Engagement Lead in Climate Change & Nature

We're recruiting for someone to lead our public engagement work on climate and nature and ensure that the public are involved in critical decisions on how to reach net zero and protect the future of nature and land in the UK. 

Involve has a commitment to use our skills, time and experience to address big challenges. Climate change is one of those big challenges and is a policy area where citizen engagement on both principles and practice is vital.  It, and Net Zero in particular, risk becoming a polarised and politicised issue where there is little room for considered, inclusive decision making. 

This exciting role will lead and coordinate our work with institutions, and others, to find a way through difficult issues like low emission zones, the energy transition, industrialisation of green spaces and other challenges in a way that centres the people who are impacted, with a social justice and equity lens. This role will primarily sit within our Innovation and Practice (I&P) function - focused on practical delivery of public engagement such as citizen assemblies, juries and other deliberative processes. The successful candidate will lead several of our major climate change and nature projects, including the UKRI Net Zero Living project - working with 28 Councils to embed meaningful public participation in their route to net zero. You will also contribute to the training, standards setting and advocacy work that Involve does - maintaining and growing our reputation in climate and environment networks and communicating the contribution we can make and impact that we are having.

We have a significant track record in public deliberation on climate change. We ran the first Climate Assembly in the UK and have since delivered many projects in this area including the People’s Plan for Nature. We have developed a reputation for best practice public dialogue, deliberation and capacity building. We want to grasp the opportunity for deliberative practices to make a real contribution to the change needed to respond to the climate crisis. This is a great opportunity to play a central role in taking this work forward. We are looking for someone to bring experience in designing and running participatory and deliberative processes and a good understanding of the complexities and challenges of climate and/or nature. You will need to be committed to taking a collaborative approach -  co-creating and coordinating our strategy on public engagement across the organisation and build on the work that others are doing.