According to a report last year by professional services firm Accenture, which surveyed 29,500 people aged 15 to 39 across 18 countries including Singapore, 77 per cent of respondents in the Asia-Pacific aspired to roles in the green economy within the next decade.
But even as the roles increase in number, are young job seekers getting the green jobs they want? Is passion for the environment enough to secure a job?
CNA Insider spoke to a variety of youths in Singapore and found a mixed bag of experiences. While some had little difficulty finding their ideal job, others faced obstacles and detours despite a willingness to pick up the necessary skills.
FROM ECO ANXIETY TO HOPE
The anticipated green jobs boom is good news for those who have harboured such aspirations since childhood.
Selene Tanne, 23, remembers looking up jobs in sustainability when she was at secondary school and feeling “despair” about the lack of opportunities.
“I always had … anxiety about the environment. It was a very real thing that I struggled with as a child,” she said. “But I had no idea how to channel it or do anything about it.”
Back then, she got the “dominant impression” that working in the sustainability field in Singapore meant “either you go work in the National Parks Board or you be some hippie campaigner”.
She went on to pursue her other interest, law, and chose to study in the United Kingdom to expose herself to environmental law in Europe, where there were more environmental developments and regulations.
Even then, her interest was not always perceived as an advantage. When she was applying for traineeships in the UK, she was advised not to focus too much on the environment as it would make her a less attractive candidate.
“The consensus among friends who were more environmentally conscious was the sense of almost despair,” she said. She came home amid the pandemic in 2020 and, by the next year, saw a very different picture.
There was “an explosion of jobs” focused on sustainability, from public policy to compliance. Friends began sharing anecdotes about the green jobs they had landed, for example in a start-up trying to make the food supply chain more sustainable.
After she completed her law degree in 2021, she started working full-time as a research assistant at the Asia-Pacific Centre for Environmental Law (APCEL) at the National University of Singapore (NUS).