NERCOUTE: AdaptABLE - Adaptation in our Environment to maximise inclusivity

Environmental science underpins the knowledge and skills that our UK job market needs for the transition to a sustainable future. The green sector has been expanding rapidly, with global green job postings increasing by 8% annually over the past five years. This is particularly crucial for the UK economy, where demand for green talent is escalating; opportunities in the environmental sector increased by 46% between 2023 and 2024 and the hiring rate for ‘green talent’ is estimated to be 72% greater than the hiring rate for talent overall. Despite this buoyant picture, the environmental sector is facing two major issues. Firstly, the supply of job opportunities is outstripping demand - the availability of people to fill the growing number of green roles increased by only 5.3% - a fraction of the increase in opportunities. At the same time, the UK environmental sector is among the least diverse with racial, gender and disability inequality in representation. Identifying and eliminating barriers to building a diverse and cohesive workforce, fully equipped with the skills and understanding of the challenges and their solutions, is key to a socially just and economically viable future. We have identified three key stages where diversity in the environmental sciences appears to be stifled or lost: 1) school age pupils between the ages of 14 and 18, 2) students leaving tertiary education, and 3) retention within the jobs market at early to mid-career level. This is often attributable to decisions around the perceived lack of secure, or financially beneficial, career routes in the environmental sector. Given the demand and expanding opportunity that exists in the environmental job market, ensuring these routes are visibly open to all is key. Using a Theory of Change approach, AdaptABLE will co-develop a roadmap, with input from under-represented groups at multiple stages, to a range of pathways into jobs across the environmental sector. As a starting point, we will draw from our partnership of over 30 university, governmental, non-governmental and industrial organisations and companies that work across the whole of NERC remit. We will explore the potential reach of different online and in-person mechanisms to showcase both the opportunities and the diversity of colleagues successfully pursuing careers in the environmental sector. We will work with pupils and early career researchers to design pathways to impact, and establish an evidence base of data and feedback on the engagement with identified activities. We will then evaluate the effectiveness of our activities across our broader partnership, inviting challenge from the groups we aim to support and the employers and educators that train and employ in the environmental sphere, to test the effectiveness of our outputs and establish where the focus of the next stages development beyond this project should lead. The green transition provides significant opportunities in the coming years across a range of sectors. Environmental science and a skilled and fully diverse workforce will be key to both the UK economy and socially just society of the future.