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Memorandum submitted
by The Institute of Environmental Summary · Defining green jobs and skills properly is essential to improving prospects for environmental employment and benefits. · Employers must see a more coherent business case for increasing pro-environment activity if demand for green jobs and skills is to rise. Increasing demand depends on greater understanding of the benefits of such strategy, but at present more official effort is going into promoting supply of environmental technology rather than developing the understanding that will create demand. · At the same time, and to compound the problem, the skills delivery system is demand-led. It depends on employers arguing for the skills they need to grow their business, although too many of them lack both the motivation that comes with a coherent business case and an understanding of the prospects for pro-environment activity in a changing economy. · The publicly-funded business support system should ensure that organisations understand the business case from environment and resource efficiency activity and are supported in developing employee knowledge and skills. · Environment professionals employed across all sectors of the economy have a significant role to play in helping to transform the UK to a low carbon and resource efficient economy.
Introduction 1) The Institute of Environmental Management and Assessment (IEMA) is a professional body of environment practitioners; our vision is to promote the goal of sustainable development through improved environmental practice and performance. Of a membership that exceeds 14,500, over 51% are employed in business and industry across all sectors of the economy, 26% are in consultancy, 10% in the public sector and 13% in education. IEMA members largely work on a broad range of multi-disciplinary environmental issues, including climate change mitigation and adaptation and resource efficiency.
2) We welcome the Committee's inquiry into Green Jobs and Skills and believe that investment in low carbon and resource efficiency has the potential to stimulate economic growth with a lower impact on the environment. We see Green Jobs and Skills as pre-requisites for transforming the UK economy into one which is low carbon and resource efficient. The 2009 Budget provided an opportunity to support moves towards the UK developing a low carbon and resource efficient economy and we are supportive of action being taken to develop the low carbon sector.
3) However, IEMA has serious concerns that the potential scope for green jobs will not be fully realised. There are a number of failures which we see as needing Government attention: failure to recognise and support the mainstreaming of environmental knowledge and skills; a skills delivery framework that is ill-equipped to deal with the cross-cutting nature of environmental knowledge and skills; a business support system that is unlikely to engage companies in resource efficiency and low carbon activities and therefore misses opportunities to stimulate demand; and a failure to align skills development with new environmental policy and regulatory initiatives.
4) We believe that for a supply and demand market to operate successfully in the areas of low carbon and resource efficiency, an emphasis needs to be placed on demand side activities. IEMA believes that mainstreaming environmental knowledge and skills across all areas of economic activity will be an essential pre-requisite to unlocking latent demand.
Defining Green Jobs
5) The Innovas 2009 report for BERR, "Low
carbon and environmental goods and services: an industry analysis", bases its
assessment of green jobs on those employed in a relatively broad and extended
definition of the low carbon and environmental goods and services (LCEGS) sector. This is followed through into the 2009
Budget Report and Investing in a Low Carbon Britain, both of which state that
880,000 people in the UK are employed in the green sector. While it can be debated whether, for
example, a company where 20% of turnover is derived from supplying the low
carbon sector is providing green employment, we believe that limiting the
definition of green jobs to those employed in the LCEGS sector misses a
significant number of people employed in green jobs. Any discussion or analysis
of green jobs needs to recognise those people who are employed in environmental
roles outside the LCEGS sector. 6) Many people are employed in environmental roles across all sectors of the economy and our experience is that the number is growing, in part evidenced by IEMA's rapidly growing membership. Moreover, the contribution that those employed in environment and sustainability roles in mainstream business, particularly in helping to improve resource efficiency and accelerate the demand for low carbon technology, will be essential if 2020 and 2050 greenhouse gas emission reduction targets are to be achieved. While we strongly support the need to stimulate the supply of low carbon and environmental goods and services, there is insufficient activity to raise the demand side for these new goods and services. IEMA believes that environment professionals either directly employed or supporting mainstream business have significant potential to stimulate and catalyse demand.
What do we mean by green skills?
7) Although use of the term skills is widespread, we believe that
when it is used in the context of green skills or environmental skills, it
needs further elaboration; this is particularly important when evaluating
whether the UK's skills delivery framework is sufficient to support moves to a
low carbon and resource efficient economy.
