Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap:
Helping businesses move frompledges to progress

November 2, 2022

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

Foreword

Brad Smith, Vice Chair
and President, Microsoft

It’s hard to ignore the effects of climate change. In recent
weeks, a heavy blanket of smoke from nearby wildfires hasenveloped the region I call home, an eerie phenomenon
that has become an unfortunate seasonal event in the
Pacific Northwest of the United States. At the same time,
the American West and parts of Europe are experiencing
historic drought. And halfway around the world, Pakistan
is recovering from catastrophic summer floods that killed
1,500 people, displaced 33 million more, and caused $40
billion in ruin. All devastating events. And all believed to befueled by climate change.
The gravity of the problem has led more than 3,900
companies, including Microsoft, to announce climate
pledges. As we work internally and with a large majorityof these companies, it’s clear that the coming businesschanges will be massive. They will impact a wide variety
of processes and operations, in part based on new
applications for digital technology, including cloud services,AI, and dedicated services like our Cloud for Sustainability.
But as we’ve learned, this will also require an equally vitaleffort to equip companies and employees with a broad
range of new skills needed for climate adaptation andsustainability transformation.
The historical importance and current breadth of thesustainability skilling challenge are difficult to overstate.
A clear analogy has emerged from our study of the issue.
Humanity’s initial quest to reach the moon required the
spread of physics into a broadly accessible academic
discipline across the United States. The world’s entry into
the digital age then required that computer science moveinto every school. In a similar way, the creation of a netzero planet will require that sustainability science spreads
into every sector of the economy.
That’s the focus of this report.

During the past year, Microsoft and the Boston Consulting
Group (BCG) studied the work of 15 companies at theforefront of sustainability innovation and change. Including
across Microsoft itself. Our teams interviewed or surveyednearly 250 employees whose jobs have sustainability
commitments. We identified new jobs that have emerged.
We studied the impact on the many jobs that existed
before. And we considered what our data says about indemand knowledge and skills.
The impact on jobs across companies falls into two broad
categories. The first is specialized sustainability positions
emerging quickly across the global economy. For example,
a company like Microsoft now employs individuals who
pursue full time the purchase of long-term, high-quality
carbon removal. The second is much broader, as existingjobs expand to encompass sustainability subject matter. A
good example involves engineers and materials scientists
who design hardware devices. They now have to assess not
only the capabilities of materials that go into a new device
but also the sustainability implications of those materials.
As companies move to create and fill these jobs, they
are confronting a huge sustainability skills gap. This gap
encompasses three categories. First, some employees
need deep and specialized sustainability knowledge andskills in areas like carbon accounting, carbon removal,
and ecosystem services valuation. This includes the skills
needed to address these issues through new climatespecific digital tools. Second, broader business teams
need readier access to more limited but sometimes deep
knowledge in specific sustainability subject areas, suchas climate-related issues that have become importantfor procurement and supply chain management. Third, agreat many employees need basic and broader fluency insustainability issues and climate science fields that impact awide variety of business operations and processes.

2Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

Ultimately, it’s important to recognize that thesustainability transformation will need people who can
combine specialized sustainability knowledge and skills
with varying degrees of other multidisciplinary skill
sets. These will need to combine knowledge from STEM
and other fields in the liberal arts and encompass skills
that span across business, the use of data, and digitaltechnology. This combination currently is hard to find andoften doesn’t exist naturally.
Perhaps not surprisingly, we’ve also learned that thesustainability skills gap is creating an increasing senseof anxiety for business leaders. This reflects not only theenormity of the climate crisis but two other factors as well.
First, there are growing public expectations that companies
will turn their climate pledges into progress. In the next 24
months, regulators in multiple countries likely will requirethat public companies report their carbon emissions. A
great many businesses are not yet equipped with the skilled
personnel, business processes, and data systems needed forthis step. Business leaders understandably fear that if theirreports are incomplete or show a lack of progress, they will
confront growing public criticism.
Second, this pressure for performance is growing while
economic concerns are rising. Economic turbulence isputting added pressure on companies to find new ways to
do more with less. In some instances, companies may evenbe tempted to postpone or forego new business initiatives,
including pursuing their climate pledges.
Yet ongoing scientific observations and data show that theworld cannot afford to wait. In late October, new reports
underscored the need for accelerated action. In particular,
the United Nations Environment Programme made clear
in its annual Emissions Gap report that current national
climate plans fall short of what will be needed to meet theworld’s climate targets.
Clearly the business community will need to do more.
Other institutions must as well. Climate pledges andperformance are equally important for every organizationon the planet, including nonprofits and even government
institutions themselves. In short, we’re all in this together,and we need to come together to chart a successful pathforward, including by investing in sustainability skills.
Yet today the gap between sustainability workforce needs
and the number of qualified people available is growing.

According to the LinkedIn Green Jobs report, green jobs
grew at an annual rate of 8 percent between 2015 and2021, while the talent pool grew at only 6 percent.
As these figures reflect, progress is underway, but it’s
not moving fast enough. To date, most companies at
the forefront of sustainability transformation have been
scrappy, growing the “home-grown” talent they need.
Our research found that employers so far have tapped
68 percent of their sustainability leaders by hiring fromwithin their own company. Sixty percent of sustainability
team members joined without expertise in the field.
Employers mostly have tapped talented insiders with thecore transformational and functional skill sets needed tocreate change in a company, even though they lacked
formal training in sustainability. They then upskilled thoseindividuals to accomplish critical sustainability work.
The biggest problem with this approach is that it will
not scale to meet either the business community’s or
the planet’s needs. As we look at the roughly 3,900
companies that have made climate pledges, it’s readily
apparent that the work to turn these pledges into progress
will require far more talent with sustainability skills andfluency than currently is being trained within thesecompanies’ businesses.
How do we move farther and faster?
This is a fundamental question, and we offer in this report
both some suggestions and a commitment as a company
to do more. Progress will be needed in three areas.
First, we all need to work together to develop a sharedunderstanding, based on better data, regarding
evolving jobs and the sustainability knowledge
and skills needed for them. Currently, data remains
spotty. We need a better and common taxonomy andframework that builds on recent sustainability work byinternational organizations, national governments, andprivate companies. As described in our report, we believe
sustainability skilling can borrow from recent advances
to address cybersecurity skilling to help create a betterroadmap linking specific sustainability skills, training, jobs,
and career paths.
Work will be needed from a broad array of stakeholders. To
develop a shared understanding of sustainability workforce
needs, Microsoft and LinkedIn will support efforts todefine skills and competencies and enable the mapping of3

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progresssustainability skills and jobs as they evolve. We will achieve
this in part through partnerships with organizations likethe International Labour Organization and our work with
the Development Data Partnership, which includes theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), World Bank, Inter-American Development Bank(IADB), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP),
International Monetary Fund (IMF), and other multilateralorganizations.
Second, employers must move quickly to upskill theirworkforce through learning initiatives focused onsustainability knowledge and skills. This will require
support from a variety of learning partners, including
educational institutions, vocational education providers,apprenticeship programs, and online training providers.
This work must start with the development of new learningmaterials that can be used both in person and online. This
must be supported by expanded learning initiatives toreach employees in companies and more broadly acrossthe workforce. There is an opportunity for government
policy and funding to help scale these efforts.
To support this work, Microsoft will work with partners todevelop and share new sustainability learning materials.
These will include LinkedIn Learning paths for sustainability
as well as business-focused sustainability materials
provided through Microsoft’s Sustainability Learning
Center and our Cloud Solution Center. Additionally, we
are forming new partnerships with NGOs to help workers,
including those in impacted and transitioning communities,
to complete sustainability learning pathways. This will
include a partnership with INCO Academy to launch a
Green Digital Skills course to support up to 10,000 learners,
including in the Global South.
We will also work with our customers to create a network
and advanced forum to share new learning and bestpractices to transform sustainability practices and reducecarbon emissions. This will include a new and focusedforum for chief sustainability officers.
Third, the world must prepare the next generation ofworkers for the sustainability jobs of the future. Just
as governments, NGOs, and companies have worked tobring digital skilling and computer science into schools,

we will need similar partnerships to bring sustainability
fluency and science into primary and secondary
schools. And higher education institutions will need tostrengthen and expand their undergraduate and graduate
sustainability programs. All these efforts can move faster
if governments and public-private partnerships develop
stronger sustainability programs through country-levelnetworks and centers of excellence, foster international
professional forums and communities of practice, andcreate real-world interdisciplinary learning opportunities
for students.
To support these efforts, Microsoft is committed to creating
and providing new curricular and training materials thatcan be used by primary and secondary students. This will
include our new Minecraft Frozen Planet II worlds, which
we will present in partnership with BBC Earth at COP-27.
This adds to the Climate and Sustainability Subject Kit
and Sustainability City learning map, available throughMinecraft Education. In addition, Microsoft FarmBeats forStudents will provide students with a hands-on experience
to explore how big data, AI, and machine learning apply
to real-world sustainability challenges. Finally, we will
join UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership to deliver
strong, coordinated action that will empower learners withthe skills required for inclusive and sustainable economic
development.
Microsoft will also invest in global capacity-building
for post-secondary education. This will include a
new partnership with the international researchcollaboration MECCE (Monitoring and Evaluating Climate
Communication and Education Project) to support theimplementation, monitoring, and reporting of sustainability
education worldwide. Additionally, we will partner with
the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability inHigher Education, providing support to its Centers for
Sustainability Across the Curriculum program.
■
The start of this decade has seen more than its share ofcrises, including the COVID pandemic, a war in Europe, andgrowing economic uncertainty. Although we can’t predict
when these current challenges will fade, it seems certainthat the climate crisis will outlast all of them.

