IEMA publishes 'Build Back Better' plan

IEMA has today published a new guide to help the UK government create the right green incentives and ensure that COVID-19 recovery plans allow the environment sector to increase jobs and better reflect modern Britain.

The 'Build Back Better' position statement, drafted by IEMA Fellows, highlights many achievable ways to make it simpler and easier for green jobs to become the central plank of the UK's recovery.

These include making government support for industry contingent on ambitious targets to achieve net-zero carbon, and supporting green finance initiatives to care for “pounds, people and planet“.

It also suggests 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.

The recommendations are included in a five-point plan for a sustainable recovery, shown below:

1) Set clear expectations that require and enable sustainability across the public and private sector2) Invest in skills, training and jobs that level-up society and address systemic social problems3) Support place-making, community connection and well-being4) Invest in infrastructure that delivers sustainable economic, social and environmental outcomes5) Support and promote business models and collaborative decision-making that can resolve critical sustainability challenges and trends.

This comes on the same day that chancellor Rishi Sunak unveiled a £3bn green investment package to help support around 140,000 green jobs in his summer economic update.

IEMA 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.“

You can read IEMA's Build Back Better position statement here

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