IEMA ramps up support for green skills on Education Day at COP28

IEMA’s CEO and deputy CEO, Sarah Mukherjee MBE and Martin Baxter, respectively, called for greater support for green skills at several events today on Youth, Children, Education and Skills Day at COP28.

Mukherjee spoke at an event organised by the British Council titled, Developing skills for a greener society – international reflections and tools to support and inspire young people, while Baxter chaired an ISO event on Underpinning accountability with standards, accreditation and skills to meet climate commitments.

“Standards are a fantastic way to drive change in organisations, but we do need people with the capability to implement them,” Baxter said. “This should involve the engagement of youth in the standards-making process, and deployment of standards through young people doing work and having a job and career that can contribute to driving climate action.”

The pair also spoke at a Stella McCartney event in the Green Zone this afternoon, titled, Skills transformation for sustainable fashion.

This forms part of IEMA’s wider campaign to get green skills and jobs in the final cover text agreement at COP28, with Mukherjee and Baxter both discussing workforce transformation with a range of stakeholders over the last week.

Speaking about the need for training collaboration at a UNFCCC side event on Sunday titled, Credible and accountable climate commitments: we can’t do it alone, Mukherjee said: “This has to be about education. Unless we are all trained to the same standards and talk in the same language around those standards, we are ultimately going to fail.”

She continued: “Every job will be a green job in the future, so we have to make sure we have a common understanding across professions around what ESG and sustainability means.”

IEMA’s CEO and deputy CEO also spoke to a group of One Young World ambassadors from Sierra Leone, Madagascar, Liberia, Nigeria, Chile, Brazil and more during a networking session earlier this week.

“We discussed the importance of opportunities for green jobs and skills for young people, so that they can be part of the solution to the challenges we face, and to a person, everybody has been supportive about that,” Baxter said.

“We have also spoken to people in business and industry, and it really resonates, but the question is whether it resonates to the extent that we actually get it on the cover text.”

IEMA will be taking part in another ISO event on Saturday at 10am (UK time), which you can watch live here: Engaging SMEs in climate action through international standards - YouTube