A transition to a low carbon society — how is Slovenia performing?
Current status quo in the fight against climate change in my home country is not too bright and that is affecting my employment opportunities.
The UN published its Sustainable Development report in July 2020 ranking countries based on their performance in achieving the so-called Sustainable Development Goals by 2030. Slovenia ranked 12th in the world, which is a respectable achievement (The US is 34th, The UK is right behind us, as well as other notable countries like Switzerland or Australia). It has to be noted that the SDGs cover a wide range of goals, including SDG 1 — Ending Poverty with performance indicators like Poverty headcount ratio at $1.90/day (%) or SDG 16 — Peace, Justice and Strong Institutions with performance indicators like Homicides (per 100,000 population). Slovenia was identified as already achieving the mentioned SDG 1 and SDG 16. Per their definition, we have eradicated poverty and established strong institutions, peace and justice with low percentages of people being held in prison as well as a high percentage of people who feel safe walking alone at night in the city or area where they live.
However, it was identified that major challenges remain in achieving the SDG 13 — Climate Action with the trend of reaching the goal even decreasing in the last years. The goal is focusing on the efforts in the fight against the current climate crisis we are in. To be fair, all OECD countries were ranked poorly in this aspect, having significant challenges to solve before reaching the goal that includes well-known indicators like Energy-related CO2 emissions (tCO2/capita).
But there is something that the UN’s report doesn’t show, and that is the uptake of the climate protection efforts of countries. For instance, Netherlands and Slovenia both rank in the top 12 based on the report with the Netherlands ranking number nine on the list, with mostly the same indicator evaluations for the Climate Action goal. But, let’s take a look at the Climate Change Performance Index (CCPI) 2020 that enables the comparison of climate protection actions like climate change policies, the percentage of renewables in the energy mix etc. The index shows a difference in the climate change mitigation efforts with Slovenia ranking 44th out of 57 countries evaluated while the Netherlands takes the 29th place. My line of argumentation for this difference lies mostly in the maturity of the stakeholder ecosystem.
With Slovenia ratifying the Paris Agreement in 2016, it has obliged to determine, plan, and regularly report on the contribution that it undertakes to mitigate global warming, however, without a proper ecosystem of crucial stakeholders we won’t reach the set emission targets. Slovenia ranks 45th in the climate change policy advancement per CCPI out of 57 countries, compared to our neighbour Croatia ranking 20th.
So this is where my personal struggles enter. How can I, as an aspiring future Master of Science in Sustainable Development graduate, contribute to the efforts in the fight against climate change in my home country if the ecosystem of policymakers, companies, private industry, NGOs, state agencies, research institutes is poorly established? Let me elaborate on this claim with some facts.
A quick job search on LinkedIn gives me precisely zero results for a search query “sustainability” or “sustainable development” in Slovenia, even when using the Slovenian translation of the terms. While it gives me 11,576 results in the European Union (Data retrieved on 19.11.2020). Let’s reduce that to a country level and make a comparison again with the Netherlands. LinkedIn job search as of 19 November offers me 1,514 job offers if I search for “sustainability” in the Netherlands compared to a big fat zero for Slovenia. I mean I understand that the Netherlands is a far more attractive country for international corporations or EU institutions to have their operations in, but zero jobs? Not even one? The result is equal if I search for “climate change” or “environment” or if I switch to the more domestic job listing websites — zero job offers.
We can then turn our attention to education. Slovenia currently has one university programme oriented towards sustainability. While the Netherlands has four Bachelor programmes and over 37 master programmes dealing with different aspects of sustainable development and climate change mitigation per mastersportal.com. Again, we have to take into account that the population of the Netherlands is approximately eight times higher; nevertheless, the educational difference is glaringly obvious.
It would be unfair to not mention that there are trailblazers battling with the climate crisis in Slovenia — NGOs like Umanotera, Eko Krog, Focus, Circular Change and CER, research institutes like Jožef Štefan Institute with it’s Energy Efficiency Centre, youth climate activist group Mladi za Podnebno Pravičnost (The Youth for Climate Justice). Slovenian government also recently published a comprehensive National Energy and Climate Plan. However, it has received criticism from the EU Commission for not being ambitious enough and lacking actual steps and numbers in achieving the goals in the plan.
Nevertheless, we need more actors, more diverse university programmes, more ambitious policies, sustainability consultancy agencies, we need more companies to consider alternative business models, we need more grassroots organisations giving the voice to civilians to address environmental issues, and we need a government climate policy working group consisting of scientists, civil public and politicians.
In short, we need a healthy ecosystem of relevant stakeholders that can appropriately undertake the current climate crisis and a one that welcomes people wanting to join the fight. The wheel needs to start turning faster if we are to reverse the consequences of the largest societal treat of this century.
