Sustainability and Decent Work

The interest in the relationship between decent work and the environmental governance has arisen in the context of the soft law instruments proposed by the International Labour Organization (ILO). The ILO maintains that green jobs promote the creation of decent work associated with the transition to a low-carbon sustainable development path. On the one hand, the first part of the binomial essentially provides that human labour is not a commodity or an article in commerce. On the other hand, there is a growing trend for ‘social companies’ and nonprofit corporations that use new participatory schemes to achieve environmental, social and community-serving ends. These companies have become an even more viable alternative to the current dominant economic structures and relations. The paper suggests a proposal for developing ecologically sustainable social organisations from a decent work approach based upon democratic decision processes and non-hierarchical structures. It paper explores the connections between environmental governance and decent work over almost one decade, and identifies the new participatory schemes of the companies that are focused in a sustainable approach.