INCLUSIVE GREEN ECONOMY IN MAURITIUS: What Skills Do We Need?
In recent decades, Mauritius has transformed itself from a low-income, agriculture-dependent economy to an upper middle-income diversified economy with high levels of human development. As a small developing island state, Mauritius is on the front-line of climate change impacts. Economic development is forecasted to grow further at 4% during 2016-19. Yet, Mauritius’ rapid economic development has come at a cost: coastal ecosystems are under threat from tourism and terrestrial biodiversity has degraded by intensive agriculture and deforestation. While Mauritius has one of the highest Human Development Indexes in Africa, income inequality is growing and opportunities for decent, green employment are scarce.
To ensure inclusive and sustainable development the Government is developing a Vision 2030, a political strategy with key focus on addressing unemployment, alleviating poverty and fostering sustainable development. Government efforts are supported by the Partnership for Action on Green Economy (PAGE) through advisory and capacity building services.
One of the focus areas of PAGE in Mauritius is capacity building and learning for green economy. Indeed, relative knowledge and capacities for inclusive green economy (IGE) are needed at all levels of the civil administration, in order to support the implementation of Vision 2030. E-learning presents itself as an efficient way to quickly up-scale foundational learning across institutions. With the support of UNDP, an e-learning platform for civil servants was built in 2016 and has been operating under the auspices of the Ministry of Civil Service and Administrative Reform (MCSAR). Recently the management of the platform has been conferred to the Civil Service College in Mauritius. Even though the platform hosts a number of courses, interest on the part of civil servants to participate in online trainings has so far been relatively low, compared to face-to-face trainings.
In this context, three main activities have been identified in consultation with MCSAR, to be carried out in 2017:
- Training of Trainers (ToT) for civil servants on how to develop and deliver effective e-learning for IGE (1st half of 2017);
- Learning needs assessment on the knowledge gaps and capacity needs of civil servants with regard to IGE learning (1st half of 2017);
- Tailoring and integration of IGE e-learning courses onto the e-learning offer for civil servants and other stakeholders in Mauritius (2nd half of 2017).
Working in partnership with the Civil Service College is particularly strategic, considering the potential to provide policy-relevant training to circa 80,000 learners in Mauritius.
Specific objectives of the one-day workshop (3 April) on “IGE in Mauritius: What skills do we need?”. include:
- Increase understanding of government officials and key stakeholders of broader issues: rationale of green economy, overview of PAGE, linkages between IGE & development priorities of Mauritius, learning needs for sustainable economic development;
- Enable dialogue on capacities for green economy transformation between UNITAR & Civil Service College and a broader audience: representatives from a large number of government agencies, learning/training institutions in Mauritius and international partners;
- Chart the learning needs and gaps to be covered through targeted capacity building efforts (including e-learning). This will link up to the learning needs assessment, to be carried out following the workshop and ToT;
- Promote the training services (especially e-learning offer) of the Civil Service College.