The employment consequences of environmental protection: the contribution of job content studies.

Summary The purpose of this thesis is to identify what employment content studies can contribute to our understanding of the employment consequences of environmental protection policies. The principle of these studies is to calculate, for different technical or organizational options, the number of jobs created per franc spent. These estimates are generally made by technical-economic calculations and/or by using an input-output table. The first four chapters justify the method used. In particular, they respond to the objection that employment content studies are not relevant because they ignore macroeconomic feedbacks. They also show that in France, low-labor intensity options are particularly favored by firms. Proactive action by public authorities to increase the employment content of the economy is therefore all the more justified. It remains to be seen whether environmental policies, which have been introduced or are yet to be defined, increase or reduce the employment content of the economy. I discuss this question for the three main areas of environmental policy, namely air, waste and water, as well as for an emerging problem, that of polluted sites. In most cases, environmental protection policies have a positive effect on employment. However, there are some exceptions to this conclusion. The first group of exceptions consists of unambitious technical and organizational options. The second group of exceptions consists of so-called "end-of-pipe" measures designed to eliminate pollutants after their production. However, these end-of-pipe solutions can almost always be replaced, at least partially, by alternative, so-called "upstream" measures, which aim to prevent the production of pollutants. In other words, a relatively radical environmental protection policy, i.e. one that avoids the least environmentally efficient options and prefers upstream options to downstream ones where this choice exists, would increase employment.