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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know that climate protection is the need of the hour! The world is changing for the better, with individuals, governments, and corporations realising the urgency of the situation and taking tangible steps to combat climate change.
Naturally, climate protection jobs have become a mainstream field of its own. These jobs are focused on assessment, mitigation, and adaptation efforts in the context of climate change and span science, technology, liberal arts, law, finance, and activism to name a few.
If you’re passionate about contributing to climate protection, finding the right jobs that fit your goals and existing skill set can be a bit tricky, given a high level of overlap in the field. That’s why we at GoGeoGo have compiled an overview of climate protection jobs, with all the complexities of the field, explained in an easy-to-follow manner. Let’s help you find the right climate protection job for you!
Climate protection is an overarching field that refers to all precautionary actions - including processes, inventions, and installations, that are taken to tackle climate change and prevent or limit the harm being caused to our Earth.
This harm is caused by incessant exploitation of natural resources, reckless pollution and an alarming increase in greenhouse gas emissions. These factors consistently harm our climate and reflect as increased prevailing temperatures, changes in natural weather conditions and patterns, atmospheric composition and others.
With so much to be done, more and more climate change-related careers and jobs are being created and added each year, giving more people the opportunity to contribute to saving the planet.
But if you’ve ever tried to find a job for yourself in this field, you already know that this is not as straightforward as simply finding a “climate protection engineer” job, for example.
While climate protection is a relatively well-defined niche, it often goes hand in hand with environmental protection. This means that a lot of new and existing jobs lie at the intersection of environmental and climate protection and require knowledge and expertise in both.
A reason for this interconnectedness could be that climate change has a direct and huge impact on our environment. This means that environmental protection (from the human perspective), as well as nature conservation (independent of human intervention), are just as important as other goals to tackle climate change such as emissions reduction.
Despite a non-straightforward path, there are so many job options for a climate protection enthusiast today because of immense political support and massive billion-dollar investments in the industry. Some sectors worth checking out if you’re looking for jobs right now are:
Just as there are an endless number of sectors you can work in, there is also a wide range of professions you can pursue in environmental and climate protection with highly varying tasks. For example, you can be an environmental engineer who builds technologies to reduce emissions, an energy manager who helps companies reduce their energy expenditure, or a waste officer helping municipalities implement efficient recycling strategies.
Most of these jobs require advanced university degrees. For jobs that involve building products, there is also often a strong demand for mathematical and scientific skills. Similarly, strong pedagogical skills are required for jobs requiring training and education. Overall, all these roles work in close connectivity with other professionals and experts and therefore require impeccable teamwork, collaboration and communication skills.
Besides the ones mentioned above, here is an inexhaustive list of typical climate and environmental protection jobs you can explore:
Let’s take a better look at some of these jobs. As we discussed above jobs in the environmental and climate protection fields are not standardised - they belong to very different sectors, have different roles, different tasks, and different eligibility requirements.
It’s often easy to envision a job in climate protection entailing work as a sustainability policy officer or a solar energy expert. But working at big corporations or international development organisations is not the only way to go.
People who work in installing energy-efficient heating systems or insulation in old buildings are also contributing equally to the fight against climate change. So are people building spare parts for batteries. Moreover, with ambitious national and international sustainable development targets, there is also an overlap between certain occupation categories and their responsibilities, such as in the construction and heating sectors.
Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the more popular jobs in this industry and what their typical tasks look like!
First up is the rather traditional role of a climate manager. A climate manager typically works for a private sector company and is the focal point for all things climate. Not only are they the topical expert, but they are also responsible for communicating and collaborating with industry, service providers, administration, NGOs, and governments.
As a climate manager, one needs to be a generalist with a strong aptitude for fields such as environmental protection, engineering, commerce, finance, and policy. You also need to have an advanced degree with several years of work experience managing teams, strong analytical skills and networking skills, and a passion for climate.
Some of the typical tasks of a climate manager include:
Next, we have climate protection managers or climate protection officers who often work in the public sector. These managers lead a wide range of projects for the community ranging from planting trees and running donation drives to more complex environmental projects, such as a heating project for all private office buildings.
Overall, they are responsible for promoting and implementing climate-friendly practices around themes such as energy efficiency, public transportation, re-forestation etc.
A climate protection manager should be passionate about climate, the environment, the economy etc. They should ideally have an advanced degree in natural sciences, commerce, finance, business administration or similar fields. Lastly, they should have some managerial work experience, preferably in the public sector in order to coordinate with private companies, the press, higher government officials and others.
The typical responsibilities of a climate protection manager include:
Climate protection managers are in high demand in the public sector and are regularly hired by city councils, local authorities, and government departments dedicated to climate and environmental protection. They are also hired by nature conservation organisations or national park authorities depending on their skills.
Local municipalities also regularly hire climate adaptation managers who are primarily responsible for ideating, creating and implementing climate adaptation concepts for their municipalities. They are generalists with specific knowledge of climate protection through a university degree, in either natural or environmental sciences, engineering, construction, public relations or communications.
In the last few years, there has been an increase in funding by the BMU in Germany to hire climate adaptation managers across municipalities.
