It has been a brutal year for many of the most senior sustainability leaders in financial institutions across Europe and the US, with teams downsized, leadership positions cut, and reporting functions absorbed into mainstream departments. In Asia, by contrast, green finance jobs are growing as capital flows into clean energy, grids and electric mobility reach record levels. The macro direction is clear: disruption is inevitable.

We are already deep into a turbulent transition – messy, uneven, and impossible to reconcile with business as usual. Plausible disruption scenarios include the breakdown of parts of the food system, a climate-induced credit crunch through uninsurability, or major supply-chain shocks. Any of them would have immediate implications for financial institutions and jobs within them. Disruption will not be contained to sustainability teams. It will cascade through risk, strategy, lending, investment, technology, and client functions. At the same time, turbulence and innovation will unlock major economic opportunities. The next wave of growth will come from new technologies and business models designed for a carbon- and resource-constrained world. But these will not be “green jobs” in the way they were understood in the past.

Green jobs in finance have never been a constant. Early roles often emerged out of CSR, communications or technical compliance teams. As societal concerns about the future grew, financial institutions chased the zeitgeist – creating dedicated sustainability teams to manage those expectations and support the development of ambitious targets and new ‘green’ products. These teams swelled during the ESG boom, in response to burgeoning reporting burdens – then shrank in the ensuing backlash. The pattern is clear: jobs follow market cycles and political winds, and sustainability teams are no longer immune from the cyclicality of the markets. Only work that is clearly tied to near-term commercial survival is certain to endure – and is increasingly integrated into core business functions once it becomes commercially central.

The question is what comes next. One answer is already visible. AI is reshaping every function in financial institutions and, in the process, redefining jobs. Billions are being invested in redesigning core risk and credit systems and in reskilling staff to work with these models. Tomorrow’s sustainability work is more likely to be about training algorithms to price systemic risk than drafting reports.

Read the full article about green finance jobs by Nina Seega at Forbes.