April 2011: In preparation for the Fourth UN Conference on the Least Developed Countries (LDC IV) taking place in Istanbul, Turkey, from 9-13 May 2011, the International Labour Organization (ILO) released a report titled “Growth, Employment and Decent Work in the Least Developed Countries.”

The study reviews trends in growth, employment and decent work in LDCs, highlighting challenges and opportunities for structural transformation, job creation and poverty eradication. It also offers a portfolio of policy options for job creation and poverty reduction to be tailored to country needs and circumstances. The report addresses a number of key issues in growth and employment across the three main regions of Africa, Asia and the Island countries.

The study outlines policies required to accelerate and sustain economic growth in the context of an increasingly volatile international environment, and to make growth more inclusive and job-rich. In this context, it stresses the need for, inter alia, higher levels of public investment targeting critical bottlenecks in infrastructure, finance, skills and other inputs, and crowding in private investments, by means of addressing coordination problems and barriers that discourage private enterprises from entering new industries and new technologies, including green production.

The report also contains a section on implications of climate change on the agriculture sector in LDCs. It underscores that poor countries, communities and persons are least able to adapt to climate change and reduce its immediate negative impacts on their lives. It notes that, in particular, sub-Saharan Africa, many poor island States and other food-insecure countries are at the most risk from the effects of climate change. [Publication: Growth, Employment and Decent Work in the Least Developed Countries]