Sustainable Habitat and Climate Action Specialist - Practice Programme

Location

Chennai | India

Job description

About the Practice Programme at IIHS

The IIHS Practice Programme aims to demonstrate capacity for innovation and change in order to influence and enable urban transformation and translate learning from practice into policy as well as research and teaching-learning material. It provides strategic/ policy advisory, implementation support and knowledge management services to national and state governments, public, parastatal and municipal agencies, international development agencies, as well as private firms at the interface of human settlements and urbanisation. This work spans a range of areas, including urban governance, water and sanitation, municipal finance, land management, urban infrastructure and services, as well as climate change and risk and resilience.

About the School of Systems and Infrastructure

The School of Systems and Infrastructure (SSI) at IIHS aims at urban transformation with the intention of improving equity and environment outcomes for Indian cities, and its citizens. The School is concerned with key systems that govern the urban such as land and planning, water and sanitation, energy, housing, transportation, IT, and ITES. Across these domains the School aims at addressing cross-cutting themes – including governance and services, inclusion and equity, safety, and financing – and at different geographic scales. SSI will bring together an eclectic set of practitioners, researchers and educators who will work across practice, research, and learning, and seek to redefine practices and knowledge in these domains.

Job Description

We are looking for a highly skilled and motivated Sustainable Habitat and Climate Action Specialist. In this role, you will be responsible for conceptualising climate-aligned solutions for the built environment, including those linked to the neighborhood/ local community scale, by integrating multiple sources of knowledge such as climate science, environmental studies, building science, and engineering principles.

We expect you to be well versed in setting up transformative and transdisciplinary processes to imagine and deliver resilient and sustainable solutions. You will, for example, play a key role in conceptualising and implementing energy-centric, climate-aligned solutions at the building and neighbourhood-scale. In addition, we expect you to conceptualise climate-aligned solutions linked to various environmental services (e.g. water, sanitation, waste water, solid waste and drainage) including those linked to natural systems. You will also play a key role at the interface of environmental impact, buildings, and sustainable practices across multiple projects at IIHS.

Activities and Tasks

Responsibilities will include, but not be limited to, the following:

Conceptualising Sustainable Habitat Solutions:

• Conducting comprehensive research and analysis of emerging evidence from multiple disciplines such as climate science, environmental studies, building science and engineering to identify various sustainable habitat options and barriers to, and enablers for, their widespread, sustained uptake;
• Creating awareness on, and generating demand for, specific solutions at the building and neighbourhood-scale; these solutions would include those linked to energy-efficiency, water conservation, waste management, decentralised renewable energy systems, and nature-based and nature-oriented interventions, and, overall, to greenhouse gas emissions reduction and enhancement of local resilience to climate shocks and stresses;
• Developing and supporting implementation of local interventions related to the above elements via extensive stakeholder engagement and by creating an accessible knowledge management system, which may include conceptualisation and implementation of an online market place;

Advise on Sustainable Household Practices:

• Providing expertise on incorporating multiple sustainable household practices such as those linked to energy-efficient technologies, water & waste management techniques, enhanced renewable energy integration, and urban agriculture into building designs and neighbourhood plans;
• Engaging, collaborating, and deliberating with multiple stakeholders such as architects, engineers, urban designers, builders, bankers, and civil servants to identify mechanisms and processes to enhance sustainable household practices, including exploring and setting up collaborative projects to explore the mainstreaming of sustainable design principles into those projects; these will be focused on creating prototypes for widespread implementation;
• Engaging, collaborating, and deliberating with communities to help mainstream ideas of sustainable habitat lifestyle; these engagements may be focused on setting up dialogues and implementation support activities to mainstream multiple environmentally friendly principles and practices into the built environment landscape and may include elements of urban farming, waste management, energy efficiency, resource conservation, and biodiversity preservation and conservation;

Project Management:

• Undertaking a continuous landscape analysis to identify and connect with climate solution providers; to begin with, this would be aimed at identifying the market-facing solutions landscape, which is expected to be leveraged to conceptualise and implement an online market place that brings together service providers and users;
• Designing, coordinating, and overseeing project execution, ensuring adherence to contracts, reporting requirements, budgets, and timelines;

Knowledge Production:

• Staying up-to-date with emerging trends, policies, programs, and regulations related to sustainable habitat practices, climate change mitigation, sustainable agriculture, urban farming and environmental conservation, and provide recommendations for integrating emerging technologies and best practices into projects;
• Promoting knowledge management at the project and institutional scale, including preparing knowledge products on innovative approaches, good practices, and lessons learned;
• Conceptualising and delivering measurement and other reporting protocols, that help monitor impact at local scale; this may include setting up assessment protocols that establish linkages between habitat scale intervention and sustainable development goals;

Capacity Building and Training:

• Conceptualising and delivering capacity building and training programs related to sustainable habitat, including aspects of energy and water conservation issues, waste management, nature-based solutions, and sustainable household practices;
• Contributing to developing appropriate training material, including, but not limited to, developing best practice cases linked to building energy performance improvement, resource (water, waste) management, incorporating nature-based interventions at the habitat scale, and biodiversity preservation and conservation;
• Conceptualising, collaborating, and operationalising citizen science initiatives and protocols for community-based learning and monitoring systems;
• Engaging with multiple education-centric and learning initiatives to identify avenues of engagement in order to mainstream sustainability education; these may include leveraging of existing IIHS projects and networks and establishing new networks and collaborations;

Others:

• Providing support to other IIHS activities including academics, research, training, practice, operations and others;
• Participating in all activities of Institution-Building at IIHS; carrying out tasks as assigned by IIHS; and traveling on IIHS work within or outside the country as and when needed.

Structure and Reporting

The specialist will report to the Senior Lead – Practice and will be required to collaborate effectively with a diverse group of internal teams and external individuals/ organisations, and students.

Person Specification

The ideal candidate should have:

• A Master's Degree in Environmental Science/ Environmental Engineering/ Architecture/ Planning/ Development Studies/ Public Policy/ Sustainability/ Climate change or other climate and environment related fields;
• A total of 8 – 10 years of professional experience at the built environment scale;
• Strong knowledge of climate solutions, waste & water management, sustainable building practices, nature-based solutions; including being up-to-date with key policies, schemes, programs and sectoral changes and challenges;
• Prior experience in knowledge management, capacity building and stakeholder management activities, including rich project management exposure;
• Prior experience of working with communities at the city-scale;
• Experience (desirable, not mandatory) around managing an online knowledge-focused and solution-centric support system and repository;
• Excellent communication, relationship management, team-building and interpersonal skills; and an ability to work in inter-disciplinary, cross-sectoral teams;
• Proficiency in English and Tamil and, preferably, in any other Indian language.

This offer is on an exclusive basis, which implies that other professional assignments (whether compensated or not) that bear a potential conflict of interest with IIHS cannot be undertaken.

The search will remain open until the position is filled.

Location

This position is based in Chennai and may entail travel to other locations in India.

Review and Assessment

The role and performance of the incumbent shall be subject to normal review and assessment systems at IIHS.

Diversity Policy

IIHS is an equal opportunity employer that encourages women, people with disabilities and those from economically and socially excluded communities with the requisite skills and qualifications to apply for positions.

Contact

Please write to us at [HIDDEN TEXT] if you need any clarifications while filling the online application form.

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