B. Strategies

Green infrastructure often becomes mixed into retooling services for basic stormwater structures. For many municipalities it is unclear who the vendors are, and which professionals are responsible for implementation and maintenance.

Strategies to Address Challenge: Career Preparation and Training, Expanding Career Pathways, Case Studies, Community-Led Research

B.1. Strategies Around Hiring and Training Practices

The hiring and training process is an important time for employers to instill a sense of belonging and satisfaction in their employees, which helps them succeed in their jobs. As a workforce grows and the industry becomes more well-known, it is critical that these practices are consistently established and implemented at different levels. This includes both adults transitioning into the industry and college aged students interested in related fields receiving education and career preparation. Making certification programs available is also critical so that workers can become officially certified and advance in their careers. Overall, accessibility is important for people to learn about the industry and obtain a job in an efficient manner.

B.1.1 Career Preparation and Training

Career preparation centered on green infrastructure skills provides workers with an advantage in related fields such as landscaping or tree care, providing transferable skills for other industries. Employers can expand their capacity to provide worker training through collaborations and partnerships with the education and training communities, as well as employer and industry associations. Further, youth career preparation can provide education, training, and opportunities for the workforce’s next generation.

Challenges Addressed: Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand, Capacity within Small Organizations, Lack of Maintenance, Municipal Cross-Training and Job Rotation

To help attract workers into the industry, key stakeholders can participate in the following activities to create connections and collaborations around current and future workforce opportunities in local labor markets:

•Public workforce development systems can utilize existing cross-sector relationships to bring forth collaborative efforts between stakeholders across sectors such as education, training, business, government, and policy.

•Local communities can take the lead in identifying a regional intermediary to bring together cross-sector stakeholders and foster dialogue about current and anticipated workforce challenges and opportunities by establishing forums for collaboration and alignments between workforce supply and demand.

•Philanthropic stakeholders at the national and local levels can participate in grant making to provide individual communities with funding opportunities.

Challenges Addressed:

Case Study:

OAI’s High Bridge was launched as a social enterprise in 2018, then closed due to the constraints of seasonal work and budget. Maintaining a social enterprise proved to be difficult due to limited capacity in terms of staff and resources to keep it functioning over time. High Bridge has since then been incorporated as a program at OAI, INC. OAI has been able to expand their work by focusing on how to impact policy making overall. Their work now spans into Indiana including the township of Gary as it shares the same ecological region as the South region of Chicago.

Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand, Lack of Maintenance, Municipal CrossTraining and Job Rotation

Certification programs are critical to the development and promotion of green infrastructure jobs. Few current green infrastructure workforce development programs meet standards for professional certifications, which require participants to pass exams. A national certification program would benefit both workers and employers by ensuring workers are highly skilled and trained while also providing jobs with livable wages and professional growth.2 A certification program would provide a clear sequence of education and training courses culminating in official credentials that workers could use to promote their skills while also aligning with the needs of a specific industry sector, thus providing diverse entry and exit options.

Challenges Addressed: “Low-Road” Practices and Reputation, Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand, Municipal Cross-Training and Job Rotation

B.1.4 Solidifying a Reliable Hiring Source

Job postings live on a variety of hiring websites, from the industry-specific Chicago Environmental Network site to LinkedIn. Stakeholders such as Cardinal State, LLC. expressed lack of certainty over where to share and search for job postings, signifying a need for a well-trusted, allencompassing site.

Challenges Addressed: Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand

B.2. Strategies Around Promoting Equity and Inclusion in Workforce Development

Increasing industry accessibility is critical to ensuring an inclusive and equitable industry. This will include making information on the types of occupations, wages, and skills required widely available to people, whereas green infrastructure is presently only known by those familiar with the green economy. Unions will be an important resource to use in ensuring workers receive fair benefits and wages while navigating these contract-oriented occupations. Furthermore, funding for green infrastructure, particularly in environmentally distressed areas, will increase the demand for workers as well as opportunities to hire from these same prioritized communities. This will help to ensure the environmental and economic resilience of the most vulnerable communities.

The green infrastructure industry has an opportunity to define its workforce practices to build an inclusive labor force. When installed and maintained in urban areas, green infrastructure provides economic opportunity for marginalized communities that are severely under-resourced.8 To ensure that benefits reach the most vulnerable communities, local stakeholders must develop objectives and solutions that will result in urban climate resilience for communities. Stakeholders should understand demographic characteristics of the areas they are working in – including racial composition, age, educational attainment, and unemployment rates – to ensure programs can be tailored to meet the needs of the community while also delivering effective results for the residents.

Challenges Addressed: “Low-Road” Practices and Reputation, Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand

B.2.2 Access to Information, Education, and Training

Expanding information and access into the green infrastructure industry makes jobs more accessible to those interested in entry-level work. A solid understanding of the occupational profiles and pathways available in green infrastructure is important in identifying what is needed to uplift workers of color, women, recently released incarcerated individuals, or unemployed. Foundational relationships between community colleges, vocational school programs, and big anchor companies are necessary to identifying green infrastructure career paths. Partnerships with big utilities like ComEd and People’s Gas, among others, serve as an anchor for people trained in renewables.

Providers of education and training can help to clarify the skills and credentials required for employment in green infrastructure-related work, as well as the training required for specific occupations. Underserved individuals must have clear options and steps on how to get started in the green infrastructure industry; they must know where to get information on occupations, as well as where and how to get necessary training, certifications, and credentials.2 Community colleges are an important resource for increasing industry awareness.

