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The possibility of attracting green finance (issuing green bonds, obtaining loans on favourable terms if environmental goals are met) has greatly changed the status of the ecologist in the enterprise. This specialist is becoming an important figure. The ecologist is needed to ensure that environmental programmes are carried out and that lenders or investors comply with requirements.
“Green finance is an established trend in many countries around the world, but in Russia there are still only a few examples of such projects. We are still at the beginning of our journey, but hopefully these approaches will be widely developed. For example, the volume of green bonds in the world has already exceeded $1 trillion, in Russia there have been several issues of such financial instruments worth hundreds of billions of roubles.
I do not think there will be a significant increase in demand for specialists such as engineers-ecologists or industrial ecologists in the coming years, but there will be a demand for experts in carbon project development and management, specialists in creating ESG business models. There will also be a need for people who are able to manage eco-programmes and green projects at a national level.
At the Higher School of Economics, a new training programme “Low-carbon development management” has been launched for the academic year 2022-2023, which includes my own course on developing eco-projects and green business models. Similar courses, educational programmes and professional development programmes will also gradually appear in the country’s regions, including as part of the Russian Ministry of Education and Science’s initiative to create carbon polygons.
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