Today, some of the fastest growing occupations are in the environmental sector. Environmental engineers, hazardous materials removal specialists, pollution prevention, energy efficiency, and environmental science and protection technicians are among the "hottest jobs" according to the U.S. Department of Labor.
Other industry watchers list additional emerging and expanding "hot jobs" including:
Conservation biologists
Often called "results-focused" biology, this field strives to create science-based solutions to protect and restore naturally functioning land, water, plant and wildlife systems. There are opportunities for conservation biologists throughout the governmental and conservation sectors, as well as in some private industry that focuses on natural resource extraction, like forestry companies.
Industrial ecologists
These environmentalists redesign pollution control systems and put new ones in place that achieve dramatic reductions in emissions, the use of toxics, and other environmental damage. This field goes beyond pollution prevention to conceptualize and realize fundamentally new approaches to industrial production that better protects the environment by keeping air and water cleaner.
Water and wastewater experts
Water and wastewater comprise another branch of environmental work. Escalating threats to water supply and quality caused by growing populations and new diseases and toxic chemicals that may contaminate water, create demand for water quality and wastewater management experts.
Environmental monitoring experts
These experts focus on new advances in technology like satellite remote sensing, geographic information systems (GIS), nanotechnology, global positioning systems (GPS). These cutting-edge methods of mapping environmental impacts provide an important tool for other environmental professionals. The maps and data that these environmental monitoring experts create are used for education, policy development, to identify the need for technological solutions that environmental engineers can provide, or to illustrate the need for additional data that environmental scientists must collect.
Environmental policy integration
Integrating environmental policy into our legislature is a growing concern. Past and current policy approaches separate air from water, water from soil, different kinds of waste from one another, people from other species, and rely on artificial political boundaries. This has created environmental policy that is uncoordinated, expensive, hard to manage, and not reflective of how people and the natural world interact with each other. From the international level to the community level, people now are looking for a more integrated way to protect the environment, and our environmental policies and their implementation need to reflect that. Larger nonprofits like Natural Resources Defense Council and governmental agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency employ experts with the broad expertise and vision to integrate environmental policy across categories.
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