2025 Sustainability Fellowship: Community Development & Conservation Collaboration

Community Development & Conservation Collaboration 

The Nature Conservancy in New Hampshire 

Concord, NH 

Position is fully remote

About the Sustainability Fellows Program: 

UNH Sustainability Fellowships pair exceptional students from UNH and across the U.S. with municipal, educational, corporate, and non-profit partners to work on transformative sustainability initiatives each summer.  Sustainability Fellows undertake challenging projects that are designed to create an immediate impact, offer a quality learning experience, and foster meaningful collaboration.  Fellows work on-site (or online) with their mentors at partner organizations during the summer, supported by a network of Fellows, partners, alumni, and the UNH Team.   

A detailed description of one Fellowship follows.  To learn more about the other Fellowships offered this year, and for application instructions, click here.  

Eligibility: 

Students and recent graduates who will have earned an undergraduate degree from ANY accredited college or university by May 2025 (current seniors, recent graduates, and graduate/PhD students). 

About the Host Organization: 

The Nature Conservancy (TNC) works to conserve the lands and waters on which all life depends. We are a science-driven organization that creates innovative, on-the-ground solutions to our world’s toughest challenges so that people and nature can thrive together. We envision a future where the aspirations of a growing human population are met, and the diversity of all life persists. 

Founded in 1951, TNC has grown into a global environmental organization with more than a million members and with branches in more than 70 countries and territories, and every state of the US. TNC has been working in New Hampshire since 1961. 

TNC’s ambitious 2030 goals aim to tackle the dual threats of accelerated climate change and unprecedented biodiversity loss.  Together with partners, local landowners, and the support of our many members across the state, we have helped to protect nearly 300,000 acres and 680 miles of rivers and streams in the Granite State. TNC NH's current strategic initiatives include advancing climate policy, climate adaptation, renewable energy development that allows us to foster essential land and water protection across the state and providing increased and equitable access to land and waters across the state – and to decision-making processes about our natural resources. 

About the Fellowship – Project Description: 

The Fellow will help TNC-NH identify and assess new strategies to meet our goals while addressing NH’s housing crisis and maintaining our rural character by combining conservation resources with community development tools.  The goal of this work is to identify areas of the state with interdependent social, economic, and environmental needs that impact land use, and within those areas: 

• Protect large, intact natural landscapes that provide ecological services (watershed function, clean water, carbon storage, habitat, etc.) and working land for natural resource-based industries; and 
• Catalyze multi-purpose community development projects that combine innovative land use practices with permanent land conservation, to meet community housing needs and pre-empt low density, rural sprawl into intact natural landscapes. 

 The Fellow will be supported by mentors from TNC-NH’s Land Protection and Policy teams. The land protection team uses science to determine where to focus our land and water protection efforts, and equity to guide how we achieve lasting results. The policy team leverages TNC’s decades of local on-the-ground experience and maximizes our impact by bringing together real-world solutions, policy expertise, sustainable financing and collaborative partnerships. 

 The Fellow will be responsible for completing a literature review, conducting qualitative interviews, summarizing local and regional plans, and analyzing spatial data in key TNC focal landscapes, in order to contribute to TNC’s understanding of the following questions:  

• How can TNC leverage its scientific, mapping, and policy expertise to help communities advance smarter development that is better for biodiversity, better for the climate, and better for social equity? 
• Where can TNC leverage its land conservation capacity and other expertise to build cross-sector partnerships that reconcile conservation and community development in the focal landscapes we are trying to protect? 
• Which sectors have complementary interests with TNC in our focal areas (e.g., planning commissions, forestry and farm groups, economic development commissions, water and sewer districts, affordable housing groups, energy commissions)? 
• Does New Hampshire have the requisite policy frameworks in place to enable smarter development that achieves dual environmental and social goals? 
• Others developed collaboratively with the Fellow. 

