Project Management Support Specialist Climate and Energy

The Project Management Support Specialist – Climate and Energy will play a key role in ensuring portfolio coordination and delivery effectiveness. This involves monitoring global climate action trends and commitments, and translating them into practical, actionable strategies and operational solutions. While analyzing the climate and energy portfolio performance against partner agreements in relation to international climate goals, the Project Management Support Specialist – Climate and Energy will develop and propose refined implementation mechanisms for greater impact.

Key responsibilities include identifying collaboration opportunities between partners and initiatives and enhancing engagement at regional, country, and local levels. The Project Management Support Specialist – Climate and Energy will also be instrumental in synthesizing lessons, advising on trends in climate, energy and related areas, and supporting strategic positioning and knowledge dissemination, including tailored communication, within and outside of the portfolio. 

Additionally, the Project Management Support Specialist – Climate and Energy will contribute to effective coordination and development of a systematic approach in GPO and its positioning where relevant.

Functional Responsibilities:

Summary of functions:

• Portfolio coordination and delivery effectiveness
• Stakeholder engagement
• Knowledge management and innovation

Portfolio coordination and delivery effectiveness:

• Identify and monitor climate action and environmental activities of partners, and cross-cutting priorities, such as gender equality, social inclusion, youth engagement, economic justice and others, to be included in portfolio coordination and delivery effectiveness as relevant.
• Monitor and support portfolio delivery in line with UN and multilateral agreements, national climate strategies and regional implementation frameworks.
• Contribute to effectively translating the portfolio development strategy into impactful service packages, and into coherent portfolio implementation and monitoring mechanisms for enhanced delivery effectiveness.
• Coordinate and collaborate with relevant stakeholders at global, regional and in-country level, to ensure aligned and coherent portfolio and project planning and implementation processes.
• Contribute to development and review of portfolio/programme/project documents, initiation plans, work plans, reports etc. as relevant.
• Analyze project and portfolio performance against key indicators, identify bottlenecks and recommend solutions to optimize results.
• Identify and develop collaborative opportunities across projects, countries and regions for enhanced impact.
• Coordinate information flow between projects, within and outside of the climate and energy portfolio, to maximise collaboration and impact.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Contribute to building and strengthening relationships with global climate partners – international organizations, donors, governments, and implementing partners – to drive climate action and enhance portfolio implementation quality and relevance.
• Participate in, contribute to, and report on relevant inter-agency coordination meetings, as well as partner, donor, and government meetings. Support the management team with common planning and programming processes, including strategic country analysis and integrated strategic frameworks to enhance portfolio delivery and impact.
• Contribute to development of programme, stakeholder, and communications management strategies to maximize partner and delivery impact, outreach, and awareness of climate action and related objectives.
• Design, coordinate, and disseminate public information products and communications activities, and develop content for communications products and platforms.
• Support preparations for official meetings, events, briefings, and field visits, and prepare talking points, briefing notes, presentations, and speeches for the management team and senior officials.

Knowledge management and innovation:

• Lead on the development and implementation of climate and energy portfolio knowledge management activities.
• Develop and implement standardized tools and templates for clear and efficient internal and external communication of project and portfolio performance.
• Identify, contribute to, record and share the ongoing development and implementation of best practices, lessons identified, and innovative approaches to improve overall portfolio performance.
• Support Head of Portfolio and WEC Portfolio Management Team in ensuring effective internal knowledge information sharing.
• Support onboarding and capacity building of new project managers and project teams.

Education Experience Language requirements:

Education:

• Advanced degree (Master’s level or above) in Sustainable Development, Climate Change and Environmental Policy, Environmental Management, International Development, International Relations, Political Science, Economics, Public Administration, Business Management or another relevant discipline is required.
• A relevant university degree (Bachelor’s degree) with a combination of 2 additional years of relevant professional experience will be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.

Experience:

• At least 5 years of progressively responsible experience required in the project/programme/portfolio development and/or management support, either in public or private sector organizations is required.
• Experience in working on project and/or stakeholder management in a UN organization or a similar international organization would be considered an asset.
• Experience in facilitating the development, management and implementation of climate action and environmental management activities, projects, or programmes would be considered a significant asset.

Language requirements:

• Excellent (written and oral) English language skills are required.
• Excellent knowledge of other UN languages is desirable.

Source: https://jobs.unops.org/Pages/ViewVacancy/VADetails.aspx?id=29918#2