Supporting Greenpeace campaign to #BuildBackBetter

The COVID-19 pandemic has had devastating impacts around the world, taking hundreds of thousands of lives while shutting down economies and impacting the livelihoods of millions more. In countries such as the UK, it has also exposed the extent of vulnerabilities and inequalities within society, with poorer and BAME communities being disproportionately impacted both in terms of health and economic outcomes.

As governments seek to respond to this crisis, huge investment is required to recover and rebuild – however in order to avoid careering from the COVID-19 crisis into a larger and deadlier climate crisis, the world that we rebuild needs to be sustainable, healthy, and to leave no-one behind – we need to #buildbackbetter.

Jobs created by a Green Recovery

At a critical juncture for the UK’s economic response, we have been supporting Greenpeace UK with research stemming from their Green Recovery manifesto, to demonstrate the scale of job creation potential if the government invests in green jobs. Based on Greenpeace’s call for a green recovery stimulus of £100 billion, our research found this would create an estimated 1.8 million jobs, at an average of 19.6 jobs per £1m spent.

The recovery packages with highest job creation potential are ‘Nature & the circular economy’ and ‘Green buildings’, generating 24.1 and 23.2 jobs per million spent respectively. ‘Clean transport’ and ‘Smart power’ having lower potential at 18.5 and 12.7 jobs per million spent. Job creation has also been assessed in terms of how quickly jobs can be created (‘shovel-readiness’) and their short or long-term nature, with policymakers often looking for short term jobs that spur rapid recovery but allow labour force flexibility once the economy has recovered. The report bases its £100bn package on the joint NGO investment document for a greener and fairer economy, and is comparable to the stimulus package currently being adopted by Germany.

Spreading the message

Given the urgency of the situation, and with recovery packages and government announcements being drawn up, it is imperative for the message for a green recovery to be spread loudly and clearly. Greenpeace is running full page adverts in the Times and the Telegraph based on our report findings, and the information will be used to support wider pledges and campaigns to Build Back Better.

Our theory of change

We are pleased to have had the opportunity to respond to Greenpeace’s need for these insights, and to have been able to quickly turn around our work to support their urgent communications work.

3Keel believes in a sustainable future. Our theory of change is to advise major businesses on their journeys to decarbonisation, as well as supporting NGOs to be as effective as possible in their missions to bring change. We believe that transformative and sustained action is required on multiple fronts to tackle the climate crisis, and that this can only be achieved by collaborating and bringing together all sections of society.

You can find the research summary on our website here.