With increasing growth in demand by companies for environmentally sustainable services, millions of job opportunities are in the offing for people having the skill sets related to green services, experts say.
"Investments going into restructuring our economy will be more sustainable and will completely dwarf our IT revolution. Large IT firms together employ less than a million people. That is the amount of jobs we can have in bio-gas production alone," The Climate Project (TCP) India director Gaurav Gupta told PTI.
TCP is an independent chapter of an international non-profit organisation founded by Nobel Laureate Al Gore.
"The ongoing economic downturn has given policy makers an opportunity to take a second look at their growth strategies and many have concluded that not only serious structural changes to a low carbon economy is necessary, but that the time to make appropriate investments has arrived," he added.
Experts said rapidly evolving job opportunities demand skill sets in environmental sustainability and traditional jobs need to be re-imagined to support 'Green economy'.
The United States-based environmental organisation, Sierra Club's international program director Stephen Mills said, "We need to ensure that the millions of jobs that are likely to be generated are not crowded out by simultaneous spending on carbon-intensive sectors elsewhere."
"Yet another challenge is to build trained human capital. Students need to make educational and training choices today, that will set them up for participating in the green growth sectors and our infrastructure needs to support them by providing the right training," Mills added.
According to an industry report, green technologies and industries in India are expected to attract spendings in the region of $150 billion between 2008-2017.
In order to provide new job opportunities in the sustainability sector and promote awareness and action for supporting a green economic revolution, The Climate Project-India and The Sierra Club have organised a 'Green Jobs Fair' in New Delhi from 24-26 September.
The fair aims at bringing together organisations working on sustainability, ranging from traditional firms such as a property developer looking for an energy efficiency expert to NGOs working on environmental policy.
