Science Writer at United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Duties and Responsibilities

• The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), established in 1972, is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment. UNEP through the Office of the Chief Scientist provides strategic coordination of and input to the science and analytics that inform the organization's decisions, policies, interventions, and publications.
• To help navigate current and future uncertainty and disruptive change, while effectively delivering on its mandate, UNEP is looking to put in place a mechanism to establish an institutionalized approach to strategic foresight and horizon scanning with the view to developing an anticipatory and future-oriented culture. This mirrors the growing interest and demand for foresight that is also reinforced by the United Nations reform agenda and the Secretary-General’s report on ‘Our Common Agenda’, which calls for all UN agencies, as well as all UN member states, to engage foresight practices more deeply and apply the derived insights to address global systemic risks. This work will also contribute to achieving UNEP’s 2022-2023 Programme of Work and Medium-Term Strategy 2022-2025, through the Science-Policy Subprogramme (Project A5: Output 2: Developing and implementing a Strategic Foresight trajectory).
• To achieve these goals, the Office of the Chief Scientist will undertake a series of complementary activities to enhance UNEP’s internal capacity and capabilities for applied strategic foresight, futures thinking and environmental horizon scanning. The foresight process will kick-start with a scenario building exercise and an exploratory scanning of signals largely derived through a digital Delphi survey. This will be followed by global level structured sensemaking session with the Foresight Expert Panel to interpret, analyse and cluster the emerging signals and their potential for disruptive change, with a view to informing the identification of specific areas for action. Following this global analysis, a series of regional workshops will be held to review the preliminary outputs of the global horizon scan/ Foresight Expert Panel with the view to providing the necessary contextualization to validate and adjust the initial identification of emerging signals of change and provide information on regionally specific issues, risks, and opportunities.
• The outcomes of the horizon scanning, and foresight exercise will culminate into a Global Report to be published in 2024. This report will be supplemented with regionally specific information that was drawn from each of the regional workshops. It is also expected that the Report together any relevant insights and recommendations put forward through the regional workshops will inform the deliberations of the sixth UN Environment Assembly in February 2024 and the Summit of the Future in September 2024.
• To support this process, specifically the drafting of the Global Foresight Report, an experienced and talented consultant is requested to work as a science writer to communicate the findings of the horizon scanning and foresight process and to produce easily accessible text, including key messages. The consultant will also coordinate the creation of visually attractive, modern, and easily interpretable infographics, illustrations and other types of visualisations to draw attention to and facilitate the understanding of the content, key findings, and key messages of the Report. The consultant will be involved in the editorial and writing work, the preparation and launch of some initial key messages summary of the Global Foresight Report at the sixth UN Environment Assembly in February 2024 and the full report ahead of the Summit of the Future in September 2024.
• The consultant will be home based, with the possibility of missions as and when required for official duties.
• Under the supervision of the Programme Management Officer, in the Office of Chief Scientist, and in close coordination with the Senior Program Coordinator, the consultant will be responsible for the following duties:

OCS activities on Strategic Foresight (75% of time)

• Finalizing the drafting of the UNEP scenario report
• Copyediting, the set of regional contextualization foresight reports
• Preparing and submitting a clean, edited, and formatted version of the Global Foresight Report for online and print dissemination.
• Preparing and submitting a clean, edited, and formatted version of the UNEP Scenarios Report.
• Drafting a set of visually attractive, modern, and easily interpretable summary and keynote messages to be distilled from the Global Foresight Report to facilitate the understanding of the content, key findings, and key messages contained therein

OCS activities on Enhancing Science use and uptake (25% of time)

• Drafting a Science Strategy for UNEP and an Engagement strategy for the Office of the Chief Scientist
• Drafting A set of five Issues Briefs

Qualifications/special skills

• First level academic degree in journalism, communication or equivalent is required. The applicants will be required to send to UNEP examples of their previous work including texts where they have synthesised scientific messages for various audiences to demonstrate their experience and knowledge in science editing and writing in addition to their Personal History Profile (PHP), as part of the selection process.
• A minimum of five years of professional experience in journalism and/or science writing and working on similar assignments required.
• Proven and practical experience in the designing of multiple communications products notably focused on science writing are required.
• Practical experience with materials related to different fields of science, the environment, and/or environmental sustainability is required.
• Demonstrated journalistic background experience applicable to science writing and analysing key messages for multiple audiences is desirable.

Languages

• Fluency in English (both oral and written) is required. Working knowledge of another UN official language is desirable.

Closing Date: 16 October 2023