China’s massive and fast-growing economy could create millions of new green jobs over the next eight years, according to a new report from the Worldwatch Institute. The study is the most thorough effort known to date to explore China’s green jobs potential.

An analysis of China’s energy, transportation, and forestry sectors shows they could provide at least 4.5 million green jobs just in 2020, with millions more positions created in the coming years. Beyond the numbers, however, Worldwatch’s research revealed large problems in the current methodologies that exist in China to track and count job creation by sector.

Worldwatch found inconsistent methodologies used by the Chinese national and regional governments, challenges tracking the many smaller businesses that likely have a significant impact on job creation, a lack of industry trade organizations to monitor employment growth, and difficulty in separating out “green” sub-sectors from larger, fast-growing industries.

“Unlike in the United States, which has long had well-established tools and institutions to monitor employment growth, China’s means of tracking job creation by industry have a long way to grow,” said Worldwatch China Program Manager Haibing Ma. “Our report shows enormous potential for green job creation in China, but more importantly it shows a clear need to develop more robust and accurate tools for tracking employment trends. This capacity building is particularly important given China’s dominant role in the global green economy.”

The report also identifies key lessons learned in China’s green development. In some cases, inefficient implementation has led to unintended economic or environmental costs. Roughly one-third of China’s installed wind capacity has difficulty connecting to the grid, causing millions of dollars of investment loss. In addition, the dominant focus on GDP growth among local governments may further challenge the central government’s ability to efficiently and effectively plan for green development.

The report, Green Economy and Green Jobs in China: Current Status and Potentials for 2020, was co-authored by Ma together with Dr. Jiahua Pan and Dr. Ying Zhang, leading researchers from Worldwatch’s Beijing-based partner, the Institute for Urban and Environmental Studies (IUE) at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS).

Key findings of the report include:

• China’s solar PV industry is projected to create an average of 6,680 direct jobs annually between 2011 and 2020.
• China’s wind power industry, including both power generation and manufacturing, is expected to generate approximately 34,000 green jobs annually between 2011 and 2020. The industry has provided an average of 40,000 direct green jobs each year between 2006 and 2010.
• China is expected to add as many as 220 million new vehicles between now and 2020, with 16.7 million of those being either hybrid or electric vehicles produced by China.
• High-speed rail in China could create an average 230,000 jobs annually between 2011 and 2020.
• Beijing’s urban rail system alone could create 437,000 jobs each year by 2020.
• China’s forestation sector employed as many as 1.8 million full-time workers in 2010 alone. Between 2011 and 2020, forestation activities could offer as many as 1.1 million direct and indirect jobs annually.

NOTES: Reporters and editors can request an electronic copy of the full report by writing rsimon@worldwatch.org. Ma has also published two blogs on the statistical challenges encountered in the report:

• China’s Statistical Challenges Stymie Accountable Development
• Data Challenges in Green Economy and Green Jobs Research in China

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About the Worldwatch Institute: Worldwatch Institute delivers the insights and ideas that empower decision makers to create an environmentally sustainable society that meets human needs. Worldwatch focuses on the 21st-century challenges of climate change, resource degradation, population growth, and poverty by developing and disseminating solid data and innovative strategies for achieving a sustainable society. The Institute’s State of the World report is published annually in 27 countries and 16 languages. For more information, visit www.worldwatch.org.

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According to staggering new statistics from the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), roughly one-third of the food produced worldwide for human consumption is lost or wasted, amounting to some 1.3 billion tons per year.

In the developing world, over 40 percent of food losses occur after harvest-while being stored or transported, and during processing and packing.

Not enough food this child in Rukungiri

In industrialized countries, more than 40 percent of losses occur as a result of retailers and consumers discarding unwanted but often perfectly edible food.

At a time when the land, water, and energy resources necessary to feed a global population of 6.9 billion are increasingly limited-and when at least 1 billion people remain chronically hungry-food losses mean a waste of those resources and a failure of our food system to meet the needs of the poor. The Worldwatch Institute’s Nourishing the Planet project (www.NourishingthePlanet.org), a two-year evaluation of environmentally sustainable agricultural innovations to alleviate hunger, is highlighting ways to make the most of the food that is produced and to make more food available to those who need it most.

