Manager, Climate Adaptation & Resilience

Position summary:
Rainforest Alliance’s Climate Change Strategy envisions a world where producers, communities, businesses, governments and civil society work together to build climate resilience and reduce emissions across farms, forests, and rural landscapes, benefitting both people and nature. Our climate change efforts focus on accelerating the use of locally-led and nature-based climate solutions, including climate smart and regenerative agriculture, forest conservation, agroforestry and ecosystem restoration.

We are seeking a Manager of Climate Resilience and Adaptation to lead our climate adaptation and resilience work globally. The manager will be responsible for leading the organization’s work on climate resilience and adaptation, designing and implementing adaptation programs and initiatives, and ensuring that RA programs and initiatives improve the resiliency of producers to climate change.  Working closely with the Climate Director and the Climate Unit, the manager will integrate adaptation and resilience methodologies and interventions across our core areas of work, including certification, landscape initiatives, policy engagement and advocacy and outreach efforts.

The manager will be engaged in a broader effort by the organization to execute the 2023-2030 Climate Change Strategy which seeks to embed climate mitigation, adaptation and resilience measures in each of its core programmatic areas.  The manager will work cross-functionally in the organization to prioritize the most impactful programmatic developments in alignment with the organization’s Climate Change strategy.  The Manager will also identify partnership opportunities to accelerate the work and impact of our efforts to provide science-based opportunities for farmers, communities and supply chain actors to implement impactful adaptation and resilience measures. 

Responsibilities:

• Support the implementation of RA’s Climate Change Strategy by designing and implementing nature-based and locally-led initiatives that build the resilience of producers, communities, and landscapes where we work

• Work closely with the regional programs and the Institutional Relations team to develop and implement programs and projects related to climate resilience and adaptation and provide technical support to ongoing regional initiatives with farming and forest communities

• Advise and support innovative program, project, and proposal design and development for climate change adaptation and resilience initiatives with corporate actors

• Maintain relationships and coordinate climate adaptation projects with key external stakeholders

• Actively engage in thought leadership, advocacy, strategy development, global engagement and leadership on climate adaptation and resilience issues in agricultural and forestry systems

• Work cross functionally within the organization to ensure programs and offerings are embedded in core areas of our work and that adaptation measures are integrated into our forest, regenerative agriculture, thriving landscape and human rights and livelihoods initiatives.

• Support the Climate Unit in coordinating the organization’s internal climate change community of practice, raising awareness, and building technical capacity across the organization.

Qualifications: 

• M.Sc. degree in climate adaptation/resilience, or tropical agronomy or natural resources management with demonstrated ability (7 years’) in climate change adaptation

• Technical experience in sustainable agriculture projects, climate risk assessment in tropical commodities, and climate risk and vulnerability assessment tools.

• Experience in nature-based solutions, ecosystem-based adaptation, climate smart agriculture, regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, agroecology or related field

• Strong knowledge of agroecological practices

• Experience working with smallholder farmers in the tropics

• Knowledge and experience in coffee, tea and/or cocoa production preferred.

• Understanding of agricultural certification and sustainability preferred.  

• Strong ability and experience in cross functional work across an organization

• Strong project management skills and ability to lead multiple priorities in a time sensitive manner

• Strong written and verbal communication skills; and

• Fluency in English; other languages – Spanish, French, Bahasa (desirable).

Job level: 3A

National Salary range (Excluding NY and DC) - $62,950 - $89,899

New York Salary Range - $74,768 - $106,811

Washington DC Salary Range - $72,369 - $103,384

Deadline: 15 March 2024

Notes: Only candidates authorized to work in the USA, the Netherlands or the UK will be considered.

If you have any questions about the job vacancy, please contact the HR department: recruitment@ra.org


WHO WE ARE:The Rainforest Alliance is creating a more sustainable world by using social and market forces to protect nature and improve the lives of farmers and forest communities. To achieve our mission, we partner with diverse allies around the world to drive positive change across global supply chains and in many of our most critically important natural landscapes.

Our alliance spans 70 countries and includes farmers and forest communities, companies, governments, civil society, and millions of individuals. Together we work to protect forests and biodiversity, take action on climate, and promote the rights and improve the livelihoods of rural people.

As an international nonprofit organization with more than 30 years of experience in sustainability transformation, we understand that the social and economic well-being of rural communities is tightly connected to ecosystem health. This knowledge has shaped our rigorous programs to advance sustainable land-use and commodity production.

At the Rainforest Alliance we combat climate change, protect forests and biodiversity, promote human rights, and improve livelihoods. The enormity of the social and environmental challenges we are facing requires working together in a broad alliance. This is why we bring farmers, forest communities, companies, and consumers together to change the way the world produces, sources, and consumes.

WhyTo protect nature and improve lives it’s becoming increasingly urgent that we approach the way we use our land and produce food and other products in more sustainable ways. For this to succeed we need to fundamentally change the way that businesses operate and source, and the choices we all make as consumers.

HowOur growing global alliance aims to transform our relationship with our natural resources and each other, to create a better future for people and nature together.

The Rainforest Alliance encourages diversity and inclusion across the global organization. With this commitment to diversity, we are proud to be an equal opportunity employer and do not discriminate on the basis of gender, race, color, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, gender identity, ages, disability, and any other protected group.