Practice Manager, Urban and Climate Change

If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, she/he will retain his her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 3 year renewable term appointment.

WBI Strategic Directions

The new vision for WBI is as a dynamic catalyst for development, which inspires policymakers to undertake innovative reforms in frontier areas, wholesales cutting-edge global knowledge and learning informed by local conditions through regional centers of excellence, connects practitioners across regions for knowledge exchange around shared problems, and facilitates transformative learning including multi-stakeholder consensus-building, change management processes, and leadership capacity building to help achieve results on the ground. This new vision calls for supplementing WBI's traditional role as a core training institute delivering structured learning only, with new roles and business lines: incubator of innovative reforms, wholesaler of transformative learning, and facilitator of knowledge exchange among practitioners.  WBI supports knowledge and learning across regions in many of the key sectors of Bank work, with a focus on seven themes that reflect corporate priorities and strong country demand—fragile and conflict-affected states, governance, growth and competitiveness, climate change, health systems reform, urban management, and public-private partnerships.  WBI also houses a pedagogical and e-learning unit, including the Global Development Learning Network (GDLN) and multimedia services, as well as units for external partnerships, monitoring and evaluation, scholarships, communications and resource management.  WBI has nearly 200 staff.

Since WBI's central focus is on knowledge and learning, it can play a crucial role in supporting the Bank's strategic mission and can serve as a knowledge connector for Bank’s staff and clients, helping Networks and Regions synthesize cutting-edge knowledge and learning, supporting global excellence teams and brokering external know-how and facilitating knowledge exchange across regions. This calls for working in close partnership with Regions and Networks to complement and strengthen the Bank's traditional lending business with cutting-edge knowledge and capacity development services that can be the lead into lending to support implementation where needed. Externally, WBI will seek to wholesale its development impact by working with regional and national centers of excellence, and with multi-lateral and bilateral donor partners, and by leveraging technology to deliver content through multiple channels (e.g. face to face, e-learning, video conferencing, radio).

Urban Development and Climate Change

Urbanization and well as Climate Change are the defining phenomena of the 21st century. The world has crossed the tipping point where more than 50 percent of the world’s population is currently living in cities. There is a new paradigm where urbanization, traditionally seen as a source of congestion and problems associated with such phenomenon, are actually magnets for economic growth and innovation and have the greatest potential for reducing poverty. At the same time, the world is facing the challenges of climate change which call for reducing greenhouse gas emissions and adaptation to climate impacts at a global, national and local level. Given the size of the urban population globally and the economic activities, cities account for majority of greenhouse gas emissions and the urban poor are amongst the populations vulnerable to the impact of climate change.   Sustainable urban development that is low carbon and climate-resilient can address the urbanization challenges but also provides opportunities for addressing climate mitigation and adaptation.  Ensuring that the potential of urbanization is reaped and undertaken in a sustainable climate-friendly and climate-resilient manner will require huge leaps forward in innovation, knowledge sharing, and capacity-building.

WBI’s Urban Development and Climate Change Practice (WBIUC) will integrate two existing Practices focusing respectively on Urban and Climate Change.  WBI’s Urban Practice currently focuses on three dimensions, namely economically vibrant cities, socially inclusive cities, and safe and resilient cities.  Within these dimensions, the Practice develops and delivers cutting edge learning content, shares best practices through global and regional dialogues of mayors of innovative cities, and provides hands on support to leadership and coalition building in a few selected countries/cities.  WBI’s Climate Change Practice mission has been to share practical knowledge that can help countries move towards a low carbon and climate resilient development. WBI has built up programs in climate mitigation, in particular through Carbon Finance Assist, the Bank’s principal capacity building program for carbon finance, administered by the WBI, as well as in adaptation. Special programs have been designed to focus on Cities and Climate Change and to reach non-traditional stakeholders, such as Youth and Parliamentarians

WBIUC aims to support the transformation of technical knowledge into practice for achieving results on the ground.  Activities and learning products are designed to close the circle of learning by developing, with technical partners, branded content, creating regional partnerships around the world to deliver and adapt WBI learning products, fostering knowledge exchange, developing consensus building and supporting hands-on problem solving practitioner-to-practitioner learning –focused around specific health systems challenges being faced by clients when implementing reforms.  Top quality technical content on urban and climate change is to be used in many learning modalities, emphasizing the “how-to-do” of implementation and the political economy of reforms.  WBIUC delivers programs at the global, regional and country levels in coordination with Bank’s operational staff in the regions.  WBIUC builds and expands capacity through regional partnerships by developing networks of institutions and of reform implementers or practitioners around the world.

Note: If the selected candidate is a current Bank Group staff member with a Regular or Open-Ended appointment, s/he will retain his/her Regular or Open-Ended appointment. All others will be offered a 3 year renewable term appointment.