Research Associate, LKR Enable Pillar, Restore Local

This is a hybrid position which requires 8 days per month in the WRI Africa office in Kigali, Rwanda. Existing work authorization is required at the time of application submission as WRI is unable to sponsor any visa work sponsorship for this position.

About the Program:

WRI’s Global Restoration Initiative (GRI) motivates, informs, enables, and invests in people that restore degraded land, converting them to socially, economically, and environmentally productive lands. WRI’s restoration work in Africa supports the goals of the African Forest Landscape Restoration Initiative (AFR100) where, with other partners, we have identified more than 700 million hectares of cleared and degraded forest and agricultural lands suitable for restoration across Africa. Since 2023, WRI has been supporting landscape-focused restoration in three anchor landscapes in Africa: the Ghana’s Cocoa Belt, the Kenya’s Greater Rift Valley and the Lake Kivu and Rusizi River basin in Burundi, DRC and Rwanda. Done well, landscape-scale restoration can revitalize African landscapes, while enhancing human well-being through food, energy, and water systems which conserve, restore and sustain the continent’s rich natural heritage while generating evidence for scaling within and across landscapes.

Restore Local is a WRI-led flagship project that contributes to realizing the goals of AFR100. The four-year project will work to restore Africa’s vital landscapes by investing in locally led restoration at scale, providing local communities and businesses across the continent with the support they need to revitalize their landscapes. Restore Local will align its work with a four-part blueprint, creating training and mentorship opportunities, directly funding restoration champions, securing policies that catalyze transformative landscape changes and reward farmers, and helping communities track their restoration progress with the right monitoring, reporting, and verification protocols. Collaborating with key partners and stakeholders, it will focus on delivering this blueprint in the three anchor landscapes and readying important infrastructure for replication and scaling across AFR100.

The Enable Pillar is crucial to the successful deployment of Restore Local. It is centered on partnering with national and sub-national governments to ensure data-based decision making in the design and improvement of policy instruments, including cost-effective public investments, such as incentives and public-private outcome-based payments, for strategically scaling restoration efforts across landscapes. The Enable pillar also aims to work with governments to drive collective action by creating the necessary conditions for on-the-ground restoration champions to thrive and for additional resources from the private sector to be mobilized.

Job Highlight:

Reporting to the Lake Kivu Rusizi Basin (LKR) Landscape Manager and the Global Landscape Policy Accelerator (LPA) Manager, you will manage the Enable Pillar program in the LKR Landscape, including Rwanda, Burundi, and DRC. You will work closely with the LKR Landscape Manager, the Global Landscape Policy Accelerator Manager, the other Pillar leads, including Finance and Inform, as well as other program teams, international offices, and partner organizations to oversee and implement GRI programs related to strengthening the enabling conditions across the landscape for long-term systemic change. You will also play a leading role in the design of policy instruments, public incentives, outcome-based payment schemes, public and private fundraising, while coalition building, and advancing the GRI team’s mandate of political mobilization.

What will you do:

Research & Knowledge (40%):

• Conduct applied research on restoration policies and incentives that directly respond to knowledge gaps and locally based priorities, as stated by restoration champions, technical partners, and visionary government officials
• Identify and explores knowledge gaps where WRI research can improve the quality and quantity of restoration policies and public incentives being designed and implemented
• Proactively assess and propose options for tailoring the Enable Pillar work and Policy Accelerator to the Rusizi Landscape, ensuring progress on a country level and across boundaries within the landscape area
• Author or co-author knowledge products (e.g., reports and briefs)
• Represent Enable Pillar and Landscape Policy Accelerator in media engagements, written materials, and external events
• Support the process of defining Enable Pillar milestones and performance indicators.

Engagement and Technical Assistance (40%):

• Actively engage with high-level government officials, in coordination with the LKR Landscape Manager, to strengthen relationships and advance the Forest Landscape Restoration (FLR) agenda through the Landscape Policy Accelerator work
• Support the Landscape Manager to develop a landscape partnership strategy, including a roadmap for structuring sub-landscape and landscape-level multi-stakeholder platforms
• Design and develop workshops and peer-to-peer exchanges to build relations with policy experts and government officials
• Lead the innovation of addressing policy bottlenecks with countries within the LKR Landscape, while exchanging knowledge with colleagues working on policy in other priority landscapes
• Support the design of innovative public incentives to support the restoration of degraded lands around the world
• Conduct feasibility analysis of designing and implementing public incentives and outcome payer mechanisms to mobilize public-private finance for restoration across the landscape, based on the political will, regulatory frameworks, and existing policy instruments

