ADB GreenSkills — Mapping ADB & ADBI courses to UNESCO Green Skills

01Purpose

This study maps the published course catalogues of ADB (via the ADB eLearn platform) and ADBI (via ADBI E-Learning) against the UNESCO Green Skills framework, and quantifies sector and stakeholder relevance. It answers three questions:

1. How much of the ADB/ADBI learning offer is green-relevant?
2. Which UNESCO green-skills domains are covered — and which are gaps?
3. Who is being reached (stakeholders) and which sectors carry the offer?

02Frameworks used

2.1 UNESCO definition of green skills

2.2 UNESCO-UNEVOC Greening TVET

The greening agenda is applied through institutional approaches — curriculum and pedagogy, teachers’/trainers’ professional development, campus and learning environment, community, workplace and lifelong learning, research/innovation, and institutional planning. Courses are judged green-relevant when they build the capabilities those approaches require.

2.3 UNESCO ESD key competencies (2017)

Cognitive and socio-emotional competencies were grouped into four clusters used for the competency analytics:

2.4 UNESCO green-skills domains (occupational areas)

Seventeen domains were used as tags (Renewable Energy & Energy Efficiency; Water, Sanitation & Hygiene; Waste & Circular Economy; Sustainable Agriculture, Forestry & Land; Green Buildings & Construction; Sustainable Transport & Mobility; Climate Adaptation & Resilience; Climate & Sustainable Finance; Environmental Protection, Biodiversity & Safeguards; Sustainable Cities & Urban Resilience; Green Industry, Trade & Manufacturing; Natural Resource Management; Green Governance, Policy & Regulation; Greening Education, Skills & TVET; Digital & Green Technology; Social Inclusion, Gender & Just Transition; Sustainable Growth & SDG Planning).

03Method

1. Course harvesting. The complete catalogue index was obtained for each institution:

ADBI E-Learning via its WordPress course sitemap (sfwd-courses-sitemap.xml, 53 courses, dated 14 Oct 2026); ADB eLearn via the Moodle course catalogue and archived course pages (127 distinct course pages → 99 after merging language variants and the client-portal sub-modules).

1. Normalisation. Each course was recorded with institution, catalogue sector/theme, and title.
2. Scoring. Every course was assigned a green relevance grade —

High (core green/just-transition content), Medium (substantively green-related), Low (some environmental/social linkage), None (no green-skills content) — plus UNESCO domain tags, competency clusters and stakeholder groups.

1. Analytics. Frequency and cross-tabulation across relevance, institution, domain, cluster,

sector and stakeholder (see data/courses.csv and the dashboard).

04Headline results

Green intensity differs sharply by institution. ADBI is a green-oriented, policy-and-finance classroom; ADB eLearn is a broad operational-learning platform.

05Sector relevance

The green-skills offer is concentrated in environment, finance, governance and water, and is thin in technical green sectors.

Division of labour (domain × institution). ADB leads on Environmental Protection, Biodiversity & Safeguards (15 vs 1) and Greening Education/Skills (4 vs 2). ADBI leads on Water & Sanitation (0 vs 6), Sustainable Transport (0 vs 5), Energy (0 vs 4), Sustainable Finance (8 vs 18) and Sustainable Cities (5 vs 11).

06UNESCO domain coverage

Reading: the catalogue is strong on enabling domains (governance, finance, inclusion) and weak on hands-on occupational domains (energy, buildings, agriculture, circular economy).

07Competency relevance

Across all courses (a course can carry several competencies):

The offer builds transferable green competencies (systems thinking, strategic action, normative judgement) at least as much as technical skills — consistent with a development-bank learning portfolio. Pure green literacy/awareness is comparatively under-served.

08Stakeholder relevance

Among the 67 green-relevant courses:

Reading: reach is government- and finance-centric. The audiences that deliver the green transition on the ground — utility/infrastructure operators and communities/civil society — are the least reached.

09Gaps and recommendations

Gaps

• Technical/occupational green skills — no dedicated courses on renewable-energy

installation/O&M, grid integration, green construction, or sustainable agriculture/forestry.

• Greening TVET & teacher training — only 6 courses; limited curriculum/TVET-system content

despite being central to UNESCO’s green-skills agenda.

• Circular economy — 4 courses, concentrated in plastics and policy, not in operations.
• Operator & community reach — the two lowest-reached stakeholder groups.

Recommendations

1. Build technical green pathways (solar/wind O&M, energy efficiency auditing, green building

codes, e-waste) to complement the strong policy/finance offer.

1. Scale greening-TVET content — teacher/trainer professional development and green

curriculum design, in line with UNESCO-UNEVOC guidance.

1. Extend ADB eLearn’s green footprint — 31% vs ADBI’s 68%; cross-list high-value ADBI green

courses and co-brand joint green-skills pathways.

1. Add operator- and community-facing courses (utility operations, just-transition and

community engagement) and widen language coverage (several ADB courses are already localised).

1. Track green-skills KPIs — publish a green-relevance share and domain-coverage index, and

refresh this mapping annually.

10Data, files and limitations

Limitations. (a) ADB eLearn is partly behind a staff login and was catalogued from the public catalogue plus archived course pages; a small number of variants may be merged or missing. (b) Relevance scoring is qualitative and title/description-based. (c) ADBI’s protected course (e.g. the ADB Health Leadership Course) is excluded. (d) Figures reflect the catalogues as captured in October 2026.

Prepared with the UNESCO green-skills definition, UNESCO-UNEVOC Greening TVET guidance and the UNESCO ESD key competencies (2017). This is an independent analytical mapping, not a publication of ADB, ADBI or UNESCO.