Eco-specialties of the future: how to become a professional protector of the planet

Representatives of generation Z in different countries are determined to prevent pollution of the planet and global warming. But what will they use in their struggle – classical education or the advice of influencers?

Global environmental issues are of concern to teenagers: from the activity on the world stage of 17-year-old Greta Thunberg, already called the “voice of her generation” and a symbol of eco-protest, and ending with the speeches of young people at international summits, forums and demonstrations, pointing to climate change and environmental pollution .

Today’s teenagers no longer consider themselves old enough and powerful enough to change the world. “We are not going to wait 5, 10, 20 years to take the actions we want to see. We are not the future of this world, we are the present, we are acting now. We don’t wait any longer,” Salvador Gomez Colón, a 2020-year-old activist from Puerto Rico, said in January 17 at the World Economic Forum in Davos. Despite the fact that many of El Salvador’s like-minded people, like himself, have not yet reached the age of voting, their activities set the agenda for the world media and make politicians of the highest rank react. Young people are given the floor, and they use it: they blog, launch their own projects, participate in TED conferences, organize eco-movements and arrange “green” actions.

Although the “Greta effect” could not but affect the growth of environmental awareness among young people around the world, psychologists and sociologists generally attribute this trend to the entire generation Z (born, according to various theories, around the end of the 1990s). Modern children and teenagers are very pro-social, and everything related to issues of equality, human rights and freedoms, environmental protection is extremely important for them. Among the main fears of the Zetas both in our country and abroad, environmental challenges take the first place. There is even a separate phenomenon – “environmental anxiety” experienced by the younger generation, realizing the scale of the threat.

Eco-anxiety is a chronic fear of environmental disaster. It occurs in people who are concerned about the ecological crisis and the state of the environment. Possible symptoms include panic attacks, loss of appetite, irritability, intrusive thoughts, and insomnia. At the same time, modern teenagers are in no hurry to receive environmental education – they want to become IT specialists or influencers on Instagram or YouTube. Although the latter does not exclude receiving funds from environmental education: many bloggers who spread the ideas of zero waste and environmental consciousness earn money on their accounts. True, there are practically no professionals with any fundamental knowledge in this area among them.

Green education should start at school: it lays the foundation for environmental education and helps to use knowledge from the social and natural sciences to protect the environment.

There are standards for secondary and general education in this area. They take into account the priorities of the global community and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development (adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015). But in the “green” movement in our country, the ECA believes that this is not enough.

Here are just a few of the “green” jobs that will be in demand in the future:

Existing programs of classical and online universities and schools offer both familiar areas (for example, “industrial ecology” and “sustainability of natural resources”), and unusual ones (“city farming” and “eco-urban studies”). The difficulty with obtaining new professions is that they are practically not taught directly anywhere. But that doesn’t mean you can’t prepare for them.

“If you want to deal with environmental issues, but have not yet decided which ones, the “ecology”, “ecology and nature management” programs that are available in many universities are suitable, explains Maria Ramzaeva, editor of the Atlas of New Professions 3.0. – If you have decided, then here you can choose a close specialization. For example, the same future eco-guide will suit the specialty “ecological tourism”, and the port ecologist – “integrated use and protection of water resources”.

Despite the increased attention to the problem, in our country, environmental professions do not yet appear on the lists of the most popular and attractive ones. But the need for such specialists is gradually growing. On average, the growth in the number of vacancies for environmentalists in our country is 8% per quarter.

At the same time, the number of resumes of applicants-ecologists has remained almost unchanged for three years.

So far there are not enough modern profiles in universities that meet the challenges of the time. Perhaps that is why young people see more opportunities to help the planet with concrete actions – demonstrations, projects and participation in conferences.

It can take a long time to wait for educational structures to adapt to new realities, and active actions are required now. An active life position and social activities do not prevent getting the right profession in the future, when the demand is more formalized, and universities learn how to train the necessary specialists.

The fact that ecology is now being talked about so actively is not least the merit of the younger generation, and it really works – as long as the problem is being talked about, it is difficult to ignore it.