Rabat, 25 November 2024 (ECA) – The webinar on “The Challenges and Impact of Climate Change on Employment in North Africa,” organized by the UN Economic Commission for Africa’s Office for North Africa on Monday 25 November highlighted crucial reforms needed as economies in the subregion face increasing impacts of climate change.
North Africa is experiencing accelerated climate warming, with summer temperatures projected to exceed 46°C by 2050. Simultaneously, the sub-region may become a destination for climate refugees, whose global numbers are expected to reach 700 million by 2030 and 1.2 billion by 2050, experts warned during the meeting.
These trends are likely to have profound impacts on North Africa’s job markets, which are already grappling with challenges such as high unemployment rates for women and youths, alongside a persistent mismatch between workforce skills and employer demands.
“There are currently no studies on how rising temperatures will affect employment in North Africa. However, the strong direct and indirect impacts of climate change and adaptation measures are expected to drive a “forced structural transformation” which can significantly impact employment,” warned Adam Elhiraika, Director of the ECA office for North Africa on Monday.
Climate change is causing forced structural transformation in two ways, explained Zoubir Benhamouche, an economist at the ECA Office for North Africa: “On the one hand, its negative effects are pushing production factors to shift from heavily impacted sectors to less affected ones. On the other hand, the urgent need to pivot towards more resilient and sustainable sectors, particularly green industries, is driving a structural shift.”
Across the subregion, current development models are becoming increasingly obsolete as climate change threatens jobs in key sectors such as agriculture, tourism and fisheries to the point where job losses in these industries risk offsetting gains in emerging climate-resilient sectors such as renewable energy.
In addition to reducing worker productivity in sectors such as construction, agriculture and tourism, climate change is expected to have a negative impact on workers’ physical and mental health, their productivity, working conditions and hours. Structural effects will likely include fewer working days in agriculture due to weather conditions and shifting tourist seasons. Last but not least, climate change is expected to impact the informal sector even more than the formal sector as it is less equipped to adapt, warned Adel Ben Youssef, a former climate negotiator and expert in environment, employment and sustainability transition.
In order for North African countries to adapt effectively, the meeting recommended that North African countries implement multisectoral policy reforms that foster the creation of climate-resilient jobs, through measures such as fiscal stimuli; adapt their education systems to equip workers with skills required in low carbon economies; extend social protection policies to groups disproportionately affected by climate change such as women, rural and outdoor workers; and design migration policies that integrate climate refugees into the job market.
Participants also stressed the urgent need for research to fill gaps in understanding the effects of climate change on North African economic growth and job markets. Policymakers require better data and methodologies to account for factors like heatwaves, rainfall patterns and shifts in order to guide investments, legal frameworks, and job creation strategies.
Globally, the scale and speed of climate change are presenting policy makers with massive challenges, with recent research showing that rising global temperatures since the 2000s have been correlated with slower GDP growth. If global temperatures increase by 2°C, global GDP could decline by 12% to 20% by the end of the century.
In North Africa, the established link between rainfall variability and growth is now compounded by additional negative effects from global and national temperature shocks.
In Algeria, Egypt, Mauritania, and Tunisia, approximately 28, 34, 37, and 26 percent of jobs, respectively, are in sectors highly vulnerable to climate change, such as agriculture, forestry, fisheries, construction, and utilities (electricity, gas, and water production and distribution).
Note to editors:
View the full event recording on the ECA YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqA23Y22oZ8
For more information and interview requests, please send an email to filali-ansary@un.org