Back Consultant as Sustainable Palm Oil Policy Specialist

Program Overview

WRI Indonesia is an independent research organization that turns big ideas into action at the nexus of environment, economic opportunity, and human well-being. At WRI Indonesia, we aim to bring innovations in research and business approaches in order to create the enabling conditions for Indonesia to achieve robust economic growth while respecting environmental and social values. We seek to contribute to the accomplishment of ambitious sustainable development goals through working with leaders in public and private sectors, as well as collaborating with civil society organizations, in turning big ideas into action.

Within our Agriculture, Forest, and Land Use (AFOLU) Program, we envision critical ecosystems such as forests and peatlands across Indonesia to be governed fairly and sustainably. We believe sustainable land use management is key for Indonesia to meet its climate goal, in line with keeping the global climate target below the 1.5 degrees Celcius warming threshold, while providing sustainable livelihoods to forest-dependent communities and conserving biodiversity in the landscape. We intend to achieve this by safeguarding the remaining forest and peatland from deforestation, degradation, and fragmentation; maintaining forests and peatland quality through sound stewardship; and restoring degraded ecosystems to improve their productivity, conservation value, and ecosystem services.

To effectively eliminate deforestation from key commodities production and provide robust stewardship for the remaining forest and peatland, we work together with various levels of government, the private sector, and civil society to mainstream the ethical supply chain principles and support forest-dependent communities to secure their livelihood and land rights. We aim to achieve this through research, policy advocacy, and the creation of a community of practice to mainstream sustainable land use management.

Policy Accelerator Indonesia

WRI Indonesia and WRI Global are partnering to deploy a tailor-made Policy Accelerator in Indonesia. This work contributes directly to the Shifting Incentives workstream under the Climate Solutions Partnership. The Climate Solutions Partnership (CSP) is a 5-year initiative that aims to remove barriers to finance projects that tackle climate change and bring them to scale. Together HSBC, WRI and WWF are supporting the transition to a net zero global economy that protects and restores nature, whilst helping HSBC deliver to its own net zero strategy.

The Policy Accelerator is a peer-to-peer capacity-building program led by world-class and the participation of policymakers that have demonstrated the motivation and authority to champion innovative improvements in public incentive programs. The project will build upon the Landscape Policy Accelerator’s experience in Latin America, where it has supported three cohorts of policymakers across nearly ten countries.

The policy accelerator aims to shift public incentives and unlock capital flows for the decarbonization of Indonesia’s Palm Oil Supply Chain through a peer-to-peer capacity-building program led by world-class mentors. Participants are mainly policymakers that have demonstrated the motivation and authority to champion innovative improvements in the public sector.

Job Highlight

The Sustainable Palm Oil Policy Specialist will be based in Jakarta. He/she will report to the Senior Manager of Supply Chain and Livelihood Transformation and coordinate with Policy Accelerator Project Lead to support the uptake and capacity-building strategy of relevant tools and frameworkswhich cover the following main components:

1. Develop understanding on the landscape of the palm oil industry in relation to climate change issues, through:
   • Desk review to stock-take policy instruments that incentivize or impede investments in decarbonization that can be addressed by policy accelerator, identify challenges and areas of opportunity, key stakeholders. This will provide a bird’s-eye view of the policy in the country in the form of a systematically cataloged inventory of policy instruments and an explanation of their relevance to decarbonization.
   • Consult with key stakeholders to confirm the initial findings with key policymakers and identify the potential policymakers to be included in the cohort. Aside from government officials, consultation needs may also include palm-oil projects, investors/funders, and other key stakeholders to share the inventory and obtain feedback on whether there are policy instruments that are missing, as well as insights on which instruments have the greatest potential, how they function in practice and ways in which they can be improved.
     1. Deploy Policy Accelerator workshop, including a series of mini workshop to discuss the design of incentive policies; socioeconomic and ecological considerations; monitoring and evaluation; amongst others. A series of modules need to be developed and presented dynamically and interactively, serving as a foundation that the cohort can draw upon for knowledge and inspiration as they identify priority policy bottlenecks within their context. The main objective is for the policymakers to work hand-in-hand with the mentors through a methodology that allows them to narrow the scope of their bottlenecks, identify targeted areas of opportunity, and cocreate a roadmap of innovative solutions
     2. Follow-up technical assistance to tackle the priority policy bottlenecks

        What You Will Do

        Research and Development (40%)

        • Perform desktop analysis of the existing policies, incentive schemes of palm oil sustainability, and key government actors related to the sustainable palm oil topic.
        • Support the process consultation with stakeholders/experts to understand the impedances of selected policy implementation including key challenges and areas of opportunity.
        • Provide insight into the best available method of policy acceleration through effective learning models and capacity-building programs for key government officials and stakeholders.

