Green Futures
"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today."
– Malcom X
About Green Futures
Green Futures will evolve to become the registered charitable arm of Green Offaly, delivering Educational & Training and Research Programmes which provide our Communities, Youth and Students with the skills, learning and resources they will need to navigate the future.
Preparing for the future via Green Education, Research and Training.
Across the planet 183 countries have committed to the Paris Agreement target (keeping the rise in global temperatures to under two degrees Celsius). The importance of increasing responses to and public knowledge of climate change is undisputed and yet in 2019, fewer than 40% of these countries included any plans for skills training to support the transition to a green economy.
Relevant SDG’s (Sustainable Development Goals). Learn more here.
"This is not just about the environment, it’s about the community, it’s about jobs, it’s about justice.."
– Eddie Bautista
A Just Transition
Just Transition is the European framework to encompass a range of social interventions needed to secure workers’ rights and livelihoods while our economies are shifting to sustainable production in order to mitigate climate change and protect biodiversity. On the one hand, climate change is set to eradicate jobs and the effects of this are having a huge impact on our Peatland Communities. On the other hand, the transition to a green economy has the potential to create tens of millions of sustainable jobs globally.
The re-skilling and training courses that are in place at present follow the route of fulfilling the transition to clean energy via renewable energy installations and retrofitting the existing building stock. These career pathways are immediate and necessary.
However if we are to achieve zero emissions by 2050, changes will have to occur across every aspect of Irish life over the next 30 years, not just energy.
At Green Offaly part of our long term vision is to transform the County of Offaly into a centre renowned for its Green Futures excellence.
A new career vocabulary is emerging in the 21st Century, concepts such as the Circular Economy, The Bioeconomy, The Doughnut Economy, Biomimicry, Biophilia, Regenerative Agriculture, Regenerative Fashion, Hydrogen Fuel, Permaculture, Biodynamics, Sustainable Construction, Natural Building, Systems Thinking, Prosuming, Environmental Accreditation, Carbon Accounting and many, many more are new and established fields of work that have the power to transform our society and generate significant employment.
Through Green Futures we will gradually build up a manifesto of education and training programmes spanning all ages and levels of education from primary through to postgraduate level, accredited and informal.
From facilitating Forest Schools, creating relevant Youth courses, building up Green Apprenticeships, providing Internships, and enabling Scientific and Social Research programmes we will position Offaly as leading from the heart of the Country and delivering on the 21st skills which are needed to achieve the successful decarbonisation of the County and the health of all those who share in our local Biosphere from people to plants to pollinators!