4

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

For almost three centuries since the dawn of the industrial
revolution, human ingenuity has produced remarkableinventions and unprecedented prosperity for much of theworld. But this has come from the use of fossil fuels thathave produced carbon emissions at an unsustainable level.
Now we must move to a Net-Zero World in which we bothseek to eliminate net carbon emissions and expand global
economic opportunity. This will require sweeping changes
in every sector of the economy in every country in theworld. And we must achieve all this in only three decades.
In the history of civilization, few generations have needed
to do as much in as little time as we must do now. At
its most fundamental level, this is the single greatest
challenge and opportunity of our time.

Like the space age and digital era, the world’s sustainability
transformation calls not only for a new generation oftechnology but a new generation of knowledge and skills.
Clearly no single entity can meet this challenge alone. The
key will be to partner broadly and effectively with others tomove the world’s workforce into the future. We know the
proposals in this report don’t have all the answers, but webelieve the world must commit to a Global Sustainability
Skilling Strategy based on a concerted and coordinatedeffort from companies, industry organizations, learning
providers, and governments. And we are committed todoing our part.

Brad Smith
Vice Chair and President, Microsoft

5

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

Part I ∙ An unsustainable talent shortage
Our planet is in crisis. The Earth has warmed 1.1°C since
the late 1800s under a shroud of the highest levels ofgreenhouse gases (GHGs) in human history.1 For some, thistemperature rise sounds slight, but the impact on the worldis not. If our carbon emissions continue unabated, theresulting shifts in temperature and weather patterns will
only accelerate and worsen, meaning more frequent andcatastrophic droughts, wildfires, floods, and storms, as wellas the expanding loss of polar ice and biodiversity.

percent likelihood of avoiding a 1.5°C rise in global averagetemperatures, humanity can only emit another 420Gt CO2
into the atmosphere—ever. At the world’s current rate ofcarbon emissions, the remaining global carbon budget
will run out in 11 years. Successfully stalling the clock will
require action from everyone, from vanguard companies tothe world’s most vulnerable communities.

But there is good news: this human-generated crisis is
not beyond our control. Although it stems from our use
of fossil fuels like coal, oil, and natural gas—the very
organic compounds that have powered our economies
and societies for centuries—most of the world agrees
we can take steps to mitigate the impact. We must take
immediate action to stop the warming by reducing ourreliance on fossil fuels and by developing new technology
to capture and store carbon dioxide while ensuring
developing countries can advance their own economies.
We aren’t moving fast enough, though, to meet thedeadline set by scientists—to get to net zero by 2050
to avoid an increase of 1.5°C 2 —and prevent the worst
effects of climate change. Meaningful progress requires
a global infusion of money, technology, and most of all,people equipped with the know-how and skills to tackle
this vital work.

We cannot address climate change at the scale and speed
required without developing sustainability capacity andfluency in the global workforce. Current gaps in skills,organizational structure, and talent pipeline present some of
the biggest obstacles to overcome. We simply will not achieve
our goals without a ready workforce that is equipped to act.

Although we are faced with a daunting challenge, there
is also cause for optimism. The industrial revolution, theagricultural revolution, and the digital revolution each proved
the transformative power of human ingenuity. Each of theseeras ushered in dramatic scientific, economic, and social
advancements, driving generations of people to acquire newskills and expertise to meet the opportunities they unleashed.
Today, we are at the dawn of a new revolution, thesustainability revolution. It will be a global transition thatwill beget new discoveries, innovations, and industries toaddress the world’s changing climate. But unlike othereras that evolved organically at their own pace, we areworking under an urgent deadline constrained by the lawsof nature: the most recent Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change (IPCC) report makes clear that to have a 50

The challenge: A workforce built for sustainability

Today, more than 3,900 companies have announced actions
to lower their GHG emissions. And more than a third of theworld’s largest public companies have net-zero targets.3

Companies with science-based targets orcommitments to reduce GHG emissions
3,943
2,253
28

62

114

215

495

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

918
2020

2021

2022

Source: SBTi (data as of October 29, 2022)

These corporate commitments and national pledges are
critical to drive progress. But progress is not being madequickly enough and much more is needed beyond current
commitments. The world must overcome a large carbon
emissions gap to achieve net-zero emissions.
Compounding the issue, companies and organizations are
struggling to meet their goals. They consistently identify
the lack of a trained workforce and inadequate strategies
to develop sustainability skills and expertise as major
barriers toward progress.4

6

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

2030 Emissions gap under different scenarios
GtCO2e60

Current policies scenario
Unconditional NDC scenario
Conditional NDC scenario

50

23Green area shows pathways
limiting global temperature
increase to below 1.5°C with
a 66% chance by 2100 andminimum 33% chance overthe course of the century

40

1.5°C
range

30

20
2015

2020

2025

Unconditional NDC gap

GtCO2eMedianestimateof levelconsistent
with 1.5°C:
33 GtCO2e(range: 26–34)

2030

Under various scenarios reported in the UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2022, the emissions
gap is between 20Gt CO2e to 25Gt CO2e (with a 23 Gt CO2e gap under the scenario where
outcomes are not conditioned on financing or other external assistance).
Source: Derived from UNEP Emissions Gap Report 2022

Millions of workers will be needed to meet the world’s
climate and sustainability goals
To meet global sustainability goals, organizations
must make their operations and business models
more sustainable across multiple workstreams. Everyorganization and company will need to fundamentallytransform to significantly reduce GHG emissions andaddress other environmental concerns including water,
waste, and ecosystems.

systems design, renewable resource procurement, andsupply chain sustainability expertise. These workers will
be at the forefront of helping organizations reduce theirenvironmental footprints as well as build new industries
and business models to transform the global economy.

At the heart of that transformation will be workers who
design, drive, and track progress toward sustainability
goals—not only within specialized roles but also in
positions that incorporate a holistic view of businessstrategy and operations to adapt accordingly.

As significant and urgent as the need for sustainabilityfocused organizational shifts is, there is a corresponding
demand for a sizeable pool of reskilled workers trained andequipped to address that need. The International Labour
Organization (ILO) estimates 18 million net-new jobs willbe created by 2030 as a result of meeting the goals of theParis Agreement.5 Yet according to the LinkedIn Global
Green Skills Report, green jobs grew at an annual rate of 8
percent between 2015 and 2022, while the talent pool grewat only 6 percent.6

Such a transition will inevitably create myriad opportunities
for employees in emerging and evolving fields, whose
roles are dedicated to carbon accounting, lifecycle analysis,
ecosystem evaluation and management, transformational

Of the nearly 200 UN member states that are party to
the Paris Agreement, the ILO found that “less than 40 per
cent … include any plans for skills training to support theirimplementation, and over 20 per cent do not plan any

7Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progresshuman capital related activities at all.”8 Some countries
and regions are developing skilling plans, for example theEuropean Skills Agenda, a five-year plan that includes thedevelopment of a core green skills set and the monitoringand statistical analysis of green skills in European Union(EU) Member States. A similar example is the ASEAN
Declaration on Promoting Green Jobs for Equity andInclusive Growth of ASEAN Community. It is encouraging
to see some countries and regions take such steps, butdevelopment and adoption of skilling plans needs to bedone worldwide.
Achieving the requisite scale of transformation will requirea global workforce—one that spans economic sectors andgeographies—trained in the right skills, knowledge, andcapabilities to develop, implement, scale, and evaluate
the new tools, technologies, and processes needed forthe world to make this transition. Our collective climate
goals are ambitious and necessary, making a skilledsustainability workforce a top priority. But forming sucha workforce will require the private sector to be fully
engaged in accelerating reskilling efforts while also callingon countries around the world to build capacity to tackle
this enormous challenge.