Our view is that it is helpful to distinguish between environmental
knowledge and the capability to apply it in practice. We believe that this is an important distinction, because many of
the skills that are required to make an environmental difference are generic in
nature - project management, leadership, communication, finance etc, whether in
mainstream business or as part of the LCEGS sector. Indeed, we would argue that the generic skills are already widely
available and used throughout the economy and that the focus should be on
ensuring that people are equipped with the appropriate level of environmental
knowledge (defined here to include both knowledge of effective tools and
solutions as well as knowledge about the environment). 8) In 2008 Lantra, the Sector Skills Council (SSC) for the environmental and land based sector, commissioned IEMA to undertake research into existing National Occupational Standards (NOS), Training and Qualifications in relation to environment and sustainability. A key finding of the research was the lack of a clear structure and framework for environmental and sustainability skills. For example, there was duplication of NOS across all SSCs, varying quality of NOS and a range of qualifications being developed in isolation. Follow up research by IEMA for Lantra focussed on the knowledge and skills required for individuals with environmental responsibility in business. This highlighted that many of the skills required by environmental professionals are generic; communication, leadership, planning, influencing; however, environmental knowledge is where training and support is required.
Mainstreaming environmental knowledge and Skills 9) IEMA believes that, in moving towards a low
carbon and resource efficient economy, it is important to distinguish between
the supply side, i.e. supplying low carbon technologies and products/ services;
and the demand side, i.e. companies and organisations actively seeking to
improve their resource efficiency and demand low carbon and efficient products
and services. Both the supply side and
demand side need to be supported in order to make significant progress in
reducing GHG emissions. IEMA believes
that "mainstreaming" environmental knowledge into all types of business is
essential as this will act as a catalyst for low carbon and resource efficient
activity. This will require training
and support to be provided at all levels and across all sectors, e.g. business
leaders need to understand the costs, risks and opportunities of climate
change; designers need to understand how to integrate eco-design principles
into product development; procurers need to integrate environmental criteria
into purchasing and procurement activities.
IEMA's view is that environmental professionals in business are an
important catalyst for this change. 10) Ensuring that employers have access to knowledge
of environment, low carbon and resource efficiency is essential. If the UK economy is to adopt the tools,
techniques and technologies available, knowledgeable people are needed to make
and communicate a more coherent business case.
The requirements of such as case are environmental performance
improvement, business context, options analysis, pay-back times, maintenance
and deployment costs needed to justify any particular action. 11) An important issue for IEMA is that the
emphasis from Government is much stronger on the supply side than the demand
side; its focus is too much on creating new low carbon technologies and not
enough is being done to stimulate the demand from all types of business for low
carbon products and services. While
there should be no diminution of proposed action to develop new low carbon
technologies, we believe that more support is needed to bring the demand side
stimulus up to the level of the supply side and we see this as being important
for two key reasons. Firstly, the 2050
80% greenhouse gas reduction target means that the whole of the economy will
need to become low carbon and all organisations need to play a part; greening
the generation of energy will be insufficient on its own. Secondly, while the export potential of low
carbon goods and services is significant, if greater take up of these is experienced
outside the UK than in the domestic market, then mainstream UK businesses will
become less competitive due to reduced resource efficiency. 12) Both the 2008 Pre Budget Report and Budget 2009 noted the importance of appropriate skills for a low carbon economy. However, it is disappointing that no new resource has been allocated to support skills development in this area, nor any indication of money ring-fenced from existing budgets. As such, we believe it will be much harder to ensure that low carbon and resource efficiency skills are properly supported as it will require re-allocation of resources within the skills delivery framework from existing spending priorities.
Skills Delivery Framework 13) It is estimated that 75% of the 2020 workforce is already in employment; therefore, ensuring an effective and efficient skills delivery framework for those already in work is essential if the UK is to meet its long-term GHG emissions reduction targets. 14) In December 2006 the UK Government launched 'Prosperity for all in the global economy - world class skills' commonly referred to as 'The Leitch Review of Skills'. The report asked a question: How should the UK develop skills to maximise economic prosperity, productivity and improve social justice? The answer lay in incentivising employers to attain higher qualifications, to be delivered through a sector-specific system that empowers employers and individuals to demand the skills they need, a simplified route to market for vocational training and funding, and publicly funded organisations and agencies that listen and react to knowledgeable employers.
