adaptable Plain Language Statement

Thank you in for your interest in taking part in project, adaptABLE. This is a short summary to explain what the project is and answer some questions you might have.

For any more information, please email the team at adapt.able@ed.ac.uk

Title of project

Opening up the Environment - AdaptABLE

Lead organisation

Centre for Adapting to Changing Environments, University of Edinburgh

Visit the centre's website

The project is funded by the Natural Environment Research Council. The Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) is the UK’s leading public funder of environmental science. They support environmental research, postgraduate training and research innovation in universities, research centres and partner organisations.

We want to highlight the growing number and range of jobs working in the environmental sector or that use environmental science and the career routes people working in these roles have taken. We also want to understand whether there might be barriers to people accessing information about these jobs or following these career trajectories to better inform how these routes could be more widely accessible in the future.

You are invited to fill in a short questionnaire about your career journey and provide a photo of yourself to accompany your career narrative. We estimate this could take between 15–20 minutes. We will ask you about your career journey, your motivation for your chosen career path and what has helped or would help you in your career journey. We will share these narratives on our project website and at public career events at our own and partner Institutions. The primary function of this exercise is to inform people about the career opportunities that exist, the routes they could take to work in the environmental sector and to enable people to see people like themselves succeeding in these different environmental roles. However, we may extract anonymised information on common themes across the narratives to identify opportunities that have been important in enabling people to follow a career in the environmental sector.

No. Taking part in any of our project activities is completely voluntary. If you choose, you can stop at any time without giving a reason.

Your narratives will be shared as agreed in the invitation to join the project but can be removed at any point by emailing adapt.able@ed.ac.uk. We will measure levels of public engagement to inform us on which roles or routes appear to be of most interest to different audiences.

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.

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.