Investing in human capital to accelerate the green transition

Climate change is eroding human capital—the knowledge, skills, and health that people accumulate over their lives—with long-lasting implications for well-being and productivity. Climate shocks threaten to increase poverty levels, reduce pathways to prosperity and deepen inequalities within and between countries. However, investing in human capital can help protect people from the worst effects of climate change and unlock their potential to drive the transition to a green economy. This event, hosted virtually by the World Bank on 14 April 2023, explores how governments, the private sector and partners can build shock-resilient systems that improve people’s ability to adapt and prepare people to work in the green jobs that will help mitigate climate change.

Participants include Esther Duflo, co-founder and co-director of the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) who contributed to session stating, ‘Because the climate change problem is so intimately linked to inequality between rich and poor countries, between rich and poor people, the solution also has to be linked to inequality. We need a mechanism that put money into a fund for poor countries’.