What exactly are green jobs?
Green jobs are those that help reduce environmental pressure and damage and also improve energy efficiency or resource efficiency in general.

The conference talks about the transition of the Flemish economy towards a green economy. What steps will be necessary?
There are lots of things that need to happen, like investment in new economic sectors. Research needs to be done estimating current and potential new green jobs. Once you know you can create new green jobs – in renewable energy, in transportation, in construction, in the retrofitting of buildings – then you need to do a lot of planning, in particular around the upgrading of skills. There are not enough green plumbers and green architects; not enough people know about solar panels or green laundry services, for example. So you need to nurture human resource development.

Europe is becoming greener partly through the export of heavy industry to other parts of the world. Isn’t that simply shifting the problem?
I would say it shouldn’t be part and parcel of a green economy policy. I don’t think we need to push out our dirty industries; we should clean them up ourselves. Energy intensive and polluting industries have also moved for other reasons – because of labour costs for example and investment climates. So we have to work with those emerging economies to put up green economy frameworks there. China is an example. They’ve already done a lot, contrary to what people believe.

How is Flanders doing in the area of conversion to a green economy?
I was in Flanders six months ago for a stakeholder meeting on the green economy in the framework of [the UN conference on sustainable development] Rio+20. And we met the Flanders delegation in consultations, and they have now taken this initiative for a conference. I think these are all important signs of how seriously Flanders takes the subject and how much they want it to happen.