Microsoft’s sustainability journey
Microsoft’s sustainability journey began with our first carbon
emissions reduction goal in 2009 and the development of
our internal carbon fee in 2012. (Throughout this report
we use “carbon emissions” to be synonymous with GHG
emissions.) It continued with the launch of the AI for Earth
Program in 2017 and continues to evolve as we assess
and learn from our progress. In 2020 we committed to becarbon negative, water positive, and zero waste, and protect
more land than we use by 2030, and to remove from theatmosphere all our historic carbon emissions by 2050.7
What’s more, we have also committed to empower ourcustomers and partners to reach their sustainability goals
through digital transformation grounded in sustainability
science. Digital tools like the Cloud for Sustainability
provide sustainability management solutions to enablemajor enterprises to measure, monitor, and report on theirprogress toward sustainability commitments and pledges.
Sustainability is now a core pillar of our business because it
is core to all business.
Microsoft is organized in part around a central
sustainability team led by a chief environmental officer. The
team includes specialized subject-matter experts in carbon,
water, waste, and ecosystems instrumental in setting
ambitious sustainability commitments grounded in science.
Once these commitments were set, Microsoft embedded
sustainability roles across the company dedicated to
the work that drives our progress toward achieving
our commitments. We currently have more than 250
sustainability roles distributed across our business groups.
As we move toward integrating broader sustainability
fluency across all aspects of our business and in all roles,
our workforce around the world is becoming upskilledon sustainability fundamentals. Having a workforce withsustainability skills and knowledge becomes increasingly
important as we look beyond our own sustainability
journey to work with our partners and customers on
theirs, as well.

8

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

Part II ∙ Insights from the corporate sustainability workforce landscape
To better understand sustainability workforce needs,
Microsoft and the Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
researched 15 large corporations from a variety of sectors.
We conducted extensive interviews and surveys acrossnine of those companies: AT&T, BCG, HSBC, John Deere,
JSW Steel, Microsoft, Owens Corning, Sysco, and Unilever.
These companies are leaders in setting and pursuing
ambitious climate goals, meaning that they are alreadyconfronting workforce challenges that most organizations
worldwide, whether corporate, governmental, or
nonprofit, will face as they adopt and work towardsustainability goals.
Each of the surveyed companies were in different stagesof their sustainability planning and operations, with eachstage reflected in the company’s respective workforce
approach. While sustainability teams look different at
each organization, they face common challenges as they
progress in their sustainability journeys. The results ofthis survey, combined with international research andMicrosoft’s own sustainability journey, yield key insights
about the sustainability workforce challenge.
1. Talent development drives the sustainability journey
Organizational capacity and talent development are
mutually reinforcing: talent development is critical toorganizational progress, and organizational changes drive
workforce adaptations.
This interplay is clearly seen as corporations movethrough their sustainability journeys. During the initialmobilization stage, companies set their goals, often
publicly, and quickly realize they need to identify
sustainability talent from within their existing workforce.
Typically, companies at this stage are in reactive mode:considering stakeholder concerns, fulfilling regulatory
requirements, and addressing shareholder demands.
Training is therefore geared toward compliance andresponding to immediate inquiries, rather than building
the core transformation and functional skill sets needed
to foster change within the company.
Companies then generally shift to optimizing businessprocesses to meet evolving corporate-wide goals. They
focus on scaling functional and digital abilities so business
units can carry out sustainability initiatives independently,

coordinated by central teams. Companies in this phasetend to embed workers with sustainability skills into key
business units. And they typically develop a more forwardlooking and customized approach to worker training, withmechanisms to upskill talent according to individualized
and tailored learning pathways to meet proactive rather
than reactive needs.
Finally, companies that have made the most progress intheir journeys have integrated sustainability across all
aspects of the business, including helping their customers
address sustainability challenges. These organizations areinvesting in individuals with specialized skills and equipping
many workers with broader sustainability knowledge;
they’ve typically set goals to upskill their broader workforce
on sustainability fundamentals to achieve widespread
fluency. Employers in this phase have also moved beyond
staggered, reactive approaches to cultivate talent andcreate roles and career paths that provide attractive
opportunities for specialized sustainability workers.
2. Businesses need multidisciplinary workers withspecialized sustainability skills
Achieving sustainability goals requires reimagining“business as usual.” Efforts to reduce GHG emissions,improve energy and water efficiency, reinvent moresustainable packaging, and address other supply chain
issues will be implemented by employees who haveacquired specialized sustainability skills to incorporate
with their understanding of business operations or
systems thinking.
Among organizations we examined, core sustainability
workforces are focused on three primary areas of activity:
setting and managing sustainability strategy, driving
sustainability implementation, and activities that enableboth of the above. Each area requires expertise in specificsustainability skills and covers a range of sustainability
business activities, such as procuring clean energy andother sustainable inputs for business operations; carbon
accounting; implementing processes for carbon removal(which throughout this report we use to mean carbon
dioxide removal); ecosystem services valuation; assessing
climate risks; and working on product design to makeproducts zero waste. Companies emphasized that while
they need sustainability expertise, even more critical is9Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progressCompany sustainability professionals focus on three main areas of work:
strategy, implementation, and enablement% of respondents’time spent by task

~30% of timeon strategy~40% of time on
implementation~30% of time on
enablement

Ambition andstrategy 15%
Materiality and exposure 7%
Policy 6%
Efficiency of operations 8%
Product innovation 8%
Sustainable inputs 7%
Sustainable suppliers 5%
Making others sustainable 5%
Removals and offsets 5%

Data measurementand disclosure 11%
Change management 11%
Ecosystem and partnerships 7%

Source: 2022 BCG/Microsoft Sustainability Talent and Skills Survey

deep knowledge of business processes, so in many casessustainability know-how is being acquired on the job.

3. Organizations need to embed sustainability science
into their day-to-day operations

For example, a company like Microsoft now employs
individuals who pursue full time life cycle assessment,
climate risk assessment, and the purchase of long-term,high-quality carbon removal.

To make significant progress on their operational goals
and build more sustainable businesses, companies willneed to collaborate with scientists experienced in thisfield. Despite tangible, trackable environmental and social
trends, complex and dynamic climate challenges will affectorganizations and industries differently, requiring solutions
that apply to unique business needs.

Another example can be found at a major US-based global
product company. In response to customer demand for
end-of-life solutions for their products, the company
built a team focused on the full product life cycle andinvested in circular economy solutions. This team includes
individuals with specialized skills in analytics and reporting,manufacturing, and material decarbonization. Although
this team is currently centered within their sustainability
center of excellence, the company plans to embed endof-life solutions and associated roles in all parts of its
business. This trajectory—incubating sustainable businessprocesses in a central part of the company and then scaling
and embedding that talent across the business—was a
way to leverage scarce sustainability expertise to transform
processes while also developing the talent required.

Sustainability science is an emerging field that draws
from earth, ecological, and social science, as well as otherdisciplines to understand evolving sustainability challenges
and develop solutions. For example, climate, ecologicalscience, and chemistry expertise is needed to evaluate
alternative nature-based carbon removal strategies,
assess interconnections and feedback of climate risks,and overcome bottlenecks to decarbonization models.
Environmental science is critical to assess progress toward
goals, model and interpret the physical risks associatedwith investments, and develop adaptive strategies
to respond to uncertain and volatile environmental

10

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progressconditions. Expanding access to and even embedding
sustainability scientists into their workforce will provide
companies with the know-how to set and assess their goals
and meet their commitments.
And underlying all these is the central role of data science
for analysis. At Microsoft, we have found that integrating
data science with AI and machine learning can accelerate
our understanding and development of solutions. For
example, we are advancing research and deploying
solutions that combine AI and biophysical observations andmodeling to improve environmental forecasts, resource
management, and GHG emissions.9
4. Virtually all workers will need basic sustainability
fluency
In addition to incorporating highly specialized, scientificknowledge into strategic planning and operations, theimplementation of these changes will require a broader
sustainability mindset. Workers will need to rethink notonly how particular tasks are accomplished but also
ways to approach and solve problems from the start. For
example, reassessing costs and benefits from a systems
perspective or tracking current and future implicationsof business decisions in terms of emissions, water, andecosystem impacts.
Growing research highlights the need for what academic
literature calls “sustainability competencies.” This
interlinked set of knowledge, skills, attitudes, and values
enables effective response to real-world sustainability
problems, challenges, and opportunities.10 There are
numerous definitions, but many of them include fluency
in thinking in systems rather than silos, future thinking(thinking about the possibilities of the future rather
than the routines of the past), normative or valuesthinking, and circular thinking (thinking in terms ofcircular production rather than purely linear processes).11
Moreover, foundational knowledge for these roles typically
includes some measure of sustainability science, change
management, transdisciplinary skills, and digital skills. We
believe the broader corporate workforce will need suchfoundational sustainability competencies and knowledge—
essentially a “sustainability fluency.”
As one supply chain sustainability leader said,“Sustainability also has a behavioral shift in thinking.
We are asking people to change from how they used
to function. It’s not just technical, it’s behavioral. For

Empowering a workforce to support the transformation to sustainability
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ambiguity
as an opportunity.
thinkers
remain open
andopencurious,see ambiguity
an opportunity.

