(by Danielle Perreault, The Sustainabilitree)

The venue for the World Changing Careers symposium (WCC) definitely helped the participants to put their mindsets in the right place. The University of British Columbia’s vast campus was surrounded by nature at every turn: great vines creeping up the buildings, enormous trees everywhere, the ocean nearby and much more. Seeing such beauty provoked a deeper desire to preserve our earth’s resources.

We all know it’s true; our demand for resources and ecosystem services keeps on growing while there is a decline in the capacity of earth to provide those resources and services. “We are already seeing the consequences; the collapse of fisheries around the world is threatening lives and livelihoods, the loss of arable farmland is contributing to global food insecurity, and shrinking supplies of clean water mean many more people are vulnerable to preventable diseases like cholera and diarrhea” (The Natual Step- http://www.thenaturalstep.org/en/canada/ ).What’s positive in all of that? Nothing- let’s face it and actually do something about it!

A green job is an entry point to address this issue. In fact, I was privileged to take part in aGreen Job Dialogue. We asked ourselves: What are transformational green jobs? We concluded that sustainability shouldn’t be seen as a “department” that tells people what to do, but more seen as cross-functional. It should be “built into job descriptions” instead of being a separate initiative. In fact, sustainability shouldn’t be a comparative model but simply needs to touch every segment.

Actually, there exists “different shades” of green jobs. In manufacturing, a light green would be pollution control whereas a dark green would be Cradle-to-cradle(closed-loop systems). In forestry, a light green job would be reforestation projects; dark green, halting deforestation. In order to create a sustainable society, we need to start thinking a step ahead and create more dark green jobs. For example, we need to continue looking at how nature does things, like capturing the sun or filtering the water, and understand how we can apply that to our lives through redesigned technologies. This is called biomimicry and it can go as far as challenging cities to provide the same level of ecosystem services at the native ecosystem.

For an interesting video about biomimicry, check out:

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