Capacity Building of Global Leather Sector for Inclusivity and Sustainable Development

Skills development currently occupies a dominant place in development discourse of the world economy. Leather sector with 26.4 million workforce currently contributing to a revenue of USD 600 billion still occupies a prominent position in the current world economy of USD 80 trillion promoting sustainable growth, socio-economic development in the long term development of the countries. Essential technical and scientific capabilities in higher-order leather and its product manufacturing and services are needed to maintain this strong economic growth. Globally countries are regulating their growth models of leather/non-leather/vegan leather-like sector with strategies to strengthen themselves, which necessitates highly skilled and technically qualified human resource base for their accomplishment. Capacity building in skilling of leather/non-leather/vegan leather-like and its products manufacturing are giving way to innovation-intensive competitiveness, based on the ability to generate new ideas, products, and processes. One of the major key challenges of the leather sectorial skills is inclusivity with sustainability, low emission technologies with near zero carbon footprint for green and energy efficient leather/non-leather/vegan leather-like and its products production for greening of world economy that is in vogue. The present paper examines the global leather skill panorama with scientific, technical and vocational pathways to augment policy making, investment and associated workforce skills needs of the leather sector. The paper also discusses pathways to disseminate green skills for green economies globally. The paper highlights the global ecosystem for secondary and tertiary leather education skills, lifelong learning skills, transformation of leather to vegan leather-like sustainable products and its associated skills to employment and entrepreneurship, skill movement and challenges of rural to urban mitigation, skills for digital era and workforce shortages, skill qualification framework and curriculum repositioning towards green jobs and low carbon economies to evolve futuristic new-age skills and become practical in global panorama of leather sector.