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Environment & climate

Natural Sciences

Studying ecosystems, the climate and the earth, to understand and protect them.

This suits you if…

You can be scrupulously neutral about what your data does and doesn't show, including when the answer is inconvenient, and you are willing to do the measuring and the reporting that is what makes you trusted.

Look elsewhere if…

You came to fight for the environment. Most of the paid work sits inside the industries this field is imagined to oppose, and the job is often to document and mitigate harm rather than to prevent it. Policy, advocacy and campaigning suit that motive far better.

What the work actually is

What the work is actually like

A mix that varies by role: fieldwork collecting samples or measurements, lab or model work turning them into numbers, and a great deal of reporting against regulations. Consultancy work, the largest employer in practice, means environmental impact assessments, monitoring and compliance documents for construction, mining and energy projects.

The catch

Much of the paid work sits inside the industries the field is often imagined to oppose, and the job is frequently to document and mitigate harm rather than to prevent it. Progress is slow and politically contingent, fieldwork can be physically hard and seasonal, and the salaries are generally lower than in adjacent technical fields.

What people get wrong about it

That it is activism with a degree. Professionally it is measurement and evidence, and being trusted depends on being scrupulously neutral about what your data does and doesn't show, including when the answer is inconvenient.

The jobs inside this area

  • Environmental scientist
  • Climate / atmospheric scientist
  • Ecologist
  • Geologist
  • Sustainability analyst

A list, not a recommendation. You narrow it, we don’t.

What this kind of work usually offers

Helping people · Working with peopleA generalisation about the sphere, not a promise about a salary. Pay and security vary enormously by country and employer.

How you get there

The one-line version

Environmental or earth science. Field projects and climate challenges are the accessible first step.

Stage by stage

  1. While you are still at school

    Chemistry, biology, geography and statistics. Join any real monitoring or restoration project locally; the ability to say you've collected field data properly is worth more than enthusiasm.

  2. What you study

    Environmental science, ecology, earth science or geography, with as much data and GIS work as you can take. The quantitative half is what separates people who advise from people who assist.

  3. How the first years actually go

    Junior consultant or field technician: surveys, sampling, and writing sections of assessment reports to a template. Professional accreditation in the country you work in tends to be the milestone that raises your responsibility.

Where this work lives, and how you reach it

What you would study for it

Each says what the first year is really made of, and who should study something else instead.

13 countries · 14 cities · 29 institutions named for this field. Each one states its catch as well as its appeal.

  • Kazakhstan

    Named here: Nazarbayev University · Al-Farabi Kazakh National University · Satbayev University

  • Germany

    Named here: Technical University of Munich · Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich · Humboldt University of Berlin · RWTH Aachen University

  • Switzerland

    Named here: ETH Zurich · EPFL · University of Geneva

  • Netherlands

    Named here: University of Amsterdam · Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam

  • United Arab Emirates

    Named here: Khalifa University · New York University Abu Dhabi · United Arab Emirates University

  • Türkiye

    Named here: Middle East Technical University

  • South Korea

    Named here: Seoul National University · KAIST

  • Japan

    Named here: The University of Tokyo · Kyoto University · Osaka University

  • Singapore

    Named here: Nanyang Technological University

  • China

    Named here: Peking University · Southern University of Science and Technology

  • Hong Kong

    Named here: The Chinese University of Hong Kong

  • United States

    Named here: Massachusetts Institute of Technology · University of California, Berkeley

  • Canada

    Named here: University of British Columbia · McGill University

Without leaving home

2 of the routes that need no visa and no move lead into this field.

Test it this month

Free, and finishable in a few evenings

Measure something in your own area over several weeks: air quality, water, plant or bird counts, with a consistent method, and write up what you found and what you can't conclude. That last part is the science.