Climate action: let's include green education and training in decarbonisation targets

The European Training Foundation is pushing for green education and training to be made a compulsory goal of international efforts to combat the effects of global warming and climate change. 

Although the historic Paris Climate Agreement of 2015 set out a raft of NDCs – Nationally Determined Contributions – to hold countries accountable for reducing fossil fuel emissions, education and training indicators are not among them. 

The ETF’s green skills expert, Romain Boitard – who was at COP 29, the annual UN climate change conference, in Baku, Azerbaijan last week along with ETF director Pilvi Torsti – says that planned revisions to the NDC targets in February 2025 should refer to the education and training aspect of preparing for the green transition that must accompany any meaningful efforts to tackle global warming. 

The current NDC template does not have any part on education and training,” Boitard says. “We are advocating to change that. We want to ask countries to talk about that. A climate change programme inevitably affects the labour force and that the omission of education and training is not viable.” 

The ETF’s push – which included talking at five public panels on the subject (two of which the ETF organised) during COP 29 – is backed up by the results of a new joint ETF-UNICEF Central Asia report on increasing youth involvement in addressing climate change.  

“From Awareness to Action: Engaging Youth in the Green Economy and Climate Action” is the fourth survey the ETF has undertaken with UNICEF into various aspects of how young people engage with education and training.  

In the latest report, conducted in 21 countries across Europe and Central Aisa with the assistance of DARYA (Dialogue and Action for Resourceful Youth in Central Asia) key findings included the fact that many young people feel that currently they are not being prepared sufficiently to undertake the new kinds of jobs crucial to the green transition. 

Cooperation with DARYA – the EU’s first-ever regional project supporting young people and their skill development in Central Asia, implemented by the ETF – allowed for deeper outreach and therefore higher number of responses. 

Along with inadequate preparation for green jobs, young people – including a number of responses from Ukrainian refugees living in the participating countries – identified social media as the main source of their information about climate change and disaster risk. 

Young people increasingly feel time is running out and argue that their views and aspirations should be an integral part of plans to become climate neutral. 

Many young people are ambivalent about technological fixes, although some grasp the need for both technological fixes and societal and structural changes; generally, they feel that more education is needed as current programmes do not prepare them for the green transition. 

Most feel governments should be doing the most to tackle what is a global issue - but they have little confidence that leaders will keep their climate promises. 

The report says government should improve youth outreach, that climate issues must be integrated more thoroughly into education and training curricula, readiness for green jobs enhanced, and skills development prioritised.  

All these issues could be highlighted through a formal recognition of education and training as a key to the green transition in the Paris Agreement targets, Boitard argues. 

Bringing these issues to the attention of policymakers and stakeholders comes at a critical moment for climate change activists. “The feeling is that we are really in a different world order,” Romain, speaking from Baku during COP 29 said.  “The magnitude of the political presence is aligned to a different world than we are used to.” 

The ETF could be effective in challenging climate change precisely because it worked directly with partner countries on providing evidence to underpin policy decisions, he added. 

“We rely on personal engagements. The ETF does not sit in negotiation rooms, but we can gradually effect change by showing the evidence for what works, and gradually you achieve a critical mass of people who can achieve the aims of reducing emissions.” 

That work was starting at COP 29 with the ETF’s participation in panels that included a focus on scaling up Green jobs, putting people at the centre as economies decarbonize, exploring how to speed up climate commitments through human-centred approaches, and skills pledges to help increase the use of renewables. 

ETF director Pilvi Torsti added: “The green transition is not just about technology or finance; it is about people and their ability to adapt, innovate, and thrive in a changing world.  By focusing on skills, we can ensure that no one is left behind as we move towards a sustainable future. With its role as a bridge between the EU and the neighbouring countries, the ETF will continue to support skills development for greener societies.” 

After COP 29, the ETF’s work on young people and the green transition will continue, taking forward the policy recommendations that emerged from its joint report with UNICEF Central Asia, including: