Environmental professionals are in development in Canada and around the globe

When the municipality of Whistler wanted to prepare itself for the 2010 Winter Olympics, officials turned to Kelly Hawke Baxter to help them develop a sustainability plan, Whistler 2020, to transform every aspect of how the town approached its development. Baxter is the executive director of The Natural Step Canada, a non-governmental organization that educates and instructs individuals in private industry and the public sector how integrate to environmental considerations into their operations.

"We're moving from lip service to really looking at how we can use environmental responsibility and sustainability to drive innovation and value creation so that we can be part of the new economy," says Baxter.

The new economy is all about green jobs, she says. "It's really gone from the margins to the
mainstream. It's a huge opportunity for those that want green careers to either enter the green sector or the traditional sector where there are more and more green jobs."

Sustainability departments are being established in everything from retail chains such as Walmart to the largest cellphone manufacturer in the world, Nokia. Don Gorber is president of SENES Consultants Ltd., a company that specializes in environmental, nuclear and energy services with offices in Canada, the United States, India and South America. He has seen the industry change dramatically during his career and believes demand for highly skilled environmental workers will continue to rise. Worthy candidates for his firm, he says, "should have a good education with some technical or social background that allows you to start here."

Given the demand for good people, lack of experience isn't necessarily a critical liability. "We'll hire people with little experience and train them," he says.The specialized nature of many environmental jobs means they are in demand in almost every industry and sector -- from private to public and NGOs to university research departments. However, job seekers eager to enter the field should be aware the term "green job" is sometimes used loosely, says Grant Trump, president of the federally funded sector council Environmental Careers Organization Canada.

"I know that a lot of folks want to be involved in that sort of area, but artificially putting that label on it is not going to help," says Trump. But he has no doubt legitimate opportunities for well-educated environmental professionals will steadily increase.

"Those folks generally have very good, transferable skills, so they could work in the IT sector or a variety of sectors of the economy," says Trump. "We have to recognize that those folks are in high demand not just in Canada, but other industrialized countries around the globe."

Baxter's Natural Step won ECO Canada's 2010 Environmental Employer of the Year Award in the small-to medium-sized category, and she credits much of it to the initial reason people go into the field.

"People want to work for industries that are doing the right thing, and that's becoming an increasing draw for employers and an increasing liability for those that aren't doing anything yet," says Baxter.
Employees in the environmental sector want the same things as anybody else, says Gorber, and in a highly competitive, rapidly evolving and emerging field, that means competition for workers is high.

"It's providing people with enough challenging projects to work on, enough independence to work on them, enough mentoring so they're learning and getting better, enough compensation so they're not going to be challenged to go elsewhere," says Gorber.

Governments around the world are investing in green technology and major infrastructure projects as they work toward environmental solutions, while industry leaders are clamouring to be the first out of the gate with the next environmental solution for their customers.The trend is creating a beneficial side-effect for employees who specialize in environmental jobs: "Sustainability is also about taking care of your people -- social responsibility -- so that's a big priority for us," says Baxter.

Gorber advises students contemplating a career in an environmental field to weigh their options carefully. They should decide whether they want to approach it from a generalist point of view or specialize and then determine where those skills and passions fit into the economy.

"A person first has to decide they want to be in the environmental field because they like it, not just because it's the latest flavour of the week," he says.
 

Article Author: Derek Sankey, for Canwest News Service

Article Source: The Vancouver Sun