Sustainability science
SUSTAINABILITYSCIENCEThe field
fieldofofsciencesciencethatfocuseson understanding
biophysicalandsystems
social systems
as to
The
that
focuseson understanding
Earth,earth,biophysicaland social
as they relate
they relate
to achieving
sustainable
This includes
earth
systemsscience, carbon
achievingsustainable
development.
Thisdevelopment.
includes Earth systems
science,carbonmanagement,
management,
environment
and equity,change, climate
vulnerability
andenvironmental
resilience,
environment
andequity, behavioral
change,behavioral
climate vulnerability
and resilience,hydrology,
forecasting,accounting
and evaluation.
hydrology, ecosystem
environmental
forecasting,ecosystem accounting and evaluation.

Digital skills
DIGITALSKILLSskills neededneededtotouseusedigital
digitaldevices,
devices,
communication
applications,networks
to accessandThe skills
communication
applications,and andnetworks
to accessand manage
information.
These including
such asdata
management,
computer programming,
data science, andmanage information.
These skills
includingskillssuch
as data management,
computer programming,
data
digitalliteracy.
science,and digital literacy.
Transdisciplinarity
TRANSDISCIPLINARITY
The
disciplines,
sectors,
andandstakeholders
to collaboratively
designdesign
and implement
The ability
abilitytotowork
workacrossacrossdisciplines,
sectors,
stakeholders
to collaboratively
andsolutions.
implement solutions.

SKILLS AND KNOWLEDGECOMPETENCIESCHANGEMANAGEMENT
Change management
The
guide
organizationalchangeto atosuccessful
resolution.
This includes
The collection
collectionofofskills
skillsneededneededtoto
guideorganizationalchangea successful
resolution.
Thisskillssuchskills
as: preparation,
strategic visions,removingbuilding
short-term
wins,
and building
includessuch as: preparation,
strategic
visions,barriers,
removing
barriers,building
short-term
wins, andcoalitions.
building coalitions.

Source: 2022 BCG/Microsoft Sustainability Talent and Skills Survey

11Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progressprocurement, some of it is about cost-savings, but we’realso asking them to think about the value creation piece.
We’re asking them to think outside of the box. We’reasking a sourcing leader to think about product redesign:instead of just asking them to source something differently,
it’s thinking through whether we can approach it [thedesign process] totally differently.”12
HSBC is a good example of a company that has invested
in sustainability fluency across its broader workforce.
Customer-facing employees needed to be able to advise
their clients on their sustainability journeys and provide theright financing solutions. Toward that end, HSBC createdan internal sustainability academy and by the end of 2022
thousands of frontline staff will have commenced their
upskilling journey. It has further developed sustainability
boot camps to “train the trainers” to rapidly scale thiscurriculum. It also supports internal rotations to enable
employees to get firsthand experience with sustainabilityrelated work and projects.
The foundational changes needed across organizations
will require sustainability fluency beyond individuals insustainability-specialized roles. These basic competencies
should broadly undergird any role-specific skills, eventhose jobs without sustainability in their title and without aprimary sustainability focus.

5. Current sustainability skilling models do not scale.
Sustainability is a rapidly evolving field. It is therefore notsurprising to find that companies reported most of theirsustainability team members did not join their company
with sustainability training but instead have learned on
the job. Among sustainability leaders interviewed, 68
percent were hired internally, and among sustainability
professionals we surveyed, over 40 percent had three or
fewer years of previous sustainability experience. Among
sustainability managers and professionals surveyed, nearly
60 percent did not have a degree in a sustainabilityrelated field. These major companies have relied
upon talented insiders with the core transformationaland functional skill sets needed to evolve their rolesand create change, despite a general lack of formal
sustainability training.
Microsoft’s own sustainability team reflects this trend.
One team member’s career path—built over 30 years at
the company—began in customer service and support,
went on to business management and reporting, thencontinued to procurement, before being promoted toa leadership position on our Sustainability Reportingand Governance team. A career intersecting businessand sustainability started with seeing an opportunity toassist with building a proof-of-concept data solution, led

Many sustainability leaders were hired internally, and majority of sustainability professionals
did not have a sustainability-related degree

Sustainability leaders’
path to current role

​ iredH
68%​internally​Hired32%​externally

Sustainability professionals’
academic degrees​Not​sustainability​related

57%

43%
​Sustainability​related

Source: 2022 BCG/Microsoft Sustainability Talent and Skills Survey

12Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

to learning sustainability accounting to meet evolving
business needs, then leveraging their in-depth knowledge
and experience at Microsoft to apply a whole company
lens to their responsibilities. Not only has this individual’s
career path advanced Microsoft’s sustainability reportingand governance efforts, but it has also elevated thisindividual as an expert in driving sustainability insights
and change around the globe—all from learning andembracing sustainability on the job.

Similar stories are easy to find across corporate
sustainability teams. This is promising because it indicatesthat many critical skills can be acquired within the structureof today’s workforce—a must if we are to act with a sharedsense of urgency. However, it also is problematic because
tailored in-house talent strategies cannot scale to theglobal change needed. There simply isn’t time to build
workforce sustainability capacities piecemeal. We need afocused, data-driven, and adaptive approach.

13

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

Part III ∙ Recommendations for building a workforce empowered to drive
transformation to sustainability
The only way to meet this pressing workforce challenge
is for business, government, nonprofit, science, andeducation communities to come together to define theirworkforce needs and gaps and to set ambitious goals
to meet them. Achieving the scale and speed of change
needed to address climate change requires an all-of-theabove approach to building sustainability capacity in theworkforce.
Based on our findings and experiences, we’ve outlined
several steps that public and private organizations can take
now—independently and together—to build the global
workforce we need.

Action 1 Map needed skills andknowledge for sustainability jobs
Although we know millions more workers are needed,
there is spotty information linking immediate workforce
needs with required skills and training. Synthesizing reports
from 32 countries, the ILO report “Skills for a greener
future” observes: “Most countries lack comprehensive
information on gaps and shortages in skills for green jobs…. And systematic mechanisms for anticipating what skills
are needed in which the private sector is directly involved
exist only in a few countries.”13
Without better data it is hard for organizations to recruit
talent, for workers to understand what skills they should
pursue, and for governments to make policy decisions.

Employers are keenly feeling the pain: 76 percent ofrespondents in the Microsoft-BCG survey identified thenascency and rapid evolution of required skills as thebiggest pain points in training their workforce.
Take one example, carbon or GHG accounting, that will bea required role at every organization with carbon emissions
reduction goals: the job’s requirements illustrate the crosscutting and transdisciplinary nature of new specialized
sustainability roles. A carbon accountant will need technicalknowledge of scopes for reporting greenhouse gases
across scopes 1-3; functional expertise in accounting andauditing; experience with data collection and reporting;and the ability to adapt to still-emerging standards.
Where each of these skill areas might traditionally belearned through different academic programs and are
principally applied in distinct professional roles, theemerging carbon accounting practice meshes them together
in novel ways while also requiring change management
capabilities and an ability to take a future-thinking approach.
Therefore, seeking to fill the role by focusing narrowly
upon traditional accounting skills may not necessarily beeffective. For example, a leading multi-national manufacturer
found that when it hired financial accountants for carbon
accounting roles, those individuals’ traditional accounting
training made it difficult for them to work with still-emerging
standards. Instead, the company had more success hiring
process engineers and training them in technical knowledgeof GHG emissions. HSBC found that in sustainability-related
work it needed individuals who, more than anything, are

SUSTAINABILITY
Technical knowledge of protocols forcalculating and reporting greenhouse gas
emissions at scopes 1, 2, and 3

FUNCTIONAL
Functional expertise incorporate accounting
and auditing

TRANSFORMATIONAL
Ability to maintain communication withstill-emerging standards for emissions
reporting to relevant stakeholders

Carbonaccounting

DATA AND DIGITAL
Data collection, aggregation, andanalysis to track and report emissions

14

sClosing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

comfortable with uncertainty. As one leader described it, in
this space “the uncertainty and volatility are key features thatpeople need to deal with.”14
A look at the skills and career history for one of the mostcommon sustainability-focused jobs at corporations,sustainability manager, is instructive. Sustainability
managers are responsible for analyzing numerous aspectsof a business to identify sustainability issues and must workwith others—internally and externally—to help a businessreach its environmental sustainability goals. Responsibilities
can differ by industry and sector, but the job frequently
entails monitoring and enforcing environmental controls;
making sure work activities comply with applicable laws
regarding waste, water, and emissions; studying theimpacts of various work activities on different environment
and energy measures; and planning for ways to reduce
environmental impacts.

