Head for China – Tropical Forest Alliance
World Economic Forum LLCBeijingUpdate time: June 13,2019
Job Description
Head for China – Tropical Forest Alliance
Fixed term appointment: May 2019 – June 2021
The World Economic Forum, committed to improving the state of the world, is the International Organization for Public-Private Cooperation.
The Forum engages the foremost political, business and other leaders of society to shape global, regional and industry agendas.
The Tropical Forest Alliance (TFA) is a global public-private-community partnership dedicated to collaborative action to realize sustainable rural development and better growth opportunities, based on reduced deforestation and sustainable land use management in tropical forest countries. It is housed at the World Economic Forum within the Centre for Global Public Goods (CGPG).
Engaging emerging markets is one of the 10 priorities TFA has laid out as essential to reduce commodity driven deforestation. Our recent report highlights the critical role all emerging markets play in terms of global trade overall and China in particular. There is no solution to reducing deforestation without much stronger engagement with China given its demand footprint for palm oil, soy and pulp and paper. Current trade and political context particularly on the soya supply-chain make it even more important to engage China strategically as part of a broader strategy to maintain positive momentum for efforts in both the Amazon and critically the Cerrado.
There are already multiple efforts underway to analyse trade flows and engage local actors in China to try to identify key intervention points and build – key actors with promising programs include WWF, Solidaridad, Paulson Institute and TNC. Some of the key opportunities emerging are the China Meat Declaration and China Soy Sourcing Guidelines. However, many of these efforts lack high level engagement with key government agencies in China or SOEs.
The team is now looking for a Lead based in Beijing, China to develop the TFA China Workstream.
Duties and Responsibilities
The primary responsibility of the TFA China Lead is to develop a higher-level convening space and to elevate the profile of commodity driven deforestation and greening supply chains. Specifically, the Project Manager will:
- Build and lead the TFA strategy in China focused on increasing awareness and catalysing action to reduce deforestation pressure from China’s commodity sourcing
- Lead all engagement with relevant senior Chinese stakeholders in government, business and civil society in close collaboration with WEF colleagues. Coordinate with related initiatives and activities to ensure that WEF/TFA is enhancing and not duplicating existing efforts on forests and commodities
- Support the objectives and outreach of the work on Biodiversity and Nature considering the UN CBD COP15 being hosted in China in October 2020
- Recruit and manage a junior colleague to accelerate delivery of strategy
- Engage and manage consultants as necessary to support delivery of strategy
- Design and organize events in China such as workshops (including during high profile WEF events such as Annual Meeting of the New Champions) to support the strategy
- Act as a liaison with international stakeholders in the forests and commodities space to deepen understanding and identify linkages/synergies
- Is the primary point of contact for TFA China internally (within WEF) and externally
- Support other CGPG engagements in China
Qualifications and Skills
- Master’s degree or equivalent
- A minimum of 10 years’ professional experience in a relevant business or not-for-profit organization including consulting or academia preferably in China and internationally
- Ideally experience with and knowledge of key commodities impacting tropical forests and their supply chains, the role tropical forests play in climate change
- Knowledge of sustainable procurement (e.g. certification, jurisdictional design)
- Knowledge of trade policies and public policy involving issues such as environment, climate change, food security
- Knowledge of UN framework and conventions particularly biodiversity and climate change
- Strong network in China relevant for this workstream
- Strong partnership and stakeholder management skills
- Strong problem solving, analytical, and synthesizing skills and the ability to communicate complex information succinctly
- Willingness to work in a highly demanding environment and ready to juggle multiple priorities and be self-directed for much of the time
- Willingness to travel regularly
- Native Mandarin speaker and fluency in English, both spoken and written.
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