Management (20%):

• Build and manage Restore Local’s Enable Pillar work across the LKR Landscape. This involves planning and executing activities to successfully improve enabling conditions and public incentives across the landscape, with support from the field coordinators in Burundi and DRC
• Work with Inform and Finance Pillar leads and colleagues to ensure alignment and contribute to strengthening the landscape level restoration strategy, including exercises to map stakeholders, prioritize restoration areas and activities, depending on the biophysical and socioeconomic dynamics
• Lead on the active day-to-day deployment of the Enable Pillar work in LKR Landscape
• Manage and deliver on the Landscape Policy Accelerator workplan and deliverables across the LKR Landscape
• Draft and submit periodic progress reports to the LKR Landscape Manager.

What will you need:

• Education: You have completed a master's degree in Ecology, Natural Resources, Agriculture Economics, Forestry, Economics, Policy, Agroecology, or a related field
• Experience: You have 5+ years of full-time, relevant work experience
• Knowledge of landscape restoration, sustainable land management, and the carbon sector and the implications on policies
• Demonstrated understanding of environmental policy and challenges of implementing Forest Landscape Restoration efforts at scale
• Experience with relations high-level government officials
• Direct policy work experience in at least one of the three landscape countries: Rwanda, Burundi, or the DRC
• Experience managing junior staff, researchers, and contractors, with prior management training
• Experience working in market-oriented solutions or structuring, capitalizing, and implementing financial instruments
• Experience motivating and coordinating different stakeholders around a shared vision
• Experience conducting high-level research and communicating complex ideas to various audiences
• Experience working in multi-disciplinary and multi-cultural teams
• Demonstrated knowledge of specific landscape areas, with experience in transboundary policy is desirable
• Languages: You are proficient in spoken and written French and English
• Requirements: Existing work authorization is required where this position is based. WRI is unable to authorize visa work authorization.

Potential Salary:

Salary is commensurate with experience and other compensable factors.

How to Apply:

Please submit a resume with a cover letter by the date of 28 October 2024. We may close the application portal sooner if we receive a high volume of qualified applications. 

Please also attach some samples of written work where you were the lead author (briefs, articles, blogs etc).

You must apply through the WRI Careers portal to be considered.

What we offer:

• A competitive salary
• Access to the WRI global network with the opportunity to exchange with and learn from passionate colleagues working at the cutting edge of their fields across Asia, Africa, Europe, Latin America and the US
• The chance to have an impact and to develop your career within a mission driven organization with access to varied learning and training opportunities
• A workplace that strives to put diversity and inclusion at the heart of our work
• The opportunity to join and get involved in different working groups and affinity groups to shape the future of WRI
• Commitment to hybrid working model with flexible working hours
• Generous leave days that increase with tenure.

About Us:

Founded in 1982, World Resources Institute (WRI) is an independent, nonprofit global research organization that turns big ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity, and human well-being. We are working to address seven critical challenges that the world must overcome this decade to secure a sustainable future for people and the planet: climate change, energy, food, forests, water, sustainable cities, and the ocean. WRI has a global staff of over 1,800 people with work spanning 60 countries. We have offices in Africa, Brazil, China, Europe, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Colombia and the United States, as well as a growing presence in other countries and regions.

The foundation of our work is delivering high-quality research, data, maps, and analysis to solve the world’s greatest environment and international development challenges and improve people’s lives. We work with leaders in government, business, and civil society to drive ambitious action and create change on the ground. Equally important, we bring together partners to develop breakthrough ideas and scale-up solutions for far-reaching, enduring impact.

Our mission and values:

WRI’s mission is to move human society to live in ways that protect Earth’s environment and its capacity to provide for the needs and aspirations of current and future generations.

Our values are shared ideals that bind us together: Integrity, Innovation, Urgency, Independence and Respect.

Our culture:

WRI is committed to advancing gender and social equity for human well-being in our mission and applies this principle to our organizational and programmatic practices. We are committed to providing equal opportunities in employment; we embrace all diversity and encourage women, the LGBTQ+ community, persons with disabilities, Afro-descendants, and Indigenous people to apply. Recognizing our strong commitment to gender equality, WRI has also been awarded EDGE certification.

Our team in Human Resources carefully reviews all applications.