Specific tasks will include gathering and reviewing local and regional plans and policies relating to land use, drinking water, wastewater, housing, economic development, and transportation to assess current data on demographic trends and recent changes to land use policy in New Hampshire that may have impacts on the conservation of natural lands, and to synthesize findings to help inform answers to the questions above. 

TNC mentors will work with the Fellow to designate one or more geographic areas of interest and would assist the Fellow with access to key information/documentation, introductions to regional and local stakeholders, and assist with outreach to implement the project. 

Expected project deliverables include a report on research findings, one or more slide decks with summary findings and recommendations, and maps and data files that TNC can use to evaluate and implement the project’s recommended actions, and potentially others developed by TNC-NH and the Fellow. 
 

 Outcomes 

The purpose of the project is to help TNC make progress toward overcoming practical, policy, and cultural barriers to collaboration between conservation interests and community development interests by identifying specific needs that can be met in common, and specific geographic locations where initiatives can be developed to fulfill those needs. This project will also identify policy opportunities or gaps that can inform future efforts by TNC and its partners.  

At a policy level, the project may identify places where innovative development strategies, reasonable zoning changes, and the strategic application of conservation tools could be applied to overcome a community’s housing and workforce shortages while maintaining a small carbon footprint and protecting vital natural and cultural resources. 

At a land protection level, the project may identify opportunities to support compact, higher density, or infill development projects that increase social equity, minimize impacts on climate and water, maintain rural character, and reduce development pressure on intact natural landscapes, while permanently protecting areas of high conservation value.  

Desired Qualifications: 

• Bachelor’s degree in political science, environmental policy, community or economic development, land use planning, or other relevant fields. 
• Progress toward an advanced degree in a related field. 
• Independent project management and self-directed research skills.  
• Strong written and verbal communication skills. Ability to review, digest, and synthesize large amounts of information and data across diverse subject areas.  
• Strong critical thinking skills, especially the ability to differentiate between technical, fact-based, data-oriented subjects and value-driven, goal-oriented subjects, and to recognize where they intersect. 
• Academic or professional training in planning principles and practices for land use, water use, housing, economic development, or transportation a strong plus.  
• GIS mapping skills strongly preferred.  
• Strong interest in state, regional, and local policy, and program development in a real-world context. 

Desire to gain: 

• Knowledge of current and evolving trends in conservation policy, including regional and local planning in cross-disciplinary subject areas. 
• Technical and policy writing, mapping, and presentation skills.  
• Increased knowledge of state, regional, and local policymaking for rural, natural resource-based communities. 
• Experience with cross-sector collaboration in community development and conservation. 

Location:  

The Nature Conservancy in New Hampshire, 11 South Main Street, Unit 203, Concord, NH 03301. Work may be performed either fully in-person, fully remote, or hybrid. TNC-New Hampshire has offices in Concord and Newmarket, NH. The mentors (below) work remotely but have easy access to the Concord office. 

Mentors:  

Ben Wallace, Land Protection Lead  

Meredith Hatfield, Associate Director for Policy and Government Relations  

Compensation:  

$8,000 
(taxable and distributed on a two-week payroll cycle over the course of the fellowship) 

Expectations: 

Fellows are expected to be primarily dedicated to their assigned projects throughout the summer, and also participate in a variety of networking activities, professional development opportunities, and presentations coordinated by UNHSI.  Specifically, Fellows are expected to: 

Attend a mandatory virtual orientation prior to the start of the Fellowship term, May 27 & 28, 2025.   

Work full-time for the partner organization, May 27 - August 15, 2025  

Complete 400 hours of work, including project work with host organization as well as UNHSI activities, between May 27 - August 15, 2025.  

Complete a Fellowship project according to the work plan. 

Participate in weekly webinars and advisory group meetings. 

Present work at in person launch event on June 17 and 18, 2025 and virtual final presentation on August 7. 

Engage in additional professional development, networking, and advisory activities as offered. 

Provide and receive feedback at the end of the Fellowship. 

Apply by February 9 at  

https://www.unh.edu/sustainability/sustainability-fellowships