Key takeways

  • Demand for green skills is growing across the economy, including the public sector.
  • The demand for green skills in government extends across a range of departments and roles, including those not traditionally associated with climate action.

Climate change is a transformative force that is reshaping our societies and economies.

The scale and urgency of the problem mean that there is a high premium on people with the ideas and skills to help us address it.

The public sector has the fourth highest demand for green skills of any global sector. For public servants looking to enhance their long-term career in government, learning how to make your area of government more sustainable could be a great addition to your skillset.

Demand for green skills in government is growing

The UN Industrial Development Organisation defines green skills as “the knowledge, abilities, values and attitudes needed to live in, develop and support a sustainable and resource-efficient society.”

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Take the energy sector, for example. By 2030, our societies need to build huge numbers of new wind farms, solar panels, hydropower stations and electronic vehicle charging stations to reduce carbon emissions. But who, exactly, is meant to build them? A September 2023 study by Boston Consulting Group predicts that there will be a global shortage of 7 million workers to complete these projects, which will lead to delays in our green transition and potentially translate to a temperature rise of 0.1°C.

What about in government?

Last year, LinkedIn crunched data from 800 million user profiles and countless job postings on its platform to look for trends in how climate change is affecting the job market.

They found that the public sector has the fourth-highest level of green skills intensity of any global sector.

That means a higher share of jobs in government require green skills than most other industries. The intensity is highest in Australia, Sweden, the Netherlands, the UK and the United States.

The LinkedIn study also shows that the demand for green skills is growing. Between 2015 and 2021, the share of workers (on LinkedIn) with green skills grew by 40%, to 13% overall. It’s a global trend, and it’s a growing trend.

Interestingly, it’s not just the sectors and jobs people traditionally associate with sustainability where this is happening; it’s across various roles within different sectors, including government.

Public servants can develop green skills in their area of government

To understand the drivers of this trend and think about how it might emerge in the coming years, we need to step back and take the widest possible view of what's happening.

Think about the numerous strands of work entailed in the twin missions of mitigating and adapting to climate change. It means remaking our energy and land systems; retrofitting the sprawling urban infrastructure in our largest cities; modernising the manufacturing sector; and, perhaps most complexly, adapting our societies and people’s livelihoods to this change.

In short, it touches on everything.

When we look at the challenge from this perspective, two things become apparent.

  • First, government has to play a leading role in coordinating the various strands of action required to address it.
  • And second, this work is bigger than any single department or professional specialism.

In the United States, for example, the Department of Defense is leveraging its $1.8 trillion annual budget and multimillion-acre training estate to take action on climate change.

The knowledge and skills that can enable climate action are not just the preserve of highly specialised scientists working in climate ministries. As data comes in from our Global Government Green Skills survey, we’re seeing that public servants across a range of departments and job roles want to develop key competencies to help them take action.

The graphic below is taken from a 2020 study by the UK’s Local Government Association. They asked 90 provincial climate leaders which green skills were most in demand within their organisations. The skills participants prioritised — such as procurement, climate-conscious decision-making and communications — could be relevant across a range of jobs and ministries.

Which green skills are in demand for UK provincial government

Where to start?

Public servants can feel disempowered when they think about climate change. Whether it’s the daunting scale and urgency or how they can align their day-to-day work with strategic priorities.

Given the size and interconnectedness of the challenge, it’s important to acknowledge that no single government — let alone a department, team or individual — can address it.

However, the reverse is also true. The scale and interconnectedness of the challenge means that we’ll need every government, department and team engaged and playing their part. From central policymakers designing national net zero strategies to municipal waste managers making procurement decisions about their fleet of collection vehicles.

Narrowing in on your specific area of government, thinking about the interaction of climate change with your work and the knowledge and skills you need to build to manage these challenges could be a good starting point to reframe your perspective.

At COP28 in November, Apolitical will be in Dubai making this case to global governments. We’ll be urging them to empower every public servant to take action on climate change by building their knowledge and skills.

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(Image credit: Unsplash)