When we examine the careers of current sustainability
managers, among their top 10 most common immediately
prior positions, roughly half are not sustainability
roles but instead relate to customer engagement,
project management, and other leadership anddevelopment functions.
Relatedly, the multidisciplinary skillsets most seen among
sustainability managers do not all occur together inprevious roles; a prior job may cover only half of the top
10 skills needed. Moreover, when we map such skills overtime, we see that the top skills for sustainability managers
have changed significantly over the past seven years andthat digital skills have become increasingly important.
Employers unaware of this may be unnecessarily limiting
their search for sustainability talent or failing to provide thefull range of multidisciplinary training that will nurture asustainability manager’s success.

Four out of the top ten prior jobs most often held by sustainability managers were notsustainability focused*
Sustainability-related roles
roles
Sustainability-related

Business operation roles

SustainabilityConsultant
Consultant
Sustainability
EnvironmentalManager
Manager
Environmental

Project Manager
Business
operation roles

SustainabilityCoordinator
Coordinator
Sustainability

Sustainability
Manager

EnvironmentalConsultant
Consultant
Environmental
Environment,
HealthandSafety
SafetyManager
Manager
Environment,
HealthandProgram Manager
ProgramManager
Quality Assurance
Quality
AssuranceManager
Manager
Customer Service
Customer
ServiceRepresentative
Representative

Sustainability
SustainabilitySpecialist
Specialist
Source: LinkedIn* Roles listed are titles for the top ten jobs held immediately prior by individuals who moved into a sustainability manager role.

Top 10 skills ranked for sustainability managers from 2015 to 2021
Rank

2015

2016

2017

2018

2019

2020

2021

1

Sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability

Sustainability

Corporate Sustainability

Corporate Sustainability

Sustainability

2

Environmental Awareness

Environmental AwarenessSustainability Reporting

Program Management

Sustainability

Sustainability

Corporate Sustainability

3

Leadership in Energy andEnvironmental Design (LEED)

Program Management

Environmental Awareness

Strategic Planning

Sustainability Reporting

Sustainability Reporting

Corporate Social
Responsibility

4Community Outreach

Sustainable Development

Community Outreach

Strategy

Sustainable Development

Strategy

Sustainability Consulting

5

Program Management

Corporate Social
Responsibility

Program Management

Project Management

Corporate Social
Responsibility

Business Strategy

Sustainable Development

6

Energy Efficiency

Community Outreach

Project Management

Leadership

Program Management

Analytical Skills

Project Management

7

Sustainable Development

Environmental Policy

Strategic PlanningResearch

Project Management

Problem Solving

Public Speaking

8

Environmental Policy

Public Speaking

Public Speaking

Public Speaking

Public Speaking

Data Analysis

Leadership

9

Environmental Management
Systems

Energy Efficiency

Management

Management

Strategic PlanningManagement

Data Analysis

10

Corporate Social
Responsibility

Strategic PlanningResearch

Microsoft Excel

Data Analysis

Project Management

Strategy

Source: LinkedIn

15

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

The core role of digital skills
Digital skills and technology will be critical to achievinga sustainable world. Technology-enabled measurementand data—through remote sensors and other IoT devices,
satellites, and connectivity, combined with big data
analytics and AI/machine learning (ML)-enabled modeling15—will play a critical role in monitoring and optimizing
resource use. Core tasks of recording and reporting
environmental impacts will rely upon evolving digital tools,
such as Microsoft’s Cloud for Sustainability, which helps
companies track their emissions and removals as well as
develop strategies to set and meet sustainability targets.
Recording and reporting jobs will depend on the ability tocollect, manage, and aggregate data from an ever-growing
array of sources. In addition, digital-twin technologies
offer the promise of reducing impacts by optimizing
every aspect of manufacturing, logistics, and supply chain
management. New applications of AI/ML offer ways ofletting companies better understand and manage the risks
that climate change poses to their business.

Individuals increasingly need to be able to use thesetechnology tools to handle sustainability-related tasks.
This is borne out in the strong presence of digital skills
in profiles of sustainability specialists. Excluding specificfunction-specific skills, two of the top five priority skills forsustainability work are digital skills.
Digital skills have become foundational to organizationalsustainability roles. What is more, as these tools evolve,
they will incorporate functionality to enable a wider rangeof workers to use them—which means that workers may
not need to have as in-depth sustainability expertise, butthey must have the requisite digital skills to use technology
tools to achieve results.

Highest priority skills for sustainability work
Data & Digital

Sustainability-specific

Transformational

Data collection & management

29%

Carbon accounting & reporting

25%

Climate change fundamentals

24%

Broad stakeholder management

23%

Business intelligence, digital design & visualization

21%

Data modeling & analysis

21%

Culture & change management

20%

Strategy definition & roadmap

20%

Sustainability challenges/opportunities

20%

Creative problem-solving

Digital skills provide a strong
foundation for sustainability
work, making up 2 of the top
5 priority skills identified bysustainability professionals

18%

Source: 2022 BCG/Microsoft Sustainability Talent and Skills Survey

16

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

The cross-disciplinary nature of many sustainability
specialist roles and the rapid pace of change bothunderscore the need for real-time data and flexible
frameworks that identify needed skills and knowledge for,as well as potential career and education pathways leading
to, these evolving roles.

Recommendation #1: Develop a common visionof skills for specialized sustainability roles

Developing a clearer picture of the sustainability skills andlabor gaps, present and future, will require a common
taxonomy and framework. Research and studies like those
conducted by the ILO, UNESCO, the National Academy of
Sciences, and the EU present overviews of the landscape,and several countries have begun to collect data on broad
green jobs categories. Private sector companies andassociations also have analyzed the state of sustainability
jobs.16 However, the picture of newer specialized
sustainability jobs has yet to be brought into sharp focus.
In other technical arenas with fast-changing skills,
a collaborative approach involving private sector,
government, and the education sector to define a skills
and competencies framework has been foundational toshape education and training curricula and inform targetedtraining and hiring initiatives and policy.
The world needs similar clarity in sustainability specialist
jobs and the skills needed to do them. The changing natureof many of these jobs demands a dynamic and flexible
framework that can continue to evolve. Such a framework
could serve as a common reference point for employers,
jobseekers, students, educators, and policymakers tounderstand the evolving skills and labor landscape forsustainability roles.

Recommendation #2: Develop and standardize
sustainability credentials

Once we identify the key skills and competencies forsustainability jobs, employers and workers still need aclear way to demonstrate those skills have been attained.
Over the past decade, a wide range of sustainability
degree programs, online training, and certificate programs
have emerged. However, without a common framework,
employers, workers, and educators are at a loss to know
which programs can deliver on the promise of creating aworkforce to drive the needed transformations.

NICE Framework
In the United States, the National Initiative for
Cybersecurity Education (NICE) Framework is a
resource to help develop a workforce capable ofmeeting organizations’ cybersecurity needs. The concept
for the NICE Framework began within the Departmentof Homeland Security (DHS) and initially focused onunderstanding cybersecurity roles within the federal
government. DHS subsequently gathered input acrossindustry, academia, and government. The Frameworkmaps cybersecurity skills through a set of competencies
and associated tasks, knowledge, and skills. This
enables employers in all sectors to define work roles
through a common language as well as identify gaps
in cybersecurity staffing. Through a mapping tool,
employers can input desired skills and competencies
to build job profiles aligned to the framework. This
supports staffing needs while also creating consistency
in the way organizations describe their cybersecurity
needs. In a reciprocal way, education and training
providers leverage the Framework to design and deliverindustry-aligned courses. This ensures that current
and future cybersecurity workers gain in-demand skills
and credentials.
The Framework has been instrumental in development ofcollaborative tools like CyberSeek, which enables users
to map job titles to specific certifications and required
skills. It also provides an interactive heat map withspecific skilled jobs by state and metropolitan area andlays out career pathways so individuals and employers
can see how roles build upon each other.

