The Big Picture
Trends in environmental organisations
Describes some of the trends in the organisations.
Environmental organisations
- More status and influence in decision-making
- More links between voluntary, government and business sectors
- More partnerships
- More professional management
- More monitoring and analysis
- More ageing memberships in some organisations
All organisations
- More outsourcing and growth of consultancies
- More social enterprises and self-employment
- More remote and flexible working
- More holistic systems/policies alongside quality, health and safety, eq opportunities and social responsibility
- More electronic commerce, communication
- More commuting and remote/home working
- Less job security
- More businesses becoming socially responsible
- More non-profit organisations becoming business-like
- More consumer/stakeholder power (?)
- More power for multinational corporations
So what sort of career for you?
The suite of environmental employers will need to change to reflect this slow cultural transition towards more genuinely sustainable forms of development.
This may entail a rising literacy in environmental and sustainable development thinking across broader areas of organisational activities, rather than concentration of environmental expertise into isolated pockets peripheral to the core business of organisation.
As we grow more sophisticated about tackling sustainable development, government, voluntary organisations and businesses will also need far greater consciousness of their international footprint.
A cleaner domestic environment - rising river and air quality as one example - will no longer be seen as unambiguously good if it has been delivered by a shift of heavy industry overseas.
Innovation lies at the heart of sustainable development, so there will be booming and new markets for cleaner technologies that rely less on natural resources and produce less waste.
Environmental expertise will need to underpin all of these areas.
