PRESHA RAMSARUP: A green economy needs green jobs

While global leaders gathered for three weeks at the COP27 climate summit in Egypt last month, the media was dominated by talk about climate change and the need for a “green transition”. Yet there was little focus on what this will mean for workplaces, how work will be structured, what we mean when we talk about “green jobs”, and what kinds of expertise workers will require.

When these issues are tabled discussions are usually limited to predictions about the number of jobs that could be lost or created in the short term and long term. Closer to home, boosting the “green economy” and fostering a sustainable and just recovery, coupled with the creation of “green jobs”, is central to government’s Economic Reconstruction & Recovery Plan.

Supporting skills for a just and sustainable transition is not as simple as it might seem because there is no common understanding of what “greening a job” will look like, what it will mean for employers, how traditional jobs will transition into “greener, more sustainable jobs”, and how workplaces will change. So, how can educational stakeholders plan and develop the appropriate education, training, and skills development response?

Research conducted by the GreenSkills Project — a collaboration between the Centre for Researching Education & Labour (Real), based at the University of Witwatersrand and Rhodes University — has found that the initial educational responses to the transition to a low-carbon economy have been inadequate. To date we have found a limited, fragmented, reactive response to skills — “bolt on” approaches that involved adding short sustainability programmes into existing education and training system and structures. Some may achieve short-term benefits, but short courses don’t enable systemic change nor a just transition; their contribution to building collective skill system is insignificant.

Educational plan

The aspiration discourse of a green economy is perceived to conflict with job preservation and the urgency of solving high levels of youth unemployment. What will help (but not solve) unlocking this conflict is an educational plan that is focused on occupational progression for intermediate skill works. That entails rethinking the role of occupational families and feeder jobs, which could ease people’s transition into green-economy jobs. But that is not enough. What is needed is an integration of social and economic interests with the imperatives of environmental sustainability. For skills to become central in the transition, the identification, anticipation and provision of “green skills” is crucial.

There are, however, a number of hurdles. First, it is important to acknowledge that environment is a new area in SA’s education, training and skills development landscape. Second, environmental and sustainability issues are viewed as cross-cutting issues, but the skills system isn’t structured to deal effectively with cross-cutting issues. For “greening” not to fall through the cracks, co-ordinating structures for dealing with the environment as a cross-cutting concern in the education and training landscape are necessary.

What we need is a form of co-ordination that will inform, anticipate, co-ordinate and integrate skills needs and plans for a just transition. Without this type of cross-cutting planning and co-ordination the skills system will remain substantively slow and reactive to policy, and to social-ecological drivers and national imperatives such as the Just Transition Framework. Third, labour market analysis instruments such as workplace skills planning and sector skills planning, must adequately capture cross-cutting issues and their impact on the changing nature work.

Skills anticipation systems around the world are struggling to map transitioning green skills against unsustainable current value chains. Very few are trying to reimagine the value chain in a more sustainable way, and hence they have been looking at jobs very narrowly framed in their current form. What Real has learnt through its research is that reimagining what a greener job will look like (if the value chain was transitioned to become more sustainable) and thereafter being able to identify what skills are needed, requires a multilevel engagement across the educational system.

Contested area

Ultimately, the transition to a low carbon economy remains a contested area. As such, the way we conceptualise and understand skills for a just transition is also contested. In framing a skills response we need to be wary about the individualistic fallacy in the skills discourses now dominating development responses, which often assumes people apply their skills and knowledge in decontextualised situations. Few, if any, individuals will have all the knowledge and skills required to undertake the complex and often drawn-out work required to advance the greening of the economy in a particular context or sector.

So, effectively the skills response to a just transition requires a different approach that will require new and different models for skills development. For example, it will require the need for some form of co-ordinating hub as highlighted previously, and a need to explore skills from a local level upwards. Generally, skills development has always taken a macro view, but the just transition process requires us to think about skills in a different way — one that interrogates and expands local economies so as to play a transformative role in local communities.

• Dr Ramsarup is director at the Centre for Researching Education & Labour at the University of Witwatersrand, a senior research associate at the Environmental Learning Research Centre at Rhodes University, honorary associate professor at the University of Nottingham, and president of the Environmental Education Association of Southern Africa.