Tropical Forest Alliance China Specialist
World Economic Forum LLCBeijingUpdate time: June 19,2019
Job Description
Tropical Forest Alliance China Specialist
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 including 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 Specialist based in Beijing, China to support the development of the TFA China Workstream and the broader Ecological Civilization agenda in the run-up to and beyond the Kunming Biodiversity COP in October 2020.
Duties and Responsibilities
The primary responsibility of the TFA China Specialist is to support building out a platform for the TFA and CGPG more broadly in Nature Based Solutions. The successful candidate will need to build a collaborative network of related practitioners and initiatives, elevate the profile of Ecological Civilisation (with a specific focus on impacts of commodity-driven deforestation) and leverage the WEF’s unsurpassed convening power to support Environmental Diplomacy efforts between China and other countries. Specifically, the Specialist will:
- Provide logistical and content support for events in China such as workshops (including during high profile WEF events such as Annual Meeting of the New Champions or “Summer Davos”) to support the strategy
- Support TFA strategy development in China and input into the Global strategy, focused on increasing awareness of Ecological Civilisation and catalysing action to reduce deforestation pressure from China’s commodity sourcing
- Support the TFA and CGPG teams with engagement of relevant senior Chinese stakeholders in government, business and civil society including drafting background materials, arranging meetings and maintaining working-level contacts
- Assisting in grant reporting and the managing of research partnerships with academia or consultancies
- Support the objectives and outreach of the work on Biodiversity and Nature considering the UN CBD COP15 being hosted in China
Qualifications and Skills
- Minimum bachelors degree, Masters or equivalent preferred in a relevant discipline related to business, international politics or environment
- At least 2 years’ professional experience in a relevant business, or not-for-profit organization including consulting, academia, NGOs or international organizations
- Experience in event management and high-level stakeholder management is a strong benefit
- Knowledge of how commodities impact tropical forests through their supply chains, the role tropical forests play in climate change, or the global biodiversity and climate agenda
- Strong partnership and stakeholder management skills, particularly the ability to work with Chinese government partners
- Strong attention to detail, problem-solving, the ability to communicate complex information succinctly, ability to spot opportunities and act in an entrepreneurial way
- Native Mandarin speaker and fluency in English, both spoken and written.
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