According to Tristram Stuart, a contributing author of Worldwatch’s State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet report, some 150 million tons of grains are lost annually in low-income countries, six times the amount needed to meet the needs of all the hungry people in the developing world. Meanwhile, industrialized countries waste some 222 million tons of perfectly good food annually, a quantity nearly equivalent to the 230 million tons that sub-Saharan Africa produces in a year. Unlike farmers in many developing countries, however, agribusinesses in industrial countries have numerous tools at their disposal to prevent food from spoiling-including pasteurization and preservation facilities, drying equipment, climate-controlled storage units, transport infrastructure, and chemicals designed to expand shelf-life.

“All this may ironically have contributed to the cornucopian abundance that has fostered a culture in which staggering levels of ‘deliberate’ food waste are now accepted or even institutionalized,” writes Stuart in his chapter, “Post-Harvest Losses: A Neglected Field.” “Throwing away cosmetically ‘imperfect’ produce on farms, discarding edible fish at sea, over-ordering stock for supermarkets, and purchasing or cooking too much food in the home, are all examples of profligate negligence toward food.”

Nourishing the Planet researchers traveled to 25 countries across sub-Saharan Africa, meeting with 350 farmers’ groups, NGOs, government agencies, and scientists. “This amount of loss is shocking considering that many experts estimate that the world will need to double food production in the next half-century as people eat more meat and generally eat better,” says Danielle Nierenberg, Nourishing the Planet project director. “It would make good sense to invest in making better use of what is already produced.”

“Humanity is approaching — and in some places exceeding — the limits of potential farmland and water supplies that can be used for farming,” notes Worldwatch Institute Executive Director Robert Engelman. “We’re already facing food price spikes and the early impacts of human-caused climate change on food production. We can’t afford to overlook simple, low-cost fixes to reduce food waste.”

Nourishing the Planet offers the following three low-cost approaches that can go a long way toward making the most of the abundance that our food system already produces. Innovations in both the developing and industrialized worlds include:

·         Getting surpluses to those who need it. As mountains of food are thrown out every day in the cities of rich countries, some of the poorest citizens still struggle to figure out their next meal. Feeding America coordinates a nationwide network of food banks that receive donations from grocery chains. Florida’s Harry Chapin Food Bank, one of Feeding America’s partners, distributed 5.2 million kilograms of food in 2010. In New York City, City Harvest collects some 12.7 million kilograms of excess food each year from restaurants, grocers, corporate cafeterias, manufacturers, and farms and delivers it to nearly 600 New York City food programs. Similarly, London Street FoodBank utilizes volunteers to collect unused food items from London businesses and get them to food banks around the city.

·         Raising consumer awareness and reducing waste to landfills. Those who can easily afford to buy food-and throw it away-rarely consider how much they discard or find alternatives to sending unwanted food to the landfill. In 2010, however, San Francisco became the first city to pass legislation requiring all households to separate both recycling and compost from garbage. By asking residents to separate their food waste, a new era of awareness is being fostered by the initiative. Nutrient-rich compost created by the municipal program is made available to area organic farmers and wine producers, helping to reduce resource consumption in agriculture. The Love Food Hate Waste website-an awareness campaign of the U.K.-based organization Wrap-provides online recipes for using leftovers as well as tips and advice for reducing personal food waste.

·         Improving storage and processing for small-scale farmers in developing countries. In the absence of expensive, Western-style grain stores and processing facilities, smallholders can undertake a variety of measures to prevent damage to their harvests. In Pakistan, the United Nations helped 9 percent of farmers cut their storage losses up to 70 percent by simply replacing jute bags and mud constructions with metal grain storage containers. And Purdue University is helping communities in rural Niger maintain year-round cow pea supplies by making low-cost, hermetically sealed plastic bags available through the Purdue Improved Cowpea Storage (PICS) program. Another innovative project uses solar energy to dry mangoes after harvest; each year, more than 100,000 tons of the fruit go bad before reaching the market in western Africa.

State of the World 2011: Innovations that Nourish the Planet is accompanied by informational materials including briefing documents, summaries, an innovations database, videos, and podcasts, all available at www.NourishingthePlanet.org. The project’s findings are being disseminated to a wide range of agricultural stakeholders, including government ministries, agricultural policymakers, and farmer and community networks, as well as the increasingly influential nongovernmental environmental and development communities.

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