Climate Ready Workforce
The Climate Ready Workforce for Coastal and Great Lakes States, Tribes and Territories Initiative is a historic investment of ~ $60 million to meet the emerging and existing needs of employers while helping workers find high quality jobs by investing in workforce training focused on climate resilience concepts, principles, and techniques and implementation, and ensuring direct hire or promotion into jobs related to climate resilience with an emphasis on training and hiring in place, especially to benefit communities on the frontline of the climate crisis.
Selected Projects
Eight projects were selected for funding with common themes spanning clean energy, nature-based solutions, green infrastructure, water management, and diverse recruitment. Learn more about each project below.
1. Empowering a resilient workforce for American Samoa
Project Lead: Hawaiʻi Sea Grant & American Samoa Community College
Amount awarded: $1,748,942
This program will address the diverse and urgent climate crisis impacts in American Samoa and empower climate-ready communities. It will provide foundational training and strengthen the territory’s critical infrastructure through a partnership with American Samoa Power Authority, the territory’s only utility company.
2. Expanding and strengthening an Indigenous workforce for climate resilience in Alaska
Project Lead: Tribal Government of St. Paul Island
Amount awarded: $2,306,004
This project aims to address the demand for climate-resilient monitoring programs and local workforce development in Alaska by leveraging existing capacity within the Tribal Government of St. Paul Island's Indigenous Sentinels Network, the Bering Sea Research Center and a partnership with Iḷisaġvik College. This collaborative effort will engage a diverse network of climate service practitioners, including Indigenous community leaders, state agencies, academic institutions and nonprofits, to support climate resilience workforce development that centers Indigenous knowledge in climate research in the development of Indigenous-led environmental monitoring programs.
3. Los Angeles County Climate Ready Employment Council
Project Lead: Long Beach Community College District
Amount awarded: $9,500,000
The Los Angeles County Climate Ready Employment Council will convene interested parties that play key roles in improving the county’s climate resiliency workforce, provide expertise that informs regional workforce needs assessment, develop training and job placement in climate resilience occupations in the solar and water management industries and more. Overall, this program will help meet the needs of employers, address climate resiliency in Los Angeles County, and connect underserved and under-resourced workers with jobs that align with the good jobs.
4. Texas Green Workforce Collaborative
Project Lead: Environmental Fund for Texas
Amount awarded: $2,146,559
The Texas Green Workforce Collaborative will create a sustainable, high-impact model for inclusive recruitment, skill-building, job training and certification, mentorship and community engagement among partners that will empower Texans from low-income and marginalized communities to pursue in-demand, living-wage green careers in various fields, including conservation, renewable energy and resilience, urban agriculture, green infrastructure, water management and more.
5. The Climate Resilient Skills Training Program (Louisiana)
Project lead: Flood Mitigation Industry Association
Amount awarded: 6,926,245
This program will develop the Green Collar Trades Jobs Training to address the need for coastal community, climate-resilient skilled workers in the flood mitigation industry in Louisiana. Climate science, real-time metrics and current industry knowledge will inform the curriculum.
6. The Greater Boston Coastal Resilience Jobs Alliance
Project lead: Economic Development & Industrial Corporation of Boston
Amount awarded: $9,799,687
This program in Massachusetts and New Hampshire will address the need for a skilled climate resilience workforce to implement Boston’s Climate Ready Boston Coastal Climate Resilience Plan and Massachusetts’ ResilientMass Plan. Participants will gain skills in areas ranging from nature-based solutions to emergency preparedness and response.
7. Training a climate-ready workforce to manage the impacts of climate change on water resources in Ohio coastal communities
Project Lead: The Ohio State University
Amount awarded: $4,852,566
The Ohio State University, in partnership with a community coalition, local utility services, community and HBCU colleges, and consulting employers, will train climate-ready workers — including technicians, scientists and engineers — to fulfill the specialized workforce needs of the water industry in the Great Lakes. Through a knowledge and skills-building framework in water quality monitoring and modeling, geographic information systems, stormwater infrastructure, and environmental policy and management, participants will form a diverse, digitally fluent workforce at various career levels and with the expertise to provide their communities with climate-resilient solutions for water system services in the coast of Lake Erie.
8. Climate resilience training to implement nature-based solutions in the Caribbean
Project Lead: Protectores de Cuencas Inc.
Amount awarded: $3,462,766
This program will develop new training curricula and identify existing training programs to address skills identified as those most needed to improve climate resilience in coastal Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands. These trainings will build the capacity of these communities to prepare for climate change impacts and increase coastal resilience.
