Green innovation, like innovation in general, depends on people who are able to generate and apply knowledge in the workplace and society at large. Required innovation skills include basic skills such as reading and writing, technical skills such as science and engineering, generic skills such as problem solving, multicultural openness and leadership, managerial and entrepreneurial skills, as well as creativity and design skills. It has been recently proposed that the green economy requires a greater emphasis on design and multidisciplinary teamwork, on strategic leadership and adaptability as important generic skills, and on a good knowledge of the sciences (OECD 2011e and CEDEFOP 2009).

Figure 11 highlights how far behind most advanced developing countries are from the more developed countries, based on the relative number of professionals engaged in the creation of knowledge and in the management of research projects. While the five surveyed high-income Nordic countries (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden), Japan, Korea and New Zealand each employed more than ten researchers per 1,000 employees, advanced developing countries are at the bottom of the table, with China, South Africa, Chile and Mexico each having less than two researchers per 1,000 employees. It is noteworthy, however, that the 10 developing countries included in these data have a higher average percentage of women researchers (37%) than the 22 high-income countries (31%).

Across countries, the share of business researchers in the national totals varies widely: while in the US four out of five researchers work in businesses, the intensity of business researchers is again lowest in emerging developing countries, with Chile, Mexico, South Africa, Poland, the Slovak Republic, China and Turkey all having less than one researcher per 1,000 employees in industry. In these countries, the business sector plays a much smaller role in the national R&D system than the higher education and government sectors, which is a characteristic of most other developing countries as well. If developing country firms are going to effectively play a greater role in accessing existing green technologies and adapting them for local use, they will need more individuals with research and related creativity skills in the workforce.<sup>42</sup> So a major effort will be required to strengthen market signals so that tertiary education institutions and technical and vocational education and training (TVET) systems are better attuned to the demands of firms and what users need, including through increased involvement of the business sector in curriculum development. Ensuring that skills upgrading costs are shared among students, employers and the government in line with benefits, and adopting periodic national independent and transparent assessments to ensure quality and consistency, will help to signal the merits of different skills development options and promote adaptation in line with evolving market demands (OECD 2009). Box 12 provides an illustration of the challenges of building relevant skills in developing country settings. It highlights the need to have sufficient local capabilities in place to attract back home scientists trained in better-equipped high-income country universities, and the need to ensure sufficient local demand for established scientific and research facilities.

# **<u>Box 12: African Monsoon Multidisciplinary Analyses (AMMA)</u>**

The West Africa region is particularly vulnerable to weather and climate variability due to dependence on rain-fed agriculture on which 80% of Sahel‘s population depends To achieve its objective of monitoring West African monsoon variability and society-environment-climate impacts, the AMMA community (an international community established in 2002 of over 600 people from 30

> 42 An important unresolved issue here is the extent to which skills are substitutable between green and non-green technologies, as there is an opportunity cost of investing in the skills sets and training for green to the extent that non-green innovations do not occur as a result of skewing capacity building towards greener technologies.

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