Green Skills and the Future of Labour Markets

Green skills: What is in it for you?

Our first live broadcast in Arabic

On Wednesday, May 25, the ETF broadcast its first LIVE in Arabic as means to enhance the Foundation’s outreach amongst Arabic speaking partner countries in the SEMED region.

As part of the ETF campaign on green skills, the LIVE tackled the promotion of such skills and how vital that is for achieving green transition and advancing environmental sustainability in labour markets and workplaces.

With the participation of Abdelefeth Bitat, Economist and Policy Analyst at the European Commission and Soumaya Belkasseh, President of the Association of the National Association for Green Job's Promotion, the LIVE provided a good opportunity for the ETF to engage with Arabic-speaking audience in many of the EU neighbouring countries namely Morocco, Alegria, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and Palestine but also for the audience to send out their questions and comments during the online discussion.

“Green skills are new set of skills different from the traditional ones; they are much needed to push for green transition in the region and combat climate change” said Bitat of the European Commission while explaining the role these skills play in today’s labour markets in Europe but also in EU partner countries.

Speaking of capacity building and enhancing employee’s green skills, Soumaya Belkasseh referred to the ever increasing awareness of the private sector and civil society of the importance of switching to green practises to reduce carbon footprint. “There is a positive trend nowadays among the business community in terms of realizing the usefulness of being environmentally friendly and going green” she said.

On the issue of financing sustainability programs and climate justice, Abdelfeteh referred to the necessity to fairly distribute the burdens of tackling climate change amongst poor and rich countries in an equitable and proportional way. In this regard, both speakers agreed on enhancing governmental coordination with the private sector in the area of upskilling labour and training youth in green skills needed as part of addressing the problem of climate change overall.

There has also been a consensus among the speakers on the effective role of women in promoting green skills in the region since they are amongst the most vulnerable segments due to the consequences of climate change.

Lasting for an hour, the LIVE discussed the role of the Green Competences Framework issued by the European Union, as well as needed procedures to be taken at the policy and legislative levels for advancing green transition in the Mediterranean.

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