Skills for a Just Transition to a Green Future

Educational and TVET systems must be systematically oriented towards sustainability — which only succeeds when sustainability is incorporated into a country's development strategies and all policy areas including TVET, and, conversely, TVET is integrated into environmental and sustainability policies. Developing countries often lack the required structures, but can be supported through strengthened governance and coordination mechanisms.

In many countries market incentives are insufficient for companies to demand green skills: environmental investment rarely pays off in the short term, and regulations are often weakly enforced. The employment gains of a skilled workforce will not materialise unless the private sector is comprehensively incentivised and supported to create green jobs — so interventions in sectors with green potential should address both the regulatory and the incentive systems.

Given the weight of the informal economy in many developing countries, transition processes must give it appropriate attention — both to reduce environmentally harmful informal activities and, in the spirit of Leave No One Behind, to open modernised TVET systems to marginalised people working informally.

The shift to a low-carbon economy brings structural, sometimes disruptive labour-market change. TVET systems and labour-market policies can prepare for it in time if they react flexibly to changing skill requirements, transmit solid occupational and transferable core skills, cover initial training as well as re- and upskilling, include women equally, and are aligned with active labour-market policy.

Many TVET systems are currently too weak to support a just transition: governance mechanisms are missing, financing is thin, skilled teachers are scarce, and links to other education pathways are absent. Broad, well-coordinated reforms are needed — aligned with sustainability and digitalisation policies, using multilevel governance, interlinked with other forms of education, and complemented by mainstreaming Education for Sustainable Development and green-skills training for TVET personnel.

Higher workforce mobility, shorter innovation cycles, digitalisation and greening make future skill needs increasingly dynamic. Anticipation mechanisms can build on national labour-market information systems where these work — sectoral or locally based forecasting is sometimes the more efficient alternative. Private-sector engagement and close linkage between forecasting and TVET systems are indispensable for translating findings into modernised, greener occupational profiles and curricula.

TVET systems are often slow to respond to changing skill demand. Policy makers and practitioners must balance sufficiently rapid responses to market needs against anchoring modernised or new green qualifications in qualification frameworks. Rapid-response approaches include supporting in-company training programmes, non-formal trainings, and certified modules that can later be added to existing occupational profiles — guided by the relevance of occupational fields to greening, demand for green skills, and analysis of industry practice.