Background

Working in 170 countries and territories to eradicate poverty, reduce inequalities and exclusion, UNDP plays a critical role in helping countries/territories achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). UNDP’s 2022-2025 Strategic Plan emphasizes the critical links between environmental sustainability, climate change mitigation and adaptation, and broader efforts to achieve the goals of the 2030 Agenda and Paris Agreement. Climate change could drive an additional 100 million people into poverty by 2030. One of its key priorities for the next 10 years is to support countries/territories accelerate ambitious action on climate change. The Climate Promise is UNDP’s response to the climate challenge. Tackling the climate crisis requires all countries to make bold pledges under the Paris Agreement. The National Determined Contributions (NDCs) aim to reduce emissions of the greenhouse gases that cause global warming and strengthen adaptation to its impacts. The Climate Promise is the commitment to ensure that any country wishing to increase the ambition of their national climate pledge can do so.

UNDP is now scaling up its support for countries to turn their NDC targets into concrete action – while continuing to push for greater ambition. Leveraging the NDCs as an umbrella, UNDP is bringing together its extensive infrastructure, networks and breadth of substantive offers to provide comprehensive support on NDC preparation and implementation. This support covers a range of key technical areas, including enhancing political will and ownership across society, strengthening targets and aligning with key national policies, assessing costs and investment opportunities, as well as setting up the systems for tracking on progress.

One of the work areas under Climate Promise is climate transparency. Transparency is central to the Paris Agreement. Article 13 of the Paris Agreement provides the outline for an enhanced transparency framework (ETF) for countries through which they can report on the actions they take related to climate change and the support that they provide and receive. UNDP has been supporting countries across the world in establishing and improving ETF and related reports to the UNFCCC (National Communications, Biennial Update Reports and Biennial Transparency Reports), and the Capacity Building Initiative for Transparency (CBIT). This support covers a wide range of projects and programs in more than 147 countries.

Additionally, the Climate Promise, through the project Enhancing climate transparency in the Lusophone and francophone countries funded by the Belgium Government is providing capacity building support on data and transparency and foster south/ south exchanges. This with the aim to provide targeted countries with effective governance and enabling environment over time, to accelerate and scale NDC implementation, by providing streamlined support and capacity building on data and transparency.

Under the overall leadership of the Climate Change Integrated Strategies Specialist in the Climate Policy and Strategies Team and day-to-day supervision of the Regional Technical Advisor and the Project Manager for Belgium’s project from the Climate Promise. The Knowledge Management Intern will support team activities that contribute to consolidate the transparency dashboard that includes data on the Climate Change Enabling Activities: National Communications (NC) and Biennial Update Reports (BUR); the Capacity Building Initiatives for Transparency (CBIT) projects, NDC Support Programme and the Transparency initiative for Lusophone and francophone countries.

Duties and Responsibilities

  • Provide overall administrative and logistic support to activities and projects undertaken by the Transparency initiative for Lusophone and francophone countries.
  • Review the existing data and knowledge management tools for tracking climate transparency efforts within Climate Strategies and Policy Team, and content to identify the existing gaps in data tracking.
  • Support quantitative and qualitative data collection and entry in the climate transparency dashboard (knowledge products, consultancies, reports, lessons learned, etc.).
  • Support in the data visualization from the climate transparency dashboard in flowcharts, figures, tables or/and slides.
  • Support the monitoring of climate transparency activities within the Climate Promise portfolio.
  • Support communication strategies to increase engagement and data entry among different sub-teams within Climate Strategies and Policy Team for the climate transparency dashboard.
  • Propose a user guide for use of the climate transparency dashboard.
  • Keep meeting recordings and minutes of the GEF Climate Transparency team meetings.
  • Provide support in the development of the knowledge management strategy for the portfolios that work on climate transparency under the Climate Promise.
  • Any other related tasks assigned by the Climate Change Integrated Strategies Specialist and the Regional Technical Advisor and the Project Manager.

The activities will contribute to evaluate the status of the establishment and strengthening of national climate transparency frameworks and the overall progress made till today under the UNFCCC (United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change) and the Article 13 requirements of the Paris Agreement (PA).

Competencies

  • Interest and motivation in working on climate change topics
  • Outgoing and initiative-taking person with a goal-oriented mind-set
  • Communicates effectively when working in teams and independently
  • Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability
  • Responds positively to feedback and differing points of view
  • Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude.
  • Able to work effectively as part of a team.

Required Skills and Experience

Education

  • Bachelor’s degree (communications, social sciences, environmental sciences, climate, energy, or other relevant fields) or enrolment in a Masters’ degree.
  • Master’s degree in one of these fields would be an asset.
  • Alternatively, the candidate may be in the final year of the bachelor's degree or enrolled in a Masters’ degree in the relevant fields.

Experience

  • Experience and knowledge in data entry.
  • Experience with developing dashboards is an advantage.

Skills

  • Excellent analytical and research skills.
  • Strong organizational skills.
  • Strong qualitative and quantitative data collection, analysis, and visualization skills.
  • Good command of MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) as well as handling web-based applications. Should have knowledge on how to apply formulas/ macros in excel (Intern is expected to have own laptop for work).
  •  Excellent writing and editing skills.

Language Requirements

  • Fluent in written and spoken English. Knowledge of other UN languages (French, Spanish or Portuguese) is an advantage.

Notes:

Financial Issues

Internships within the UN system are subject to conditions the applicant must get familiar with before signing his/her internship agreement. 

Starting from January 2020 interns will receive stipends according to UN rules and regulations. 

Any further costs associated with the internship must be borne by the nominating institution, related institution or government, which may provide the required financial assistance to its students; or by the student, who will have to obtain financing for subsistence and make his or her arrangements for travel, accommodation and other costs.

Application procedure
The application should contain:

  • Brief Cover Letter (in English) stating interest in and qualifications for the post;
  • Current and complete CV in English;

Please group all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.
Candidates who are selected for must submit prior to the interview the following documents:

  • Official letter from the University confirming enrollment in a graduate-level degree programme;
  • Proof of medical and life/accident insurance valid for the location in which the internship will be carried out. Selected intern must have medical and life insurance.

UNDP only accepts interns for a minimum of 6 weeks and a maximum of 6 months.
UNDP accepts no responsibility for costs arising from accidents and/or illness or death incurred during the internship.
Interns are not staff members and may not represent UNDP in any official capacity.
It is important to note that interns are responsible to arrange for their own visa and residence documents, and need to plan for these well in advance.

Subsequent Employment

The purpose of the Internship Programme is not to lead to further employment with UNDP but to complement an intern’s studies. 
Therefore, there should be no expectation of employment at the end of an internship.
More information available at: http://www.undp.org/internships/.