieve net zero carbon,
• Supporting green finance initiatives to care for pounds, people and planet,
• Prioritising the retraining of workers in sunset industries towards jobs of the future to ensure a just transition, and
• Encouraging flexible and mixed-use buildings when regenerating town centres, to increase resilience to future shocks and transitions

IEMA’s Chief Executive, Sarah Mukherjee, said:

“COVID-19 has taken a terrible toll, in terms of human life and business. But it has also shown us how the public and private sectors can collaborate – for example on vaccines or ventilators – at a speed we would previously have thought unimaginable. We have an opportunity to create jobs and wealth, support retraining and reduce inequality. As a person of colour, I am all too well aware that the environment sector needs to work hard to better reflect modern Britain. We at IEMA will be playing our part.”