Research Intern

Council on Energy, Environment and Water (CEEW), New Delhi
Research Intern - Climate Risks (Urban Planning)

At CEEW, we are deliberate about what we stand for (and what we don’t stand for) as an employer. So, if the below description strikes a chord, we would love to hear from you

**We are proud to build careers in public policy and social impact.**
- We offer strong visionary leadership - with emphasis on research and impact at scale
- We actively promote leadership by initiative
- We celebrate talent and ambition
- You will be surrounded by smart people who will challenge you and help you grow
- You will learn faster than your peers in other organisations
- Curiosity and irreverence as well as responsibility come together at CEEW
- You will get best in market remuneration
- We provide a safe space for all
- At CEEW, your life is your example for others

**Designation offered**: Research Intern - Climate Risks (Data)
**Team**: Climate Risk
**Reporting to**:Programme Lead
**Location**: New Delhi, India
**Duration**:2 months (extendable based on performance)

**Project Description - Developing a Climate Risk Atlas**
**Background & Context**
As per recent studies 800 million people are at risk due to climate change only in India. These numbers are likely to increase by four-fold if an integrated approach is not adopted. Climate change will contribute to making rainfall erratic, thereby leading to rising seas which will further intensify the weather events to extreme levels. As a result, an increase in the occurrence of floods, drought and heat waves will be witnessed. From a risk perspective, climate change is primarily a risk management problem and ideally, climate change policies should target limiting the probability of a very bad outcome to an unacceptably small value (GAR, 2019). In a recently released report by CEEW, more than 75 percent of the Indian districts are extreme events hotspots.

Many studies are commissioned to look at understanding the nature of impacts across sectors under climate change scenarios but what it lacks is quantifying the risks, so that effective management of these risks can be phased into policy planning, designing and implementation there by optimizing the resource allocation. Until now disaster preparedness is based on corpus allocation of the public expenditure under extreme weather events.

The Climate Risk Atlas (CRA) is a risk informed decision-making toolkit and will try to answer the underlying questions pertinent to climate risk management by quantifying the impact of climate change on various sectors in the form of a risk index.

The CRA will help in addressing the following underlying perspectives
i) Understanding the perception of “Risks” and identifying the underlying risk drivers across sectors can provide a strong rationale for pursuing development pathways.
ii) Estimate and project the degree of disaster risks associated with different kinds of hazards faced by specific sectors of the national economies in India through regional downscaling (South Asia).
iii) Understanding the components of critical infrastructure.

The project is aimed to develop a region-specific climate risk atlas with specificity to India for specific hazards like flood, drought, cyclones and heat waves through a climatology interfaced risk model to predict the degree of risk (quantifying the losses) for an effective risk-informed decision-making process. This will also lead to the creation of a robust database on the vulnerability index of the elements at risk across regions thereby estimating the probable minimum and maximum loss.

**Job Duties and Responsibilities**:
**Research, Analysis and Research Writing**:
The research intern is expected to assist researchers in the team in the following:

- Contribution towards systematic literature reviews using relevant tools and software for climate proofing of critical infrastructure (CI) and sectoral mapping of CI
- Contribute in desk-top research for exhaustive review of available spatial information and data on climate risks across various sectors of CI
- Contribute to systematic literature reviews to understand the policy, frameworks and guidelines on climate action and CI
- A coalition of the ancillary data on CI and assistance in preparation for stakeholder engagement meetings
- Support to research outputs and in developing concept notes and research proposals

**Programme Assistance**
- Respond to research requests from senior researchers, discuss research needs, and prepare responses that synthesise and analyse information.
- Assist with programme implementation, including help with preparing presentations.
- Assist with building a database and relationships with a broader community of experts, scholars, institutions and potential donors in the energy, environment and water domains.
- Assist with planning and executing events such as report launches, consultation workshops, round table discussions, etc.
- Contribute to report