people and planet

2
KEY MESSAGES
Education has a key role to play in moving towards
environmentally sustainable and inclusive economic growth.
1
Education and lifelong learning are needed to make production and consumption sustainable, to provide
green skills for green industries and orient research and higher education towards green innovation.
a. Creating green industries relies on high-skill workers with specific training.
b. Greening of industries will require continuing training and education for low- and medium-skill
workers, often on the job.
c. Research can be oriented towards green innovation and growth.
2
Education can help food production and farming be more sustainable.
a. Agriculture urgently needs to transform to meet environmental and global needs: Agriculture
contributes one-third of all greenhouse gas emissions.
b. Primary and secondary education give future farmers foundation skills as well as critical knowledge
about sustainability challenges in agriculture.
c. Literacy and non-formal education in the form of extension programmes can increase farmer
productivity.
d. Yet many are halting investment in agricultural research at a time when it is urgently needed: In sub-
Saharan Africa, the share in global expenditure on public agricultural research declined from 10% to 6%
from 1960 to 2009.
3
Education contributes to economic growth.
a. Educational attainment explains about half the difference in growth rates between East Asia and sub-
Saharan Africa between 1965 and 2010.
b. But education must keep up with the changing face of work and produce more high-skill workers. By
2020, there could be 40 million too few workers with tertiary education relative to demand.
4
Education of good quality can help ensure economic growth does not leave anyone behind.
a. If 10 recent EU member states met 2020 targets to decrease early school-leaving and increase tertiary
participation, they could reduce the numbers of those at risk of poverty by 3.7 million.
b. Secondary and tertiary education is far more effective than just primary for helping people access
decent work and earnings.
5
Education reduces poverty and helps close wage gaps.
a. Education helps people find work: In South Africa, less than 45% of those with less than upper secondary
education were employed in 2005 compared to roughly 60% who completed upper secondary.
b. If workers from low socio-economic backgrounds had the same education as more advantaged
counterparts, disparity in working poverty between the two groups would shrink by 39%.
c. Education increases earnings by roughly 10% per year of schooling.
d. Meanwhile, policies are needed to meet the increased global demand for skilled and qualified labour.
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CHAPTER 2 | PROSPERITY: SUSTAINABLE AND INCLUSIVE ECONOMIES