Typical responsibilities of a climate adaptation manager include:
So far we’ve spoken mostly about managerial jobs in the public and private sector. But as we’ve said time and again, the climate and environmental protection industry has a lot more to offer, especially to students, graduates and early career professionals.
Engineering is a critical occupation in this industry, and there is a high demand for environmental, ecological, or any natural sciences-related engineers. This is because we need to engineer massive changes in technology, processes and complex systems to make them more climate-neutral and energy-efficient.
Public and private sector consulting is another incredible sector for young professionals and offers a lot of scope for growth. These jobs are especially great for people who have a more policy-oriented background and can support companies’ transition out of practices that harm the environment while still being commercially successful. Consultancies also hire data analysts and modellers to inform their consultants’ decisions and recommendations.
And then we have specialists such as ecologists, wildlife conservationists etc who may are focused on nature preservation and also play a crucial role in slowing down our economies.
As climate and environmental protection become mainstream due to a global shift in focus, there is also increasing competition in getting jobs at reputed organisations. Naturally, people with university degrees have an edge over their competitors.
These jobs often require one or the other or a mix of technical skills such as the ability to work with complex data and languages, along with soft skills such as teamwork, collaboration, and communication.
Given the interdisciplinary scope of this industry, universities across the globe offer bachelor’s, master’s, and doctorate degrees that give you the relevant skills to enter the field of climate protection.
As an initial university degree, you have the option to choose from a bachelor’s in science (BSc) or a bachelor’s in applied science (BASc) to a bachelor’s of environmental studies (BES), and bachelor’s of arts (BA) degree for a policy/public relations route.
Some of the most popular courses offered across the globe along with potential career paths are as follows:
As is true for most careers today, university degrees are not the only way to break into the field. Germany as well as most countries across the globe are offering excellent vocational training programmes as well as online or remote certifications for people who’ve not received conventional education as well as as for mid-career professionals looking to transition.
Additionally, private-sector companies are also hiring consultants to train their employees in climate protection through a range of courses from beginner to expert to help them perform better with a stronger sustainability focus in their existing roles.
Internships are a great opportunity for students from any of the above-mentioned degrees to get initial industry experience while studying. There are several job boards that post internship listings for all things related to climate protection.
They may be highly general and require only an initial interest in the industry, or be specialised and require a certain background such as engineering or specific skills such as coding. These internships can be 2-6 months to even up to a year and can be both paid and unpaid.
Sometimes it’s also a good idea to reach out to people working at an organisation directly with an unsolicited application expressing interest in doing an internship with them. If you keep an open mind and show sincere interest and dedication, an internship in this industry should be relatively easy to find!
Salaries in the field of climate and environmental protection can vary massively depending on the roles and responsibilities of any job.
For a generalist such as a climate manager, the salary ranges from roughly 40,000.00 € at the lower end up to 86,000.00 € for experts.
If you’re currently in a job that’s not aligned with climate protection but you want to transition to this industry, there are largely three ways of doing it. The first is essentially a no brainer - go back to school! Obtaining a degree or vocational training or a professional certificate is a great way to upskill and transition to a new profession.
The second option is to use your existing skillset in a new organisation that is dedicated to the goal of climate protection. For example, if your are a website developer, you could join an early state climate startup in the same role and support them in their work as you also start picking up new skills.
Lastly, if your current financial or otherwise situation doesn’t allow you to change jobs, you could attempt to start making a different within your existing role. Regardless of the company’s mission, you could try to create resource groups to bring your colleagues about climate awareness, or try to promote more sustainable practices in your existing work habits. The potential of something like this is endles!
Climate protection is a field that’s strongly interconnected with environmental protection, both in terms of focus and functionality. Jobs in these sectors often have overlapping roles and responsibilities. For that reason, climate protection is a highly multidisciplinary field that employs engineers, policy makers, data analysts, ecologists, environmentalists, geographers and many more.
Each of these roles requires a different skill set ranging from technical to soft skills depending on whether it’s product development or training and advocacy.
Climate protection is studied widely at the university level across the globe in different combinations and students have the opportunity to enter the field from several different focus areas. People also have the option to pursue vocational training courses or do internships as an alternate entry point into the industry.
If this has excited you, head over to GoGeoGo now to find your dream job in climate protection!
What is the need for climate protection in our lives?
A deteriorating climate has an adverse impact on every aspect of our lives because of how interconnected we are with our environment. We receive frood from the earth, we use resources such as rocks, wood, and minerals to build infrastructure, and depend on it for our health and livelihood. This is why it’s critical to protect it.
What are some common climate protection projects across the globe?
Climate protection is at the crux of most mitigation and adaptation efforts. Some common projects that are being widely implemented across the globe on the topic are swapping oil and gas for renewable energies, reducing methane emissions, realising higher energy efficiency etc.
Why is nature conservation relevant to climate protection?
Our natural surroundings (forests, rivers, mountains, waterfalls) form key parts of a functioning global climate because they provide resources and benefits to both individuals as well as our biodiversity. Depleting forest cover, polluted rivers, dried up waterfalls are just a few of the reasons why our global temperatures are rising, biodiversity in decreasing, and humans are getting unhealthier. Hence, conservation of nature is as important as other climate protection efforts.
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