India may see about 1 mn 'green jobs' in next two years

The fast-growing green energy sector is expected to create about one million new jobs in the country over the next two years, offering employment opportunities in diverse areas, say experts.

Increasing environmental awareness, growth of global carbon markets and the rise of green buildings and the like will eventually mean employment opportunities for lawyers, policy writers, carbon finance consultants, business risk analysts, architects and engineers adept in green building norms.

As green jobs exist in all sectors, this means more engineering, more construction and more management jobs.

"These are just a few sectors and jobs out of the hundreds of jobs that will be transformed and created into the future," Kamal Meattle, the Promoter of GreenSpaces and CEO of the Paharpur Business Centre & Software Technology Incubator Park, said.

Echoing a similar sentiment, Udit Mittal, the Managing Director of Unison International, an HR consultancy firm, said the scope is so vast that "around one million green jobs will be generated in India over the next two years."

A 'green job' is employment in any industry that contributes to preserving or restoring environmental quality. A green job can be a white or blue-collar job in any sector: agriculture, manufacturing, research and development, administration and service activities such as IT, finance, teaching and so on.

One of the biggest future recruiters in green jobs is likely to be real estate, with green buildings coming up fast. Companies like Wipro, Microsoft, Cognizant, TCS, Infosys and Oracle are either operating -- or planning to -- from green offices.

Unfortunately, green jobs are still not considered lucrative. And that's mainly because of a lack of awareness and insufficient experience, experts said.

Meattle further said that "the future looks like it could be brighter, except that in our excitement we forget that we will need thousands of skilled people to build a bridge to our new carbon-free world. Put simply, there are neither the trainers, facilities or financing to skill the labour force we urgently need."

To fulfil this talent crunch, a lot of courses have been introduced in India that are devoted to green technology, like Bachelor of Science (Env Sc), BE in Environmental Engineering, BTech in Environmental Engineering, Carbon Finance Course, Masters in Science (Env Sc), Mtech/ME in Environmental Engineering, ME in Hydraulics and Flood Engineering, Phd & Mphil in Environmental Management and a Phd in Environmental Protection and Management.