Environmental sustainability is a major concern for world-citizens, especially for the younger generations. In the words of Tim McPhie, Spokesperson for Climate Action and Energy at the European Commission, “there is no bigger threat to our future than climate change and no bigger responsibility than tackling this threat together”.
A global green transition is urgent and, to achieve it, it’s crucial to empower the youth with green skills. The movement is essential to sustain economic development, reduce social inequality and address environmental challenges. Restoring nature as a primary ally is humankind’s main weapon to deescalate climate war.
With the European Union being committed to becoming the first climate neutral continent by 2050, massive investments, changes in industry, services, and infrastructures, are required to drive this ecological shift. But what about the necessary skills to ensure that this net-zero ambition is sustained?
Amid the EU Green Week 2023, the Sustainable Value Hub, in a partner event with the European Commission, organized a panel discussion at the Press Club in Brussels, on June 7, to open the debate “Skills for the Green Transition: Challenges, Opportunities and Best Practices for the Youth”.
#Happeningnow Our Panel Discussion on : “Green Skills for the Green Transition : Challenges, Opportunities and Best Practices for the Youth” has started 🤩🙌🏼 !
— Sustainable Value Hub (@Sustainable_vh) June 7, 2023
Panel: Beatrice Biolcati Rinaldi , @GilesDickson @trocaforum_ew Veronique Van Haaften, Eliza de Ward, @MariaRamosUK pic.twitter.com/DWTNA2fNKi
1. What are Green skills?
To better understand what green skills are, is to better comprehend how to implement them and, therefore, raise a bigger awareness for the challenges they face, but also the opportunities they create.
I think we all have green skills, it’s the awareness that you have to make responsible choices, in your professional and personal life, the mindset you adopt in the way you carry yourself and your choices – those are green skills.
Véronique Van Haafter, ESG Consultant and Secretary General of the bilateral European Chambers of Commerce in Instanbul
A pyramid on the typology of Green Skills, elaborated my Margarita Pavlova, was presented at the panel by Paola di Manzo, Project Office at Erasmus Student Network. With specific green skills for new occupations (new skills) at the top of the pyramid, it is the soft skills, a positive attitude towards sustainability, and the development of green mindsets, that support this structure. This indicates that attitudes and values should be viewed as an essential element of green. In addition, green skills also include topping-up skills for greening all occupations.
“The opportunity for a career in the green transition is infinite. Any skill can be a green skill and contribute to the global energy transition. It’s about finding something your passionate about. (…) Almost any job can be a green job, with the adequate mindset guiding the choices in it”, said Eliza de Waard, Group Head Corporate Communications, Aquila Capital.
The opportunity for a career in the green transition is infinite. Any skill can be a green skill and contribute to the global energy transition.
Eliza de Waard, Group Head Corporate Communications, Aquila Capital
The green transition demands systemic changes in all sectors and structures of society. Then, while it is clear that research and innovation will be instrumental components for this change, they need to be complemented by an investment in skills and competences. On the discussion panel, two of these imperative supplements stood out: upskilling and reskilling the workforce; and transformative learning, empowering educators and their students with updated environmental knowledge and conscience.
2. Upskilling and reskilling the workforce
“Having a workforce with the skills that are in demand contributes to sustainable growth and leads to more innovation. (…) It’s important to explain companies that this change of mindset and reskilling is a valuable investment”, according to panelist Beatrice Biolcati Rinaldi, DG for Employment, Social Affairs and Inclusion in the Vocational Education & Training Unit of the European Commission.
As one of the initiatives to help citizens get the right skills for quality, greener, jobs, the European Year of Skills, which started May 9th and runs for 12 months, aims to assist companies to address skills shortages in the EU, reskilling people with a focus on digital and green technology skills.
Conferring the initiative’s website, “throughout the year, various stakeholders, including the Commission, the European Parliament, Member States, social partners, public and private employment services, chambers of commerce and industry, education and training providers, as well as workers and businesses, will work together to promote skills development.”
Governments want to improve climate and energy security, however we are struggling to find people with the right skills.
Giles Dickson, Chief Executive Officer of WindEurope
“By 2030 we need an additional 150,000 employees in the wind industry. We need people with good soft skills: communication, leadership, teamwork, critical thinking. But it all starts with people wanting to work in green industries. (…) Governments want to improve climate and energy security, however we are struggling to find people with the right skills”, highlighted Giles Dickson, Chief Executive Officer of WindEurope.
The European Union is a world leader in climate action, with ambitious targets, writing them into law and defining the policies to achieve them. The EU’s environmental legislative proposals, aiming for a clean tech revolution through a wider ecological transition, have potential to increase resilience and create jobs and business opportunities.
Across the panel, it was emphasized how Environmental Strategy Goals (ESGs) need to be transferred not only to companies’ agenda, but also into personal targets. “They are seen as something additional to the work tasks, when in reality they need to be combined. People need to be aware that our sustainability tasks are, indeed, part of our job, whether you are a CEO or the chef of the canteen”, said Van Haafter.
3. Education first
What is lacking is a perception of the value of nature. We must develop new lifestyles that go along with green awareness.
Valeria Giannotta, Scientific Director of CeSPI Observatory
The aim now is to define the role of education in providing the adequate knowledge and skills for the green transition. Both from the perspective of the institutions as well as from the students and the policy level.
“Environmental education should be obligatory and continuous, a life-long learning interdisciplinary objective. The purpose is to make people aware of the complex nature of environmental issues and thus develop those critical thinking skills to tackle these problems. Environmental education should include a historical perspective, understanding the impact of modern societies”, said Marciela Dregan Tekdemir, Co-Founder of Sustainable Value Hub.
For teacheres to become promoters of sustainability, by encouraging students to embrace such a lifestyle and creating new patterns of behavior, it is necessary, before all, that the educators are endowed with the factual and updated knowledge. According to Märt Aro, Co-Founder of DreamApply, this is an issue that needs to be reformed – unrealistic school manuals and outdated school agendas could be a barrier of the successful implementation of already established green ideas. “If we develop grate policies on ESGs but we are not able to follow on a practical level, I find it pretty strange”, he stated.
Along with an update of the program of education, to include green awareness to future and existing generations, the delivery of such content is also in need to be reformulated. “Tailoring to the knowledge level, letting students be part of the conversation”, as mentioned by Matteo Vespa, President of the European Students’ Union, is a great method to engage younger layers of the population, “showing them there’s a contribution to be made and that is still a future where they can thrive”, added Aro.
Nevertheless, the second panel of the day carried positive, effective, ways to implement these ideas, with the discussion “Experiences and Perspectives from the Field”
Antoine Duboi, Representative of Education4Climate, presented the company as an example of a practical experience to provide a solution to fight the fact that, currently, in Belgium, more than 60 percent of all school programs do not contain any relevant environmental teaching unit. Their goal is to list all the programs in Belgium that give you those skills.
“Focus on new business models, embrace technologies, and put the human element at the heart – find a new proposition and show which services you can offer and what the costumer is expecting – be more practical and give young people proper training”, was the appeal left from educator Ellen Wasylina, President and founder of Trocadéro Forum, Institute of Sustainable Leadership & Diplomacy.
