亚开行-为低碳经济做好劳动力准备：深入了解绿色工作和绿色技能（英）-2023.10-12页_406kb

Preparing the Workforce for the Low-Carbon Economy

A concise briefing on green jobs, skills, and workforce development strategies.

Key Takeaways

• Green jobs can be defined in multiple ways. The choice of definition depends on the use case.
• Technical and medium-skilled occupations are likely to be in high demand in the green economy.
• Green jobs typically require more technical skills than other jobs and reflect specific sustainability mindsets.
• Green jobs are diverse with specific requirements for different roles, necessitating tailored workforce planning.
• Green workforce development initiatives need to incorporate labor market forecasts, sector-specific planning, qualification updates, capacity for vocational training, and promoting sustainability competencies.

The Asia-Pacific Context

The region is highly vulnerable to climate change and a significant contributor to global emissions. Accelerated action towards a low-carbon economy (e.g., renewable energy, transport, construction, circular economy) presents a major policy challenge requiring tailored workforce transitions.

Defining Green Jobs

Four main approaches exist:

1. Sustainability: All jobs can become green if improved (too broad for targeting).
2. Green Industry: Jobs within specific green economic activities defined by a taxonomy (useful for sectoral planning).
3. Task Profile: Includes jobs affected by demand increase or task changes due to the green transition (covers direct and indirect impact well).
4. Green Task: Identifies jobs with a significant share of genuinely green tasks (good for pinpointing high-need jobs) but excludes indirect green jobs.

Future Labor Market Needs

Labor market forecasts indicate:

• High demand for blue-collar jobs, particularly in construction and manufacturing (related to installing renewable infrastructure, etc.).
• Predominance of low- and medium-skilled jobs in initial forecasts, though highly skilled roles, especially in sustainability mindsets, are also crucial.
• Job demand is primarily driven by the specific transition scenario (e.g., renewable energy focus initially).
• Country-specific forecasts are essential to account for local priorities, technology adoption paths, and transition speed.

Skills for Green Jobs

Skills required for the green workforce include:

• Technical Skills: Highly demanded, essential for operating, maintaining, and installing green technologies.
• Sustainability Mindset: Informing transversal skills is key; requires teaching system thinking, future literacy, critical thinking, and other skills as a competence (knowledge, skills, values, attitudes) to address specific green challenges.
• Basic Green Skills: Foundational technical and transversal skills are needed across many occupations.

Recommendations for Green Workforce Development

1. Conduct Green Labor Market Forecasts and Analyses: Needs-based, scenario-driven, potentially including just transition and decent work considerations.
2. Promote Strategic and Sector-Specific Green Workforce Planning: Dialogue with industry, tailored qualifications based on different "greenness" levels.
3. Develop Technical Education and Training Capacity: Improve access to and relevance of technical/vocational education for green industries.
4. Integrate Sustainability Competencies: Foster a sustainability mindset early and teach it as a valued competence across education levels to inform transversal skills application.