Event Summary: What skills do you need to succeed in an environmental job?
Discussion details
On the morning of 28th June, 2013, UNEP and the European Youth Press along with the Brussels Environment Interns Network organised an event on environmental jobs in the European Parliament. The event brought together over one hundred Brussels-based interns to discuss with four panelists what skills were needed to succeed in an environmental job.
The assembled panelists had a range of experiences in different sectors. The four were: Philippe Lamberts, a Green MEP since 2009, who previously worked for twenty years at IBM; Ignace Schops, winner of the Goldman Environmental Prize and the founder of Hoge Kempen, Belgium’s first National Park; Marie-Noëlle Keijzer, CEO of NGO WeForest, who holds both an MBA and a Masters in Environmental Sciences, and Asger Olesen, a soil expert and policy officer at DG Clima.
What is success?
The panelists described how they had got to where they were today, with Mr. Lamberts saying that he had taken a conscious decision not to enter politics fully until later in life, but to gain business experience whilst keeping politics as a hobby. Mr. Olesen said that he had ‘never got a job I have applied for in my life, but got them through networking’. He said the secret to this was having a story to tell that was both coherent but not overly simple, which made him stand out from other people, and which combined scientific knowledge with practical skills such as communication.
Moderator Carmen Păun, from the European Youth Press, asked the panelists to think about the word ‘successful’ in the title of the event, and to consider how ‘success’ could be judged in an environmental job. Ms. Keijzer said that if she leaves behind a personal legacy with her work and a better planet for her son, then her career will have been a success. Mr. Olsen and Mr. Schops agreed that the most important criterion of success was that their worked made them feel happy and fulfilled.
Mr Olsen added, ‘if I finish work most days and go home and feel satisfied with what I am doing, I know I am being successful.’ He also suggested another more specific litmus test, ‘when I am at a dinner party and I am trying to chat someone up, if I can explain to that person succinctly exactly what it is I do and feel proud of my work, then I know I am in the right field’.
Large Institutions
The panelists discussed what skills were needed to be successful in a large institution. Mr. Lamberts said that you need to learn to manage the tension between dreams and realities. ‘If you work too long in an institution, it will crush you and will only see the ‘realities’, or the obstacles, not any possibilities.’ He also added that real effective change in institutions was brought about teams, made up of individuals who could truly express their individuality whilst still contributing to team goals.
Internships in Brussels
The panelists were also asked about Brussels-specific problems, such as the preponderance of short-term internships, and the difficulty of securing a full-time job in the environmental field. Mr. Lamberts said that that exploitation was inevitable when there too high a supply of young talent and not a high enough supply of jobs.
Mrs. Keijzer said that young people should only take internships if it helped to further their ambitions, and the internships could be used to assist them in other projects and could be combined with other activities such as volunteering. ‘Take advantage of the internship; don’t let yourself be taken advantage of', she concluded.
All of the panelists also urged the attendees not just to think about the Brussels-based policy world and to get out into the ‘real world’ and get experience in other sectors before dedicating themselves to a career in policy. ‘If you go straight from University to working on creating policy designed to help people in the real world, you will make mistakes and not be effective because you will not know what the real world is!', said Mr Lamberts.
Mr. Lamberts also encouraged people to get experience in the private sector, or to do project rather than office-based advocacy work for NGOs. Mr Schops added that people should not even be worried about taking a little time out to think about their career, ‘by all means go to Brazil, visit a favela, learn something about life, and them come back with a fresh perspective.’
Success for environmental NGOs
As many of the panel had experience in founding, working for, or working with an NGO, they were also able to offer plenty of advice on how to be successful in that field. Mr Asger said that ‘NGOs fail if they spend all their time saying how the world is bad because someone else is doing something wrong. To have an impact you have to articulate an alternative vision; one that is actually realistic’.
Ms. Keijzer and Mr. Schops added that it is important when speaking to businesses to make environmental messages more appealing. ‘We talk about planting trees, because trees are sexier than carbon’, said Mrs. Keijzer, whilst Mr. Schops said, ‘I used to get very nervous talking to CEOs and MEPs. If you remember, however, that they are not some gods who live on a cloud high-up in the sky but people like you and me who are worried about their children’s future too, and if you really speak to them from the heart and with genuine passion, then they will listen’.
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