Programme Manager, International and EU public finance

at  European Climate Foundation

ABOUT THE EUROPEAN CLIMATE FOUNDATION

The European Climate Foundation (ECF) is a major philanthropic initiative working to help tackle the climate crisis by fostering the development of a net-zero emission society at the national, European and global level.
We support over 1000 partner organisations to carry out activities that drive urgent and ambitious policy in support of the objectives of the Paris Agreement, contribute to the public debate on climate action and help deliver a socially responsible transition to a net-zero economy and sustainable society in Europe and around the world.
The ECF brings together diverse perspectives and backgrounds to find the best innovative solutions to tackle climate change. We are focusing on engaging and hiring great people from a wide diversity of backgrounds to strengthen the cause. If you share our values of respect, innovation, and collaboration, join us.

EXPERIENCE AND COMPETENCIES

• A genuine interest in the mission and values of the ECF.
• In-depth knowledge of the EU and international public climate finance agenda, policies and policy making processes on public finance, with minimum 7 years relevant work experience strongly encouraged, including in the EU institutions, an MDB or public development bank, think tank, NGO, consultancy or a central public administration.
• Understanding of climate finance trends and challenges,
• Strategic agile leader, with the ability to follow through with smart and adaptive implementation plans and operate in a networked organization.
• Strong network across government, business, civil society or funders in Europe and globally and strong networking skills that enable effective collaboration with a diverse group of partners; existing networks in climate finance are welcome.
• Proven project management skills, including monitoring and evaluation and impact analysis.
• Excellent collaboration and influencing skills.
• Proven communication and public presentation skills, developing and delivering multi-mode communications that convey a clear understanding of the unique needs of different audiences.
• Experience managing large and politically sensitive projects to drive forward agreed outcomes
  Excellent command of the English language (both spoken and written). French would be a plus.

ABOUT THE ROLE

In line with the Paris Agreement and the EU net zero 2050 target, the ECF Climate Finance Strategy aims to ensure the global financial system is transformed to make financial flows consistent with a 1.5-degree pathway and climate-resilient development by:
(i) working on increasing Paris-aligned finance flows: ensuring an increase in development finance, particularly through reform of international financial institutions; greater mobilisation of private capital catalysed by development finance; and ensure fiscal and monetary tools are used effectively to support the transition.
(ii) Supporting the shift to a net zero financial system: ensuring that the financial sector has the tools and methodologies to plan its approach to the transition; that corporate and financial actors provide the information and data required to assess their sustainability impacts; and that they are held to account for their climate impacts and commitments to meet net zero.
(iii) Working on knowledge gaps and supporting capacity building: ensuring that policymakers, central bankers, supervisors have the knowledge and skills to create ambitious and robust policy on sustainable finance.

This means supporting activities such as the following:

• Supporting the implementation of ambitious public finance action within the EU, including via the EU budget and EU funds, macroeconomic policy and levers
• Fostering the work of Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and National Promotional Banks (NPBs) in promoting the net zero transition, e.g. financing and mobilizing private capital for green and low carbon investments and aligning their activities with the Paris Agreement,
• Creating opportunities for dialogue between all financial sector stakeholders
• Supporting processes and building capacity on climate finance

The Programme Manager, Public Climate Finance is responsible for implementing a strategic grant program to implement the ECF Climate Finance Strategy. These grant programs are developed in collaboration with our funders, our grantees and the wider ECF team and ECF-hosted platforms. The Programme Manager, Climate Finance will also contribute to the further development of the ECF’s climate finance programme, its monitoring and reporting.
The Programme Manager, Public Climate Finance reports to the Programme Director, Climate Finance.

KEY RESPONSIBILITIES

This job offers an excellent opportunity to lead ECF’s public climate finance work and play a key role in implementing the ECF Climate Finance Strategy, providing thought leadership in response to important developments related to public climate finance in Europe and globally, providing strategic advice, co-developing the strategic grant program, dealing with grant management, and monitoring and evaluating the progress of different work streams. There will be direct engagement with other ECF programmes, partners and funders in designing and aligning grant programs.

The Programme Manager will be responsible for:

• Thought leadership on public climate finance developments in Europe and globally: Closely follow, analyse and provide input to important strategic developments regarding public climate finance in Europe (such as the EU budget, macro-economic policy) and globally (including reform of MDBs, public finance in the context of the UNFCCC COP processes), develop thought leadership inside and outside of ECF
• Strategic grant-making: anchored in the ECF Climate Finance Strategy, co-developing and implementing strategic grant programs with our network of grantees and partners; developing the scope of work for ECF grant projects; soliciting and validating proposals from potential partners; drafting recommendations for the consideration of the ECF board and our donors.
• Team and people management: providing empowering management of 3 staff and providing joint support to the Director and PM for Private Finance on team management and processes.
• Grant program management: managing the public
• finance budget, monitoring and evaluating progress and impact of initiatives and grants; facilitating coordination amongst grantees; identifying areas for improvement, acting as a liaison to report regular progress to donors, managing reporting requirements.
• Research activities & prospecting: supporting the Executive Director and/or Program Director in scoping the landscape around global, European and national climate finance project opportunities, identifying potential new projects & grantees.
• Internal coordination and communication: liaising with ECF’s other programmes, as well as other ECF country programmes and the organisation’s operations and communications teams to ensure proper and timely dissemination of information, and consistency and complementarity of different projects and work streams.

Networking: contributing to growing the stakeholder network of the ECF climate finance programme. including policy makers, public financial institutions, private banks and investors, regulators, industry associations, CSOs, philanthropy et al., building partnerships with key individuals across the policymaking, business and civil society communities at national, European and global level; convening meetings.