IUCN is seeking a senior results-focused professional to spearhead a project aimed at facilitating the restoration of 150 million hectares of degraded and deforested lands by 2020 – also known as the Bonn Challenge. The Bonn Challenge is an initiative of the Global Partnership on Forest Landscape Restoration (GPFLR), for which IUCN provides the Secretariat. Fifty million hectares of pledges and pre-pledges to this target have been secured in its first year.

The successful candidate will lead the delivery of a major new knowledge, tools and capacity project to support practitioners and policy makers in successfully and credibly implementing the Bonn Challenge. S/he will therefore not only be an experienced manager but also have a strong technical background on issues related to land-use dynamics and the restoration of forest landscapes. A solid understanding of knowledge uptake pathways and of means for mobilizing commitment and investment is also essential.

This position offers great opportunities to engage with and be recognized as a leader among a wide range of partners at both the national and international levels. IUCN is the world’s oldest and largest global environmental organization with more than 1,200 member organizations including 200+ government and 900+ non-government organizations, almost 11,000 voluntary scientists and experts in some 160 countries, more than 1,000 staff in 45 offices, and hundreds of partners in public, NGO and private sectors around the world. The GPFLR has more than 30 members drawn from government, international and non-governmental organizations and the private sector.

This project is a component of Improving the way knowledge on forests is understood and used internationally (DFID KNOW-FOR) whose other participating organizations are the World Bank/PROFOR and CIFOR. Close collaboration with DFID, PROFOR and CIFOR will therefore be a key element of this position.

The success of this initiative will be determined on the basis of the outcomes it helps facilitate, namely the degree to which pioneer investment in restoration has been mobilized and commitment and actions have been undertaken with respect to restoring 150 million hectares of deforested and degraded lands by 2020.

The thematic streams of the initiative are:
A. Restoration as a vehicle for carbon-intensive land stewardship
B. Understanding and mobilizing land-use dynamics as a contribution to landscape restoration (the role of farm fallow systems)
C. Optimizing adaptation and mitigation synergies in landscape restoration practice
D. Understanding links between water, water flows and landscape restoration, including its implications for urban areas
E. Governance, institutional and monitoring arrangements to advance landscape restoration
F. Models for private and public sector investment in support of landscape restoration in both semi-natural mosaic and heavily modified (industrialized and/or mined) landscapes

The Senior Manager will:
• Assume overall responsibility for the timely and quality delivery and management of the Knowledge, Tools and Capacity project

• Lead on the conversion of knowledge, tools and capacity outputs into policy impacts, investment opportunities and results on the ground. This will include:
o Embedding new and pooled knowledge in Bonn Challenge pledges, national and international policies, programmes and operations
o Encouraging the replication and scaling-up of effective practices by “champions” in the front line in countries
o Helping to mobilise pioneer investment
o Putting in place systems and approaches for monitoring of early adoption and delivery of results and impacts

• Develop frameworks and partnerships for scaled up interventions in up to 15 Bonn Challenge partner countries. This will include:
o Supporting and guiding the project’s implementation partners in identifying opportunities, particularly from among those governments, institutions, NGOs, communities and companies whose commitment and action will deliver the Bonn Challenge
o Engaging directly with Bonn Challenge countries and organizations (and potential pledgers) on the definition, management and delivery of their pledges
o Working closely with colleagues, partners, collaborators and stakeholders to ensure alignment of efforts and effective prioritization and deployment of resources

• Provide intellectual and strategic leadership on the role of the Knowledge, Tools and Capacity project in shaping and catalyzing demonstrable action to achieve the Bonn Challenge

• Develop and implement a fundraising strategy that provides the project with expansion potential, ideally to 2020 over the period of the Bonn Challenge

• Provide effective and timely management of the project, including financial management and reporting, monitoring progress against annual work plans, regularly updating DFID and other donors, and tracking “value for money” against agreed operational outputs

• Manage and supervise the project’s technical and support staff

• Maintain relationships with other international and regional organizations working on issues relevant to the project and to DFID’s KNOW-FOR programme more broadly, including particularly the World Bank’s Program on Forests (PROFOR), the Centre for International Forestry Research (CIFOR) and other members of the Collaborative Partnership on Forest (CPF)

• Facilitate integration of the with broader work of the IUCN GFCCP

• Manage the organization of Advisory Board meetings and follow up to its deliberations