15) Firstly, the system developed to up-skill the economy is demand-led, relying on the private sector engaging with and arguing for the skills it feels are relevant to maximise economic growth. IEMA believes there is market failure in expecting a demand-led skills delivery landscape to meet the skills requirements of a low carbon and resource efficient economy. Despite significant drivers, too few organisations understand the low carbon and resource efficiency skills they need, why they are needed and the productivity and competitiveness wins that follow as a result. In a demand-led system this is tantamount to putting the brakes on.
16) Secondly, there needs to be an understanding in the skills delivery framework that 'the environment' is not just a sector; it is also a cross-cutting theme affecting all sectors of the economy. In a vertically structured sector skills delivery system, this poses a significant challenge for horizontal issues such as 'low carbon', 'resource efficiency' and 'environment'. Our view is that the UK Commission for Employment and Skills should take the lead to ensure environment and sustainability skills are embedded across all parts of the skills delivery framework.
17) The skills delivery framework needs to ensure that it supports the development of higher levels of environment and sustainability knowledge and skills at levels 4 (degree level equivalent) and above on the Qualifications Credit Framework, as well as helping people achieve level 2 qualifications. This means that Train to Gain, the funding and brokerage service, needs to understand the qualifications that are available and also have the in-house skills within its brokerage team to ensure resource efficiency and low carbon skills development can be identified and successfully brokered.
Business Support 18) IEMA welcomes the emphasis that Government has placed on streamlining the way resource efficiency business support is provided through the new Business Link Information, Diagnostic and Brokerage (IDB) service. With an estimated 500,000 IDB interventions per year, this presents a significant opportunity to mainstream resource efficiency. However, we are concerned that the full scale of opportunity will be missed as Business Link Advisors, the gateway to business support, lack sufficient resource efficiency knowledge to identify the issues and potential improvements. This will result in a failure to help employers understand the business benefits of resource efficiency, which in turn would stimulate demand for more specialist support. 19) Where support is provided to business, IEMA believes it needs to be targeted to ensure organisations understand the business case and sustain resource efficiency activity after publicly funded support has ended. Support must include skills development to ensure relevant employees have the appropriate knowledge and capability. Support in implementing relevant management tools, such as environmental management systems that conform to national/ international standards, should also be provided as a means to embed environment and resource efficiency into business management systems.
Linking Skills Development and Environmental Policy Initiatives
20) Legislation and regulation are essential
policy mechanisms to support environmental protection. Fiscal instruments and sector voluntary
approaches are also being used to stimulate improved environmental performance
by companies. The result is a detailed
and complex set of legal and policy instruments across a wide range of
environmental issues (e.g. waste, water, air, contaminated land, habitats and
species), business activities, products and substance use. 21) However, research from NetRegs in 2007 showed
that less than a quarter (24%) of SMEs could name a piece of environmental
legislation, and that only 15% thought that they undertook activities that are
harmful to the environment. 22) IEMA believes that there needs to be much closer alignment between skills development, business support and Government policy and regulatory initiatives. This would help to raise awareness of the importance of legal compliance in improving environmental performance and also help to ensure companies implement laws and regulations in the most effective and efficient way possible. The ongoing development of new legal requirements being placed on companies of all sizes, for example the Carbon Reduction Commitment, extension in scope of the European Emissions Trading Scheme, together with voluntary initiatives to encourage companies to quantify and report their GHG emissions or determine the carbon footprint of their products/ services, should be supported with appropriate skills development programmes. Skills development should also be an important feature of sector agreements and product roadmaps.
Conclusion
23) The transition to a low carbon and resource
efficient economy will require a significant shift in culture and behaviour in
all sectors of the economy, if the UK's challenging greenhouse gas reduction
targets are to be met. Achievement will
depend on the supply of new technologies and techniques and their deployment
throughout the economy. In addition to
providing support to develop skills in the low carbon and environmental goods
and services sector, IEMA believes that environment and sustainability
knowledge needs to be mainstreamed throughout the economy and that
environmental professionals working in mainstream organisations have a
significant and important role to play in securing this transformation. 21 May 2009 |