Dhaka: Governments in Asia and the Pacific must invest in education and training to comprehensively develop climate literacy and green skills needed for low-carbon economies. A new report from the Asian Development Bank (ADB) suggests that education systems and nationally determined contributions (NDCs) have not yet caught up with the human development needs of climate-resilient economic growth.
According to Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha, globally, the demand for green jobs is outpacing the supply of green workers, as outlined in ADB’s Climate Change and Education Playbook launched today. The report stressed the need for adapting schools to the impacts of climate change, as extreme weather is significantly increasing school closures and affecting learning outcomes and household incomes over the long term. With the right green investments, the transition to a low-carbon economy could create more than 230 million jobs in Asia and the Pacific by 2030, the report states.
Around eight million coal industry workers
in the region will need reskilling as coal industries are phasing out. Additionally, all 4.7 billion citizens in the region require basic climate knowledge and awareness. The report highlights Bangladesh’s vulnerability due to its coastal location and low-lying land, leading to high economic and non-economic costs from climate change, such as loss of life, mobility, environment, health, and knowledge. Flooding incidences have worsened over the last decade, and climate projections suggest this trend will continue with rising temperatures and precipitation.
Failure to address climate change impacts is estimated to result in a 6.8 percent loss in GDP per year by 2030. The increasing pressures of climate change, coupled with the global push for sustainability, demand that businesses shift toward climate-resilient and resource-efficient industry practices and adopt green technologies essential for economic competitiveness. However, there is a significant gap in green skills among the current workforce and a short
age of competent mid-level managers who can champion climate-resilient business models and environmentally conscious operations. These shortcomings hinder industries from integrating green technologies and sustainable practices that can increase industry competitiveness and move up the global value chains.
The report cites the example of India, where students exposed to prolonged storms are about seven percent more likely to fall behind in school and experience an eight percent drop in household income on average. Last year, extreme heat in the Philippines closed schools for 32 days, while Pakistan’s devastating floods in 2022 damaged approximately 17,000 schools, disrupting education for 2.6 million children, as per the ADB report.
“Making education systems climate-ready is a key policy agenda in the coming years,” said ADB Sectors Group Director General Ramesh Subramaniam. “We must make education systems climate-ready at various levels-from the curriculum, to infrastructure, and teacher education so that
students develop the skills to enable the green transition,” he added.
The report aligns with the Baku Initiative on Human Development for Climate Resilience launched today at a COP29 high-level meeting attended by COP President and Azerbaijan Minister for Ecology and Natural Resources Mukhtar Babayev, Subramaniam, and other global development organizations and government representatives. The report calls for building climate resilience through education, enabling transformative climate literacy for children and youth, building green skills for the current and future workforce, and incorporating the human dimension into upcoming NDCs. It also emphasizes supporting the education and training of women, disadvantaged youth, and the marginalized to pursue climate-resilient pathways.
Governments in developing Asia must ensure that they incorporate clear, substantive measures to harness education and training in forthcoming updates to their NDCs under the Paris Agreement. Doing so can ensure that education system
s strategically enable countries’ paths to decarbonization based on climate literacy, green skills, and the research and development required to achieve national mitigation and adaptation goals.
ADB recently announced a new financing program that will enable it to increase its education investments. Under a partnership signed with the International Finance Facility for Education-a sovereign-backed Swiss foundation, the organization will guarantee $125 million of ADB’s existing loan portfolio, which the bank will then leverage four times to generate a new $500 million in concessional financing for lower middle-income countries in Asia and the Pacific.