Sustainable development and organizational capacity building should go hand-in-hand. As more and more industry organizations and their member businesses are stepping up the pace towards a sustainable futures it is a good time to reflect on past present and future status of sustainability in Australian VET education.
Historical perspective
According to the UN the 2009 Australian Green Skills Agreement seeks to build the capacity of the Vocational Education and Training (VET) sector to deliver the skills for sustainability and required in the workplace and to enable individuals, businesses and communities to adjust to and prosper in a sustainable, low-carbon economy.
The vision back then was that this would support Australia’s transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy. Remember this was six years before the establishment of the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, the 2030 Agenda and the Sustainable Development Goals.
The idea was that Australia could continue to prosper while making the changes required to reduce the impact of climate change. It was noted that the transition to a sustainable, low-carbon economy would involve changes to how we do things individually and collectively, the ways we live, work and do business, and the mix of what we do in our economy.
It would also require new skills, the application of existing skills to new technologies and practices, and new ways of thinking, working and doing business across all areas of the economy and society.
These changes would also require “inclusive” strategies to support disadvantaged workers and job seekers to take advantage of the job and training opportunities presented by Australia’s transition to a low-carbon economy.
Ultimately all businesses and industries would need to factor adaptation to climate change into their future business decisions. Many, if not all, enterprises would need to draw from a workforce that understands and can apply skills for sustainability so that productivity and profitability are protected.
Australia leading the way on green skills education
The Australian Quality Training Framework for Vocational Training defined the Training packages in 2010 and 2011 and these packages intended to support over 1.7 million students per year in the transition. These so-called green skills, also known as skills for sustainability, are the technical skills, knowledge, values, and attitudes needed in the workforce to develop and support sustainable social, economic, and environmental outcomes in business, industry, and the community.
The present day
Enterprises these days recognize that skills for sustainability are important for future prosperity, but still reluctant to make the necessary changes in their own business practices. Is this due to lack of skills and competencies, unfamiliarity with the SDG’s or lack of understanding on actionable steps to take as a business?
The need for research in the area of Sustainability skills is also confirmed by the fact that despite the widespread awareness of the importance of sustainable development, even among employers and academicians there are still people who are not familiar with the concept of green skills, who show, for example, a tendency to refer to general green skills as green practices.
In 2019 the European Union introduced the Green deal. A long-term strategy (2019- 2024) that support the transition towards a carbon neutral, competitive and inclusive sustainable society.
The political climate in the United States of America (32nd on the SDG index 2021) has changed dramatically in 2020 with Joe Biden becoming the new President and the USA rejoining the Paris Climate Agreement.
Finally, China’s (listed 57th on the SDG index 2021) commitment to sustainable development is backed up by heavy investments over the past ten years making China the biggest investor in renewable energy.
Moving forward: the European Framework for Green skills
The world has significantly changed since the AQF model for green-skills was developed in 2009. Australia is listed 35th on the 2021 global sustainable development index, encountered extreme weather conditions, massive bushfires and the Great barrier reef on the edge of becoming an endangered UNESCO world heritage site. The recently (January 14th 2022) published European GreenComp Framework responds to the growing need for people to improve and develop their knowledge, skills and attitudes to live, work and act in a sustainable manner.
GreenComp is a reference framework for sustainability competences. It provides a common ground to learners and guidance to educators, providing a consensual definition of what sustainability as a competence entails. It is designed to support education and training programmes for lifelong learning. It is written for all learners, irrespective of their age and their education level and in any learning setting – formal, non-formal and informali.
Sustainability competences can help learners become systemic and critical thinkers, as well as develop agency, and form a knowledge basis for everyone who cares about our planet’s present and future state.
The aim of GreenComp is to foster a sustainability mindset by helping users develop the knowledge, skills and attitudes to think, plan and act with empathy, responsibility, and care for our planet.
Somehow this sounds a lot like the 2009 Australian Green skills framework, but then updated. If we look at the GreenComp Framework more closely we see it consists of 12 competences (in bold) organized into the four areas (in italics) below:
– Embodying sustainability values, including competences
- valuing sustainability
- supporting fairness
- promoting nature
– Embracing complexity in sustainability, including competences
- systems thinking
- critical thinking
- problem framing
– Envisioning sustainable futures, including the competences
- futures literacy
- adaptability
- exploratory thinking
– Acting for sustainability, including competences
- political agency
- collective action
- individual initiative
Building organizational capacity towards a sustainable future
The current Australian government has no strategy towards sustainable development or the 2050 net-zero agenda so it is time to act now. It is time to seek collaboration between sectors and build coalitions of positive change. Our partner Artibus Innovation, a Skills Service Organisation is one of the organisations leading the change. On behalf of the Australian Government and in the built environment they’re facilitating the establishment of an Industry Cluster to accomodate the demands of industry.
It is time to build capacity for the Australian workforce to become “sustainably literate” if that is even a word.
It is time to make sustainable development a business habit. Let’s get started.
19/04/2022 – post update:
Linkedin just released its Global “Green skills report” that emphasises the need for action:
- Policy makers must commit to green skills, be their champion and prepare the workforce.
- Business Leaders must invest in up skilling current and future green talent.
- The global workforce has to build green skills to power change and compete for the best jobs.
