- While Mongabay-India has been reporting about green jobs for almost a decade, our series in 2025 aimed to document their evolution and the aspirations of the new entrants into the workforce.
- While green jobs are often framed around energy transition, we examined sectors like disaster management and films to show how new sustainability roles are emerging where none existed before.
- Through this series, we aimed to inform as well as inspire action and reflection.
Green jobs are not new, but what counts as a green job is evolving. Typically tied to renewable energy or sustainability roles, the term now captures a broad spectrum of roles that contribute to environmental protection, restoration, or adaptation.
According to the International Labour Organization (ILO), green jobs are “decent jobs that contribute to preserve or restore the environment”, whether in established industries such as manufacturing and construction or emerging ones such as renewable energy and energy efficiency.
In today’s context, this definition encompasses everything from solar technicians and electric vehicle specialists to environmental engineers and jobs in climate finance, ESG reporting, and nature-based solutions. It also includes roles that may not seem traditionally “green”, such as community environmental workers or disaster management personnel, but are linked to climate resilience.
Since Mongabay-India’s inception, we have been reporting about green jobs. In 2017 we wrote about how India’s push for renewable energy will generate more jobs, particularly in villages. In the following years, we analysed whether the renewable energy sector would be able to provide the capacity of jobs needed for the transition away from fossil fuel jobs, we looked at the scale of solar energy needed to accommodate the shift from coal mining jobs and at how jobs in the decentralise renewable energy sector are projected to increase.
Almost a decade later, we are still talking about green jobs to document their evolution and the aspirations of the new entrants into the workforce.
By 2030, Gen Z (born between 1997 and 2012) will be a third of the workforce. But, fewer than one in five people in the age group have a full understanding of the different career paths for breaking into green jobs, and what a green job can be, says the Global Green Skills Report 2024.
In the mini-series we launched in 2025, we examined how green jobs are expanding and are not limited to the energy sector or to the discourse around transitions.
Green jobs now encompass a wide spectrum of roles from high-tech sectors to grassroots work and community engagement, ranging from highly technical to creative roles. With climate mitigation being one of the major trends reshaping businesses in the next five years, demand for relevant roles is likely to go up. Young people entering the workforce are also looking at this sector for financial promise and long-term job security.
While the aim for this series was to inform, we also wanted to inspire action and reflection. ‘Green jobs’ are more than a buzzword now; they are part of India’s climate response and future workforce strategy.
Read more: What are green jobs? [Explainer]
Finding green jobs in unexpected locations
In our story on how people are navigating the green labour market, we found that young aspirants are often inspired by climate goals but struggle to find clear pathways into meaningful work. Organisations are still figuring out how to define and advertise new roles, and training programmes have yet to align fully with hiring needs. Yet, there are pockets of support mushrooming to clear the pathways into this sector.
Going further into this series, we picked up certain areas of work that are not traditionally seen as “green” sectors such as renewable energy but are closely linked to disruptions in the environment and climate change. Our piece on an evolving workforce around disaster management showed how disaster response and resilience roles, typically a part of public administration or humanitarian work, are increasingly connected to environmental change and climate risk. These roles stretch from early warning systems and AI-based risk mapping to community counselling and long-term recovery. This story reminded us that green jobs can be both technical and human-centred.
One of the unexpected places where we found green jobs was in the film and entertainment industry. In an industry that is far from being ‘green’, a small community of people are working to scale the sustainability mountain. Former film professionals, engineers, and designers are turning entrepreneurs to mitigate the industry’s growing impact on the climate.
In the article on how reel and real stories create impact, we highlighted how professionals are carving out roles as sustainability consultants, renewable-energy advisors and circular-economy entrepreneurs on film sets. These jobs barely existed a few years ago and may not yet be part of formal hiring pipelines, but people are taking small, determined steps to reduce diesel use, reuse sets, and cut waste, effectively creating opportunities where none previously existed.
Who is being left behind?
The stories also touched upon access and motivation with regards to green jobs. In the renewable energy sector, for example, while there’s a lot of talk about new job creation, studies show a gap between the demand for workers, the available supply, and who actually gets the jobs. Awareness about green jobs is also uneven, and many aspirants don’t know what opportunities exist or how to prepare for them.
Gender differences also emerge when talking about what drives someone to a green job – men are more likely to cite the sector’s growth and rising investments as key motivators, finds a report on women in climate careers in India. Women, on the other hand, more often highlight concern for the planet, future generations, health, and personal experiences with climate change.
As this series continues to explore the various aspects of green jobs and their evolving nature, we hope it offers food for thought for new entrants to the workforce as well as people making a career switch, with a starting point to dig deeper and find their place in a greener, more resilient future.
Banner image: Workers at a solar panel manufacturing plant. (AP Photo/Manish Swarup)
