Abstract
Sustainability and employment are not terms often used together. Sustainability is often treated as something that has mainly to do with environmental issues, and the protection of the environment is not necessarily seen as an important driver of higher employment. However, when we look more closely into the subject and try to leave the boundaries of the current paradigms, we realise how the interests of sustainability and stable employment are indeed intertwined. This paper attempts to show that as soon as we leave the comfortable realms of the current paradigms, we may find potential solutions to a multiple of questions and realise that sustainability and employment can indeed go hand in hand. In order to be able to find adequate supporting tools to "think out of the box", our paper focuses on a new methodological approach, namely backcasting, in relation with the topic of sustainable employment. The paper is divided into two main sections. In the first section we intend to illustrate the main relationships between employment and sustainability. In the second part, through the results of a concrete Hungarian backcasting experiment we demonstrate how the backcasting approach can be used to involve stakeholders creating a normative vision of the future and identifying the necessary policy steps to reach the set goals.
Highlights
In political and policy rhetoric, the term ―sustainability‖ has become commonplace
Backcasting is one of the techniques applied by transition management (TM) in order to identify policy measures along the path of more radical changes towards sustainability [9]
―At the beginning of the industrial revolution, labour was overworked and relatively scarce, while global stocks of natural capital were abundant and unexploited
Summary
In political and policy rhetoric, the term ―sustainability‖ has become commonplace. Existing strategic policy documents on all levels of governance, as well as public speeches are inundated with goals of establishing a transition to a sustainable society, including the objective of ―green growth‖ in employment [1,2,3]. The paper presents the different elements that participants considered important regarding the future of sustainable employment, drawing attention to the similarities and diversities that the two different groups represented These elements will be linked to on-going scientific and policy discussions in order to gain an insight into what components the term sustainable employment may cover. According to Wright it is essential to develop visions as normative ideals against which present social structures can be measured and necessary changes can be initiated According to him, these ―real utopias‖ should be visions for the future in which all human beings can live flourishing lives while they should reflect upon the complexities and the multi-faceted nature of modern societies [11]
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