Challenges Addressed: Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand

Across stakeholder conversations, unions were identified as an untapped ally in the industry. Unionizing green infrastructure jobs is especially important in ensuring fair labor practices because most of the work is contracted. Without union protection, contract jobs in sustainability-oriented work present setbacks similar to those experienced in the larger national gig economy. Unions can be a valuable resource in ensuring that equity and inclusivity are prioritized in the green infrastructure industry. For example, many water and construction worker unions are instrumental in securing employment benefits and security for their members.

Coal fired power plants jobs are unionized under United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), which is working with the Biden administration on ensuring that displaced coal workers have opportunities to obtain jobs in renewable energy productions during the green economy transition.1

Stakeholders within the green infrastructure industry must determine how green infrastructure skills and jobs can fit within existing unions, as well as how to establish mutual relationships or new union jobs for people entering the workforce.8

Challenges Addressed: “Low-Road” Practices and Reputation, Seasonality

B.2.4 Promoting Green Infrastructure Investment

Promoting green infrastructure investment beyond centralized regulation such as zoning could further expand programs and initiatives. The use of stormwater fees allows property owners or non-profits to pay in a non-centralized way. Philanthropic investments can also provide direct funding where needed. Better financial quantification of the positive impact of green infrastructure can help garner additional support of investments.

Challenges Addressed: Economic Obstacles

Funding for green infrastructure is becoming more accessible as local and federal governments prioritizes climate resiliency, but it comes from a variety of sources ranging from the Metropolitan Water Reclamation District (MWRD) to the Illinois Green Infrastructure Grant (IGIG) program. Creating a trusted, one-stop source or point of contact for all grant programs would create efficiency in procuring funds.

Challenges Addressed: Capacity within Small Organizations, Economic Obstacles

B.3. Strategies to Address Research Gaps and Research Needs

These final strategies will be recommendations that will require additional research and effective coordination in the long run. This includes creating case studies of current examples of collaboration among various stakeholders on green infrastructure implementation in their communities. While such case studies exist, very few have demonstrated the economic benefits of green infrastructure. Long-term planning and research coordination may be required to track these benefits in real-time and thus showcase that investing in green infrastructure is economically beneficial to municipalities and businesses alike. Identifying stakeholders for collaboration will be critical, and so will understanding the role that various entities, such as new or existing unions, can play in further growing and supporting the industry.

B.3.1 Case Studies

Green infrastructure implementation differs by municipality; stakeholders will benefit by learning from others. Case studies can be a valuable resource to community practitioners, local governments, businesses and contractors, and others. Along with sharing findings, this will allow organizations to connect with other practitioners whose work overlap or identify municipal clients with whom they could collaborate.

Challenges Addressed: All

Tracking the economic benefits associated with green infrastructure has been identified as a difficult research area to navigate. There is currently extensive scholarship addressing benefit estimates; however, these estimates are not guaranteed and are frequently insufficient to persuade municipalities to investigate green infrastructure for their communities due to perceived economic risks. This can include tracking the economic benefits of green infrastructure implementation in Chicago-area communities.

Challenges Addressed: Capacity within Small Organizations, Economic Obstacles

B.3.3 Promoting Access to Green infrastructure Funding

Availability of funding is a challenge in green infrastructure, especially among smaller organizations that do not have the capacity to take advantage of grants and other financial resources. Research to document the various methods municipalities have used to secure green infrastructure funding and how other communities can pursue these avenues can be key to addressing this.

Challenges Addressed: Capacity within Small Organizations, Economic Obstacles

B.3.4 Identifying the Role of Unions within the Green Infrastructure Industry

Working with unions is a key strategy that will be crucial in the green infrastructure industry. As the industry evolves, it is critical to document the industry’s need and value add in areas such as economic development, pandemic recovery, weatherization funding, and workforce development. Future research should involve noting who the unions are, what they typically look like, their practices, and how people of color’s experiences with unions can be improved.

Challenges Addressed: “Low-Road” Practices and Reputation, Seasonality

This report includes a critical component that analyzes who the stakeholders are in the green infrastructure industry. The next step in expanding on this can be to identify who individual stakeholders in the Chicago area are. By thoroughly documenting employers, vendors, employees, and others, it will be possible to identify industry gaps in the Chicago area. In addition, mapping career paths for industry workers can be a useful resource to share with local communities that have a high concentration of small businesses in the construction, landscaping, and groundskeeping fields.

Challenges Addressed: “Low-Road” Practices and Reputation, Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand, Difficulty Projecting Job Growth

3.6 Community-Led Research

To ensure funds are channeled into communities disproportionately impacted by flooding, it is essential that entities providing funding understand the current representation of Illinois FEMA flood maps. To do so, they must collaborate directly with communities on localized maps as flood patterns and risks are susceptible to rapid changes. Involving residents in planning processes is an informative and effective way to identify challenges in a community’s built environment and secure solutions that will drive the best results.

Challenges Addressed: “Low-Road” Practices and Reputation, Mismatch Between Workforce Supply and Demand, Difficulty Projecting Job Growth, Economic Obstacles, Lack of Maintenance, Municipal Cross-Training and Job Rotation

Using the 30 core occupations identified by Jobs for the Future’s Exploring the Green Infrastructure Workforce report, we examine Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) data on green infrastructure-related occupations in the Chicago region and the United States in terms of employment projections, pandemic recovery, and employment change.17 It is worth noting that even within these occupations the percentage of jobs involved in green infrastructure vary, with only 5% of construction laborers and 75% of tree care and open space workers involved in green infrastructure, respectively.

Understanding these selected industry sectors and occupations will provide insight into how these jobs may or may not grow on a regional and national scale over the next decade. Local and state policy, workforce development, and strategic planning will all be required to ensure that the green infrastructure industry can contribute to the growth of an equitable and inclusive green economy.