Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport 

Call for Applications

The Partnership on Sustainable, Low Carbon Transport (SLoCaT) and the Volvo Research and Educational Foundations (VREF) are launching the Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport programme.

The programme seeks to build bridges between the transport community and young people and to explore new perspectives by creating an interface between knowledge and policy. It will also raise the capacity of young people and provide them new skills in evidence-based policy analysis for sustainable transport.

Young people are recognised as the torchbearers of sustainable development and the vanguards in the struggle against climate change. By working directly with young leaders, the transport community will empower the generation who can help foster far-reaching and unprecedented change and build long-lasting bridges with other constituencies.

Who qualifies for the Young Leaders programme?

The Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport will be recruited from a pool of high caliber young researchers, practitioners, and policy makers with a certain degree of professional experience and a track record around climate action and sustainable development. Researchers can be Master graduates or current PhD students. Practitioners are people who have recently begun to work in a relevant professional field, and young policy-makers can be any person who engages in policy-related work or advocacy (e.g. NGO, think tanks and similar or who are elected representatives).

Planned activities

The Young Leaders in Sustainable Transport will engage in research with a strong connection to policy advocacy from June to December 2019. The specific research topic will be chosen in consultation with VREF and the SLoCaT Secretariat. The research will center around the substance and themes of major milestones in both the sustainable development and climate change processes, like the UN High-Level Political Forum (HLPF) on Sustainable Development and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) process. In the initial phase of the programme, the Young Leaders will examine specific Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and their implications vis-a-vis sustainable transport. This activity will culminate in the Young Leaders’ participation in the HLPF in New York City and will be followed up by exploring synergies between the SDG-research and the climate change/Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) process with a country-specific focus. The second phase will pivot around the Young Leaders’ participation in the UNFCCC process, including engagement around Asia-Pacific Climate Week (APCW) in Bangkok or the 25th Conference of Parties (COP25) in Santiago, Chile and webinars.

Programme Offerings

The programme offers participants the opportunity to connect to other young, up and coming professionals working in the global policy space related to sustainable development and climate change. Young Leaders will engage in key milestones in wider intergovernmental processes, thus fostering a stronger professional network and developing highly beneficial skills related to knowledge-based policy making and advocacy. Through this platform, Young Leaders will become thought leaders on sustainable, low-carbon transport as it relates to the realisation, implementation, follow-up, and review of global sustainability frameworks. Finally, Young Leaders will be in strongly involved in determining the ultimate activities and outputs of the programme, further ensuring even greater benefits to professional and career development.

Criteria

Suitable candidates fulfill the following criteria:

• Recently graduated from a graduate school programme or between three (3) to five (5) years of work experience in an organisation working on global climate and sustainability agendas. 
• Strong interest in knowledge-based policy-making. 
• Educational background in sciences and/or humanities; efforts are to be made to recruit Young Leaders beyond transport-related fields.  
• Fluency in English (oral and written).

Preference will be given to applicants from developing countries (see here for definition of developing countries).

Candidates are to submit a CV and a cover letter (of not more than 600 words) answering the question “Which sustainable transport challenges in your personal experience has inspired you to be a change maker in the struggle for sustainable, low carbon transport and what would you like to do as a change maker?”. The deadline for submissions is 20 May 2019.

Please submit your application to Nikola Medimorec (nikola.medimorec@slocatpartnership.org). Interviews with candidates will be held between 27th and 31st May 2019.

For more information about the programme, please click here.