There is a desperate need to harmonize and standardize
credentials for sustainability skills.17 This can be enabledthrough the common frameworks discussed above that linkspecific skills and competencies with specific job functions:those can in turn be connected to identified certifications
and training providers. They can also be mapped to rolesand career paths, so individuals and employers can see
how skills and experience build upon each other and canlead to increased expertise over time.

17

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

There are uses for different types of credentials at
different levels. Online self-paced, self-attested learning
programs can be effective to promote rapid, entitywide skilling and help existing employees address
sustainability-related issues in their day-to-day workflows.
They can also be useful for individuals seeking to learn
more about the field and develop basic competencies
in sustainability fluency. General sustainability certificate
programs are also becoming widely available. And
numerous professional associations have establishedgeneral sustainability certificate programs designed
to help professionals gain a baseline understanding ofsustainability practices.18
Additionally, for more specialized sustainability areas,industry-recognized certifications that verify acquired
skills through examination can be particularly valuable.
It is common for skilled technical jobs—such as those in
information technology—to require widely recognized,
high-value industry certifications. Those certifications
are developed by experts who carefully analyze thespecific tasks for the roles in question, have thatanalysis reviewed and validated frequently by industry
experts, and engage psychometrics experts to develop
evaluative criteria. Certifications are only awarded via
rigorous examination.
Today, widely recognized sustainability credentials
already exist, particularly where robust standards andcompliance regimes are in place, such as around LEED
certification or green construction.19 But in arenas wherecompliance standards and reporting requirements are still
evolving—such as carbon accounting, climate adaptation,and ecosystem evaluation—or where roles have crosscutting responsibilities, such as chief sustainability
officer, required skills do not yet fit neatly within
existing pathways and certifications. This proliferationof credentials and certificates is difficult to decipher for
workers and employers. For example, there are multiple
frameworks and certifications for GHG accounting andreporting (e.g., GRI, CDP, FSA).
Sustainability experts, industry stakeholders, government, andcertification experts should collaborate to drive standards andclarity in specialized sustainability areas. Such standards canbe supported through national or international accreditation
bodies or industry associations.

To further a shared understanding of the skills,
knowledge base, and competencies for thesustainability workforce, Microsoft commits to:Work with others in the public and private sector tomap jobs and needed skills: Microsoft and LinkedIn will
support efforts to define skills and competencies, and toshare near-real-time information on sustainability skills
across sectors, occupations, and geographies. We willcontinue our partnership with the International Labour
Organization and leverage our existing partnership with
the Development Data Partnership, which includes theOrganisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), World Bank, Inter-American Development
Bank (IADB), United Nations Development Programme(UNDP), International Monetary Fund (IMF), and others toprovide data to enable partners to map the evolution ofsustainability skills and jobs.

Action 2 Provide sustainability skills totoday’s workforce
Ambitious initiatives are needed to ensure that themillions of individuals around the world who need todevelop sustainability skills and knowledge do so. The
private sector, and particularly organizations that havemade sustainability commitments, must be at the leadingedge of the needed change. Their skills and training
efforts can also help support industry talent pipeline
development, and coordination with policymakers canhelp leverage broader change.

Recommendation #1: Develop and disseminate
needed training materials

As sustainability skills and tools become more embeddedin the day-to-day work of companies, organizations
will increasingly need relevant skills training materials
that speak to business needs. This work must start withthe development of new learning materials that can beused both in person and online. Some key actions thatbusinesses should take include:• Work with education and training providers
to develop needed sustainability fluency andspecialized sustainability skills curriculum. High-18

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

quality credentials require active participationby employers and industry experts. Companies
and industry associations must work closely withtraining and education providers to develop andcontinually update curriculum and training that canmeet business needs. This includes curriculum tounderstand and use digital tools to record, reportand manage carbon, water, waste, and energy
for businesses.
• Disseminate training resources globally. Somefoundational resources already exist at centralized
hubs including the UN Global Compact and theADBI E-Learning platform20 as well as throughprivate providers. It is vital that such curriculum bemade broadly available in numerous languages,
including at points where employers and businesses
are most likely to seek resources to upskill theiremployees. For example, LinkedIn Learning currently
offers numerous courses and pathways to support
sustainability fluency. Additionally, the Microsoft
Sustainability Learning Center includes detailed
information about business-focused environmental
sustainability topics and technologies.

Recommendation #2: Train today’s workers

Organizational transformation to net zero and othersustainability goals will require employees to have abasic grasp of business-related sustainability issues.
Our own experience and our customers’ businessneeds suggest some key domains of learning for the
corporate workforce:
Climate and Environmental Science Fundamentals,
which includes an understanding of cycling of matterand the flow of energy through ecosystems, including
the carbon cycle and the water cycle. This inclusdes
knowledge of the different (GHG), the primary sourcesof these emissions, and relative warming potentials.
Measurement, Accounting and Reporting, which
includes an understanding of categorization of GHG
emissions (scopes 1,2 and 3), common reporting
frameworks, and the differences between avoided
emission offsets and carbon removal. It also includes
an understanding of approaches and frameworks foraccounting for biodiversity and ecosystems. These areas
include an understanding of the major sources of risk to
a company and ways to measure and manage these risks.
This also includes the ability to leverage relevant tools andtechnologies in support of measurement and reporting.

As we have seen from corporate organizational
experience, on-the-job training is critical. Companies
highly value business experience and often prefer to train
existing workers. Training also can open up opportunities
for individuals who hold other roles in the company.
These efforts are happening today but need to be
exponentially increased. Critical steps that organizations
should take include:

Management of GHGs, Energy and Water, which
requires an understanding of methods to reduce GHG
emissions across scopes 1, 2, and 3, energy efficiency
and renewable energy procurement, and processes tooperationalize efficiency and reduce emissions across the
supply chain and the value chain, including construction.
This also includes understanding strategies for water
conservation and recycling.

• Invest in broad sustainability fluency across thecorporate workforce. Companies should use a hostof strategies to encourage sustainability fluency
broadly across their workforce. This includes setting
goals for basic sustainability training for all workers
or developing in-house academies, badges, rotational
opportunities or other incentives to encourage
employees to participate in training. Organizations
should also engage with suppliers and partners to
support their sustainability fluency.

Systems and Circularity, which includes a knowledgeof what systems thinking is and how to apply it
when trying to understand and minimize impacts
to our climate and environment. It also provides anunderstanding of concepts of circularity and the need
to use and reuse resources.
Governance, Law and Policy, which includes
international, national, and local policy frameworks. This
includes common policy measures and regulatory trends.

19

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress• Employ upskilling strategies to build the talentpipeline. Businesses should identify areas wheretargeted skilling can help individuals move into
sustainability roles (including individuals whose priorjobs were not sustainability-focused). Strategies thatcombine both work and learning, including rotations
and apprenticeships, can be effective here. Suchinitiatives could target experienced and midcareer
individuals that have business experience but needto gain sustainability knowledge and skills, or they
can focus on local communities or traditionally
underrepresented populations. Organizations should
consider how investments and partnerships with
nonprofits and education providers can help build
the broader sustainability talent pipeline.
• Use a wider lens to identify potential talent.
Data and experience demonstrate that manysustainability professionals come from diverse
backgrounds and gain skills on the job. Companies
should take a skills- and experience-based
approach to identify talent that can fill specialized
sustainability roles, with the right training. By
focusing on skills and experience from prior roles
rather than only four-year degrees and exact title
matches, employers will widen the aperture of whothey view as qualified for in-demand sustainability
roles. Employers could apply this approach inconjunction with data aggregation tools to refine
transitional training programs to develop a broader
pool of potential talent.

Recommendation #3: Work with policymakers tobring actions to scale

Many countries—including nations that have set ambitious
climate-related goals—have yet to articulate concerted
approaches that involve skills and training.21 To taketraining efforts to a broader scale, intentional investments
on a national and international scale are needed. This
will require policymakers to consider incentives, such as
training investments and tax policy. In addition, because
the private sector is often at the leading edge of innovationand has the ability to move nimbly to address immediate
workforce needs, public-private partnerships should
leverage that innovation to bring impact to scale. Although
we are seeing efforts on this front,22 we must think bigger
and bolder.

