Projects: Employment and Environment
-The Transfer Project (completed)

From January 1998 to spring 2000, the Science Centre for the Social Sciences Berlin WZB, the German Institute for Economic Research DIW and the Wuppertal Institute for Climate, Environment, Energy collaborated in a project commissioned by the German trade unions' Hans-Boeckler-Foundation to develop such strategies. It combines in depth analysis, scenario development, computer simulations and the identification of core sustainability strategies. The results will be published in autumn 2000, with a summary of the project results already available in German (www.a-und-oe.de). The results clearly indicate that by 2020 it is possible to overcome mass unemployment (less than 3% left unemployed), reduce material flows by 30% and CO2 emissions by 60%, maintain competitiveness and stabilise the social security system as well as global and European development co-operation by ODA.

In all these respects, scenarios bound for sustainability provided better results than those going for mere cost reduction, following a simplified neo-liberal paradigm.

SERI (together with WZB and DIW) has been entrusted with the transfer process, making the results (analysis and policy implications) available for the work of the trade unions and the civil society at large. So far, the working language is mainly German, but summaries of the results will be available in English from the SERI web page.

Besides SERI together with the iff is working on a project "labour and environment in Austria", where, starting from the experiences and results from the first project, sustainable paths for Austria in the area "employment and environment" are going to be developed.