At this stage, we're hoping to experiment around use cases across both supply and demand sides of the labor market—including training, recruitment, hiring, delivery, workforce development, and more. That includes (but of course isn't limited to):

📈 Identifying current or emergent gaps in workforce capacity
⚒️ Guiding training and up-skilling programs across sectors
📝 Informing hiring, job classification, role descriptions, and recruitment efforts
🎓 Supporting curriculum development and credentialing efforts
🤖 Anticipating and preparing for technological transformations (AI impacts, data systems)
⚖️ Shaping policy discussions and informing workforce-relevant legislation or executive initiatives
📚 Serving as a core learning asset and basis for derivative products (playbooks, white papers)
🚦Informing recommendations for cross-sector partnerships to improve stewardship outcomes

We also hope to discover and refine use cases in collaboration with a wide-range of partners interested in our mission. If that's you, or if you're interested in piloting resources, strategies, or collaborations around this work, please reach out.

Short answer: almost anyone working directly on environmental stewardship issues or in adjacent fields and policy settings. That means:

🏛️ Government Agencies

• Federal environmental and natural resource agencies, human capital planners, interagency teams, and policymakers (e.g., USFS, FWS, EPA, NOAA, OPM, GSA)

• State and local environmental and natural resource teams (e.g., cities, municipalities, counties, and regional planning organizations), human capital planners and policymakers

• Tribal nations and indigenous organizations

🌇 Non-Governmental Partners: 

• Environmental NGOs and advocacy organizations

• Land trusts and conservation groups

• Academic institutions and extension programs

• Research organizations and think tanks

• Private timber companies (and other industry organizations) 

🎗️Cross-Sector Initiatives:

• Public-private partnerships

• Community-based collaboratives and organizations

• Workforce development and training organizations

• Technology companies serving environmental markets and/or supporting government environmental program delivery 

• Industrial or professional groups

Longer answer: This toolkit is meant to be a living resource subject to validation, refinement, and change based not only on implementation experience, but also shifting technology and policy landscapes. We anticipate regular updates—with input from experts and users across sectors—as factors like AI, climate adaptation needs, political trends, and workforce demographics continue to evolve.

Our taxonomy organizes the full spectrum of skills and competencies we see as key to effective environmental stewardship now and in the future. Which is why we built it around three classification levels: Domains, Sub-Domains, and Skills. To see how they organize skills across work areas, check out the Skills Explorer (beta). In practice, the hierarchy looks like this:

 🗺️ 1. Domain → 📝 2. Sub-Domain → 🛠️ 3. Specific Skill

These are major work families representing broad but distinguishable areas of expertise. Domains naturally cut across disciplinary, training, and delivery boundaries and contexts. There are six domains in this taxonomy. Think about Domains as functional areas that knit together related work activities and knowledge requirements.

They contain the major categories of expertise needed to evolve the work of environmental stewardship, and— we think—to do that work better today and tomorrow.

📍Examples from this framework include:
🐝 → Ecological and Scientific Knowledge Skills
📊 → Technology and Data Science Skills
🏡 → Communication and Stakeholder Engagement Skills

These are discrete abilities anchored in sub-domains and which can be learned, practiced, and measured. For illustrative purposes, several examples of skillsets are included in each sub-domain of this framework.Think about skills as the fundamental building blocks of competence* across the many domains and fields that make up stewardship work.
Examples of skills from this taxonomy include:

📊 Within Technology and Data Science sub-domains:
→ Skills building or using Geographic Information System (GIS) applications
→ Skills analyzing Environmental DNA (eDNA) and/or Genomics data

🏡 Within Communication and Stakeholder Engagement sub-domains:
→ Skills in Cross-Cultural Communication with partner or constituent groups
→ Skills in Cultural or Natural Resource Interpretation
→ Skills in and/or analysis of Environmental Justice issues or shifting policy/political dynamics

Note: While not yet a formal feature of this taxonomy, we see "competency" as the integrated application of multiple skills, knowledge, and abilities needed to perform work in real-world situations. Competency encompasses not only a skill in itself, but also the ability to apply that skill appropriately in various working contexts.