Measuring green jobs through fuzzy logic: aimed at environmental conservation and socio-economic stability and inclusion

Abstract

The western model of development is experiencing a generalized crisis manifested by economic, political, ecological and sociological worldwide instabilities and heated popular responses sparking in several points of the globe. As illustrated by Kate Raworth in Doughnut Economics, 13% of the world population lives in a situation of food insecurity and 19% lives without electricity, meanwhile society experiences increasing rate of green gas emissions, biodiversity degradation, and deposits of reactive nitrogen. Aims at proposing an economic theory that supports access to basic human rights to every human being without depredating the quality of the environment have led a group of post-Keynesian/neo-Kaleckian economists to push for a framework that couples economic stability with concerns related to the broader social and environmental systems. To contribute to the newly intensified push of a post-Keynesian/neo-Kaleckian ecological economics, the present article introduces a metric for green jobs, using non-dichotomous measurements as proposed by “fuzzy logic,” as a tool to operationalize economic policies such as an ecological employment-guarantee program, for instance.