“Our strategy to hit net zero is very much at the heartof everything we do in our operations, but we need toknow where we’re impacting, which part of our process,which part of our supply chain is either causing the mostrisks to those goals or can give us the most opportunity
to make a real dent in the goal and move forward atpace. Enabling those digital technologies and digitalskills to come together with your net carbon goals andwith green skills, that’s where the opportunity become
reality … When you look at your own workforce, there isreal opportunity to harness people who are passionate
about this agenda and look to cross skill and upskill
people who are already in your organization.”– Digital services leader at a major utility company

Key actions that policymakers can take to drive change andwork with private sector and NGO partners:• National goals for climate should include national
goals for skilling. Countries that have set Nationally
Determined Contributions should develop strategicplans for meeting the workforce needs to achieve
such commitments. This calls for bringing together
private sector, government, educational, and otherstakeholders to incorporate sustainability skills as a
critical component of any sustainable infrastructure
spending and planning.
• Support broader participation. Government
programs often have the furthest reach to be able todisseminate training materials and reach and support
communities that otherwise would not be touched bytraditional private sector routes. Businesses, NGOs,
and governments should partner to reach impacted
and transitional communities, as well as individuals
from traditionally underrepresented groups, withtraining opportunities and supportive programs
to help individuals complete learning and entersustainability-related jobs.

20Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress• Support the exchange of talent and ideas between
industry and academia/research institutions. Fields
like agriculture, healthcare, and pharmaceuticals
have built up longstanding national and international
networks of research and exchange. Governments
should also facilitate and accelerate the flow ofsustainability scientific expertise more seamlessly
and rapidly to the point of action. This can be ofparticular benefit to least developed countries,
particularly if such resources go beyond standard
scientific research to include information exchangewith government agencies, civil society organizations,the private sector, citizen-science initiatives, andlocal communities.23
To further sustainability skills and scientific expertise in
today’s workforce, Microsoft commits to:Share learning materials: Microsoft will work withpartners to share sustainability learning with millions ofworkers around the world. These resources will include
LinkedIn Learning paths for sustainability as well as
business-focused sustainability materials provided throughMicrosoft’s Sustainability Learning Center and our Cloud
Solution Center. We will also work with partners to codevelop new learning resources for sustainability fluency
and knowledge.
Reach more workers and communities: Microsoft will
partner with NGOs to help workers, including those inimpacted and transitioning communities, to complete
sustainability learning pathways. This will include
partnership with INCO Academy to launch a Green Digital
Skills course to support up to 10,000 learners, including
learners in the Global South.
Facilitate access to sustainability expertise: Microsoft
will provide our sustainability customers with an advanced
forum for sharing learning and best practices, which includes
convening a summit of chief sustainability officers.

Action 3 Build the sustainability talentpipeline of the future
Just as governments, NGOs, and the educational andprivate sectors have worked together to bring digitalskilling and computer science into schools, we will needsimilar partnerships to do the same with sustainability

skills. Opportunities for learning should be accessible fromeverywhere, and we should leverage investments andinnovation in sustainability education to benefit people
around the world.
A sustainability workforce must be built upon a populacethat has basic sustainability education—and the needfor fundamental sustainability education is part of the
UN Sustainable Development Goals. (SDGs).24 Everycountry will have a different focus and priorities in how
they incorporate concepts into curriculum. However, thebroad-based understanding of sustainability education
at an international level is, as framed by UNESCO: “todevelop and expand educational activities that focus onsustainability issues such as climate change, biodiversity,
disaster risk reduction, water, the oceans, sustainableurbanization, and sustainable lifestyles.”25 Students of allages should have the knowledge, skills, and agency toaddress these interconnected global challenges.
Paris Agreement Article 11 explicitly refers to the needto enhance the capacity and ability of developing
countries, including those particularly vulnerable to theadverse effects of climate change.26 And in the UNFCCC
October 2022 synthesis report on National Determined
Contributions under the Paris Agreement, 66 percent ofparty signatories cited the importance of building capacity
to facilitate training, education, skills development andworkforce transition, and related items.27 Supporting
sustainability education must be part of building thiscapacity; strategies must focus on reaching those
impacted by sustainability transformation and traditionally
underserved communities. They must also consider thediffering needs of different regions, impacted areas, andspecific climate vulnerabilities.
There is more work to be done. Analysis across 46 UNESCO
member states showed that over 50 percent of primary andsecondary education policies and curricula studied madeno mention of climate change; 45 percent made little-tono reference to environmental themes; and only 19 percent
referred to biodiversity.28 The European Commission has
found that education for environmental sustainability is not
yet a systemic feature of education policy, and althoughmany EU countries commit to some sustainability goals
and embed education for environmental sustainability
in education policy strategies, few follow up with clear
action plans.29 More countries are beginning to include
sustainability issues and concepts in their curriculum.

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Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

However, even where this is the case, there is no clear
data on how much sustainability concepts are flowing
into schools.

Recommendation #1: Build capacity
and incentives to support inclusion offoundational sustainability in primary andsecondary education

The UNESCO Education for Sustainable Development(ESD) Learning Objectives provide key guidance forincorporating sustainability content into primary andsecondary education. Yet currently less than 40 percent
of teachers express confidence in teaching about climatechange, and far fewer can explain the effects of climatechange on their region.30 This signals an opportunity forministries of education to build more capacity for teachingcore competencies that will enable students to better
understand the impacts of a changing climate and preparethem to deliver the next generation of solutions. The
UNESCO roadmap provides guidance for the incorporationof ESD into national education agendas, but morecountries must act.
Promising practices for capacity building are emerging
Strong collaboration among ministries, particularly those
focused of education and environment, enables effective
climate change education.31 Specific examples include
collaborative national platforms (Costa Rica, Japan, and
Hungary), mainstreaming ESD in the curricula (Colombia,
and Morocco), and teacher training and development(Kenya, Peru, and South Africa). This type of collaboration
between ministries should be further encouraged andincentivized where possible. Additionally, education
policymakers benefit from the continued development of
resources to support research-based sustainability policies,
plans, and initiatives. The Sustainability Education and
Policy Network, located at the University of Saskatchewan
in Canada, is an example of such a center, providing
researchers and policymaker with a framework forcollaboration.
The extent to which countries are addressing theseissues in curriculum varies greatly. A focused tracking of
implementation, monitoring, and reporting of climate
education is needed to mark progress. Leaders can look
to resources like the MECCE Project for global monitoring
tools, country profiles, case studies, and a digital resource

library. Additionally, UNESCO’s newly formed Greening
Education Partnership will help deliver coordinated action
with the goal of preparing every learner with the neededsustainability knowledge, skills, values, and attitudes.
Foundational sustainability content should also include
building cross-cutting competencies
The application of sustainability content in schools and in
the workforce will require cross-cutting competencies. The
UNESCO ESD Learning Objectives highlight competencies
such as systems thinking, collaboration, critical thinking,and integrated problem solving. Additionally, as we haveillustrated earlier in this report, digital skills are essential forthe current and future sustainability worker and so provide
examples for how schools might integrate sustainability
content while attending to cross-cutting competencies. The
Climate and Sustainability Subject Kit and Sustainability
City learning map from Minecraft are examples of content
that builds cross-cutting competencies.

Recommendation #2: Post-secondary educationneeds to be designed to shape, respond, andadapt to sustainability workforce needs

Strengthening sustainability education at the postsecondary level—from technical and vocational
opportunities to Ph.D. research programs—is critical toensuring that the workforce has foundational sustainability
fluency and can attain specialized sustainability skills.
There are key ways in which cross-cutting collaboration
can help meet these goals. First, higher education
institutions have traditionally focused within nationalboundaries, but the global urgency surrounding this issue
and the opportunity for immediate real-world application
call for a global approach. Second, the real-worldurgency of these issues calls for crafting partnershipsthat are not only academic (university to university) but
also cut across industry, research, and applied teaching.
Third, partnerships to develop and exchange learnings,
curricular resources, and best practices are needed tostrengthen transdisciplinary linkages. Finally, althoughsome competencies and skills are universal, others willneed to be focused locally to meet unique community
needs. Making sure sustainability curricula reaches andis informed by traditionally underserved communities,
often the most impacted by climate change, will better
enable success.

