Green Careers Fair surpasses expectations
This year’s Green Careers Fair took place on the 12th in Queen’s Tower Room. Well over 500 people attended to see the 27 companies which had set up stalls.
Of all the companies present, only two focused on climate adaptation rather than mitigation. This highlights a broader problem: in 2021/22, 91% of global climate finance went to reducing emissions (mitigation) and only 5% went exclusively to adaptation. We need to be funding adapting to the consequences of climate change at similar levels as mitigation.
There are plenty of exciting areas for innovation in adaptation, just like mitigation. The consequences of hurricanes, flooding, extreme heat, and drought, will be wide ranging and we need engineers and scientists working on building resilience and designing new monitoring techniques in vulnerable places. Each situation is unique, and whilst this is part of what makes adaptation interesting, local solutions are not appealing to investors. Unfortunately, the “cool factor”, as Green Careers Fair organiser Guillaume Felix put it, is just not there for adaptation. The organisers told Felix they’d make an effort to include more companies working on adaptation next year.
Despite this missing link, a variety of companies were present, with everything from batteries and renewables, to reducing food waste and plastic pollution represented. One student complemented the Green Careers Fair saying it helped them gain a “broader understanding of how multidisciplinary the green industry is.”
The fair was sponsored by Sustainable Imperial and hosted jointly by Imperial+, Chemical Engineering Society, Environmental Society, Climate Entrepreneurs Club, and Engineers without Borders UK. A representative for Imperial+ said they “were delighted to see the event go so well: the number of attendees surpassed our expectations and broke last year’s record by a large [margin]!”
