Community-scale nonprofit organizations in Austin, Texas, have worked successfully for decades to place people from low-income neighborhoods in career-pathway jobs. Historically, however, human resources and environmental nonprofits had not established robust collaborations, nor had they focused specifically on training people for climate resilience-oriented jobs.

To address climate-related risk, a coalition of community development organizations formed an initiative called the Green Workforce Collaborative (GWC). The Collaborative brings together climate experts, employers, workforce personnel within city and county agencies, to identify opportunities for jobs in conservation, renewable energy, urban agriculture, stormwater management infrastructure, nature-based solutions, waste management, and more.

In addition to convening these stakeholders, the Collaborative is partnering with local educational institutions and employers to identify opportunities and create job training programs in response to climate-related hazards that impact the Austin area, the Gulf region, and all of Texas. The GWC is bolstering local education and employment priorities using workforce data (from the Texas Workforce Commission as well as regional climate action plans) to determine the types of jobs that are in demand across the state. The Collaborative hopes the training and coordination model they establish in Austin can be implemented by other communities throughout the state.

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City of Austin, TX skyline

In 2021, the City of Austin set ambitious goals to be met by 2040, focusing particularly on pollution. Implementing the plan hinges, in part, on training the needed workforce. This collaboration builds on relationships that nonprofits maintain within and throughout communities that have established successful track records, placing people into good jobs. None of these individual organizations has sufficient means to compete for the grant funding needed to tackle the broad needs for a climate resilience workforce. Only through collaboration can they muster the needed capacity to meet the City’s challenges.

The economy of the Austin area is changing, and workforce development needs are likely to change with it. Austin is a state capital city, which means that its economic base has historically been dominated by government and services and associated businesses. However, the recent construction of a major battery factory is changing the employment landscape and is drawing other technology firms into the region.

It's too soon to say whether they succeeded. The team is identifying training and employment opportunities.