22

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progressSome actions to support these goals include:
Strengthen sustainability programs through countrylevel networks and centers of excellence
To drive change at scale, institutions around the world
need support to establish or grow their sustainability
education programs. This includes addressing the needfor faculty training and the integration of sustainability
content across the curriculum. This need is particularlypressing in resource-constrained countries and ones with asmaller base of scientific support and research institutions.
Building a strong network of institutions that can support
each other in growing their programs is one potential
solution. Several countries have already developed these
networks through programs such as the UN Sustainability
Development Network. These networks support theadvancement of institutions in the country by functioning
as resource hubs for sustainability education.

education.32 More systematic collaboration between higher
education institutions offering advanced sustainability
programs and those with less advanced programs canlead to more equitable access to sustainability educationand can support the development of curriculum and tools
to address local needs. This will also help drive greater
integration of sustainability education and applicationof sustainability skills to real-world problems.33 Suchforums could enable collaboration on global sustainability
challenges, transnational research sponsorship, industry
exchange programs, and programs focused on recruiting
and retaining historically excluded populations. The UN
HESI Education for Green Jobs Initiative, for example,
is focused on enhancing communication between
employers and educators to further align curriculum toworkforce needs. Another example is the Mainstreaming
Environment and Sustainability in Africa (MESA)
Universities Partnership, which currently has a membershipof more than 85 universities in Africa.

A related model is to develop Centers of Excellence withexpertise in sustainability higher education. As an example,
the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability
in Higher Education (AASHE) Centers for Sustainability
Across the Curriculum program builds capacity fortransdisciplinary education by increasing the availability
and accessibility of faculty development opportunities
related to sustainability. This enables students in various
academic disciplines to engage in sustainability content inauthentic ways.

Such projects should strive to increase the workforce
relevance of academic programs, such as through industry
participation in developing and evaluating curriculum
to ensure alignment to workforce needs, planning forboth core and interdisciplinary educational experiencesand development of new case study applications forthe classroom.

It is also possible to focus centers of excellence for the
purpose of ensuring a more inclusive sustainability
workforce. In this model, the focus is on institutions thatserve historically excluded populations or in areas withfewer resources. For example, the NSF Centers of Research
Excellence in Science and Technology program provides
support to enhance the capabilities of minority-serving
institutions in areas of national significance in scienceand engineering research. This includes commitments toaddress issues of recruitment and retention of historically
excluded populations. A similar program could be
developed with a focus on sustainability education.

One of the most critical aims of post-secondary educationmust be preparing students for the sustainability
workforce. That means integrating opportunities forreal-world experience into the curriculum. The UN Global
Guidance for Education on Green Jobs34 recommends
applied projects and applied research as high-impact
learning opportunities. Potential tools to advance thisaim include:

Build and strengthen international professional forums
and communities of practiceProfessional forums can also help address differences inresources and capacity for this work among countries andvariance in engagement of the private sector in green jobs

Provide real-world interdisciplinary learning
opportunities for students• Virtualized workforce experience: The private
sector and academia can work together to create
opportunities for students to engage in narrative
driven, simulated sustainability challenges invirtualized business environments. The NICE
Challenge is an example of this model in the
cybersecurity domain. These challenges can beshared globally if they are delivered online, which
would help students in regions with fewer real-world
workforce opportunities.

23

Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress• Experiential learning/internships: Experiential
learning provides a valuable base for students tomove into practical applications of sustainability
knowledge. Given the scale of need, such programs
can be structured to enable students to work on
immediate applications. For example, internships or
volunteer service learning could connect students toorganizations that need help defining, measuring,and meeting their emissions goals. Such a program
would provide a needed service to the organization
while also providing critical practical experience forstudents. And such programs can be connected torecruiting mechanisms to bring diverse talent into
the field. Programs such as the Global Sustainability
Scholars program enable students and earlyin-career professionals from underrepresented
groups to work with leading scientists on criticalsustainability challenges.35

Capacity building in post-secondary education: Microsoft
will join the international research partnership MECCE(Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communicationand Education Project) to support the implementation,
monitoring and reporting of sustainability educationworldwide. Additionally, we will partner with the
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability inHigher Education, providing support to its Centers for
Sustainability Across the Curriculum program.

• Interdisciplinary research: The National SocioEnvironmental Synthesis Center has a program to fosterand support interdisciplinary, team-based synthesis
research specifically for advanced graduate students,
with the aim to develop a cohort of researcherscommitted to socio-environmental synthesis.36
To further the sustainability talent pipeline of the
future, Microsoft commits to:
Curriculum and training for primary and secondary
education: Microsoft will provide new curricular andtraining materials including Minecraft Frozen Planet II.
This adds to the Climate and Sustainability Subject Kit
and Sustainability City learning map, available throughMinecraft Education. Microsoft FarmBeats for Students
provides students a hands-on experience to explore how
big data, AI, and machine learning apply to real-world
sustainability challenges. Finally, Microsoft will join
UNESCO’s Greening Education Partnership to deliver
strong, coordinated action that will empower learners
with the skills required for inclusive and sustainableeconomic development.

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Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

Citations
1. Summary for Policymakers. In: Climate Change 2021:
The Physical Science Basis. Contribution of Working
Group I to the Sixth Assessment Report of theIntergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

competencies: a systematic literature review |European Commission Joint Research Center; UNESCO
has defined a similar list of cross-cutting competencies
in Education for Sustainable Development Goals:
Learning Objectives | UNESCO

2. Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C |Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change

12. Quote from sustainability leader

3. Net Zero Tracker

13. Skills for a greener future | ILO

4. Special Report 2022: Sustainability | NTUC
LearningHub; Taking the lead in sustainable finance |Deloitte

14. Quote from HSBC leader

5. Greening with jobs: World Employment Social
Outlook 2018 | International Labour Organization
6. Global Green Skills Report 2022 | LinkedIn
7. 2021 Environmental Sustainability Report | Microsoft
CSR

15. Microsoft, Planet and The Nature Conservancy launch
the Global Renewables Watch | Microsoft News
Center; Make greenhouse-gas accounting reliable —build interoperable systems | Nature
16. Global Green Skills Report 2022 | LinkedIn; State of
the Profession 2022 Report | Greenbiz
17. Skills for a greener future | ILO

8. Skills for a greener future: A global view |International Labour Organization

18. Sustainability Excellence Associate and Professional |Sustainability Excellence Credentials

9. What is Azure FarmBeats - Azure for Industry:
Agriculture | Microsoft Learn; Subseasonal Climate
Forecasting | Microsoft Research; Uncovering new
insights to support effective climate change decisionmaking | Terrain-AI

19. ISO 14001:2015 for environmental management
systems | International Organization forStandardization; Leadership in Energy andEnvironmental Design | US Green Building Council

10. Key competencies in sustainability: a reference
framework for academic program development |Sustainability Science
11. Strengthening Sustainability Programs and Curricula
at the Undergraduate and Graduate Levels | National
Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine;GreenComp: The European sustainability competence
framework | European Commission Joint ResearchCenter; Key competencies in sustainability: a reference
framework for academic program development| Sustainability Science; Pursuing Sustainability| Princeton University Press; The sustainability
professional: 2010 competency survey report |Environmental Quality Management; Sustainability

20. Homepage | UN Global Compact; ADBI E-Learning |Asian Development Bank
21. Skills for a greener future | ILO
22. Pact for Skills | ILO
23. The Future is Now: Science for Achieving Sustainable
Development | UN Department of Economic andSocial Affairs
24. Target 4.7 | Sustainable Development Goal
25. What you need to know about education forsustainable development | UNESCO

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Closing the Sustainability Skills Gap: Helping businesses move from pledges to progress

26. Agreement | UNFCCC
27. FCCC/PA/CMA/2022/4 (unfccc.int) | United Nations
Framework Convention on Climate Change: Synthesis
report by the secretariat
28. Learn for our planet: a global review of how
environmental issues are integrated in education |UNESCO
29. Education for environmental sustainability | European
Union

34. Global Guidance for Education on Green Jobs | UN
Environment Programme
35. Strengthening Sustainability Programs and Curricula
at the Undergraduate and Graduate Levels | National
Academy of Sciences
36. Strengthening Sustainability Programs and Curricula
at the Undergraduate and Graduate Levels | National
Academy of Sciences

30. Getting Every School Climate-ready | UNESCO
31. Getting Every School Climate-ready | UNESCO
32. Skills for a greener future | ILO
33. Strengthening Sustainability Programs and Curricula
at the Undergraduate and Graduate Levels | National
Academy of Sciences26©2022 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.