What does Rainfall to Groundwater offer for employment prospects?
Actualization of Rainfall to Groundwater principles has potential to dramatically expand the ecological restoration industry, including creation of numerous jobs at a range of professional skill levels.
Following devastating 2017 hurricanes, Steve Zwick, Editor of Ecosystem Marketplace, shared “10 things you need to know about the restoration economy” (September 22, 2017), reprinted on GreenBiz.com .
Some ecological restoration job creation documented there has come in the aftermath of hurricanes, such as Sandy, which remind us of the economic benefits of ecological buffers against environmental extremes.
While drought and groundwater overdraft seldom offer the temporal drama of natural disasters, the logical response now, given what we know, is that funds expended to restore watershed detention storage functions are equally well spent to ensure a sounder future. That spending will support jobs.
Zwick points out that such jobs are naturally skewed toward rural areas, where they are especially needed, stimulating rural economies.
As Silicon Valley debates optional strategies to deal with what many envision as inevitable loss of jobs to looming artificial intelligence (A.I.), jobs in the restoration economy are generally robot-proof, Zwick notes.
While technology has greatly expedited our abilities to visualize planning and projections at regional and watershed scales during Verna’s professional career, ecological restoration demands, literally, boots on the ground – from project inception through monitoring and adaptive management, as emphasized in the Rainfall to Groundwater planning program.
The Rainfall to Groundwater approach will employ technology and those who use it most effectively, but it must never lose human physical contact with the lands it concerns, that directly inform our actions.
More –
Zwick,Steve. 2017. 10 things you need to know about the restoration economy http://www.ecosystemmarketplace.com/articles/hurricanes-harvey-and-irma-highlight-importance-of-restoration-economy/
https://www.greenbiz.com/article/10-things-you-need-know-about-restoration-economy