          Program Implementation (organizing community, mentoring, coaching, etc) (30%)

          📚 𝗗𝗶𝘀𝗰𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗿 𝗛𝗼𝘄 𝘁𝗼 𝗚𝗲𝘁 𝗮 𝗝𝗼𝗯 𝗶𝗻 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗡 𝗶𝗻 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯! 🌍🤝 𝗥𝗲𝗮𝗱 𝗼𝘂𝗿 𝗡𝗘𝗪 𝗥𝗲𝗰𝗿𝘂𝗶𝘁𝗺𝗲𝗻𝘁 𝗚𝘂𝗶𝗱𝗲 𝘁𝗼 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗨𝗡 𝟮𝟬𝟮𝟯 𝘄𝗶𝘁𝗵 𝘁𝗲𝘀𝘁 𝘀𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝗳𝗼𝗿 𝗨𝗡𝗛𝗖𝗥, 𝗪𝗙𝗣, 𝗨𝗡𝗜𝗖𝗘𝗙, 𝗨𝗡𝗗𝗦𝗦, 𝗨𝗡𝗙𝗣𝗔, 𝗜𝗢𝗠 𝗮𝗻𝗱 𝗼𝘁𝗵𝗲𝗿𝘀! 🌐

          ⚠️ 𝐂𝐡𝐚𝐧𝐠𝐞 𝐘𝐨𝐮𝐫 𝐋𝐢𝐟𝐞 𝐍𝐨𝐰: 𝐏𝐨𝐰𝐞𝐫𝐟𝐮𝐥 𝐓𝐞𝐜𝐡𝐧𝐢𝐪𝐮𝐞𝐬 𝐡𝐨𝐰 𝐭𝐨 𝐠𝐞𝐭 𝐚 𝐣𝐨𝐛 𝐢𝐧 𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐔𝐧𝐢𝐭𝐞𝐝 𝐍𝐚𝐭𝐢𝐨𝐧𝐬 𝐍𝐎𝐖!

          • Support the project lead in developing an actionable work plan throughout the project period.
          • Support the team in organizing meetings, workshops, and discussions required for preparing and implementing the policy acceleration.
          • Support the development of booklets and modules required for the implementation of the project together with the other team members.
          • Perform the design of the capacity-building program for relevant government officials and stakeholders to accelerate the policymaking or implementation of existing policies.
          • Support deployment of the workshop, including the development of modules and identification of facilitators and mentors.
          • Follow-up technical assistance to tackle the priority policy bottlenecks when necessary.
          • Monitor and evaluation of overall project implementation.

            Stakeholders Engagement (30%)

            • Support engagement with relevant policymakers and government officials to be included in the cohort.
            • Support engagement with key stakeholders to gain meaningful support and enabling environment.
            • Support and connect other team members and additional external experts and stakeholders.

              What You Will Do

              • Legally able to work in Indonesia
              • Minimum bachelor’s degree, or otherwise a technical qualification in a relevant subject area.
              • Minimum 5-6 years of progressive professional work experience related to the palm oil industry in the context of governance and natural resource management.
              • Minimum 5 years of experience in high-level government engagement in the relevant subject area.
              • A clear understanding of environmental and social sustainability issues affecting agricultural commodities and familiarity with issues related to palm oil production upstream and downstream.
              • Strong leadership and project management skills
              • Experience in building networks of relationships and partnerships with government/authorities, civil society, and other stakeholders engaged in environmental issues
              • Ability to work independently and with confidence to take initiative and make decisions.
              • Strong communication, listening, and interpersonal skills.
              • Candidate must be self-motivated, detail-oriented, and a logical thinker with an ability to multi-task and work well under pressure.
              • Flexibility and willingness to explore unfamiliar issues are all qualities that will be looked upon in the hiring process.

                Preferred qualifications

                • Having basic knowledge and working experience in public policy making.
                • Having knowledge and working experience in organizing high-level capacity-building events.
                • Professional fluency in Bahasa Indonesia and English.
                • Ability to work well with internal and external participants is essential;
                • Knowledge of Microsoft Office Suite is imperative.

                  Deliverables

                  Scope of Works

                  Key Deliverables

                  Due Date

                  1. Desktop analysis of the existing policies, incentive schemes of palm oil sustainability, and key government actors related to the sustainable palm oil topic.

                     Report of the findings on policy instruments that incentivize or impede investments in decarbonization of the palm oil sector, that includes: (1) stocktaking of policy instruments; (2) identification of key stakeholders, opportunities, challenges; (3) Taxonomy and analytical framework for assessing policies

                     1st month

                     1. Updating the analysis of policy instruments that incentivize or impede investments in decarbonization of the palm oil sector based on the interview and consultation.
                     2. Support project lead in the stakeholder engagement process

                        Report on updated findings on policy instruments that incentivize or impede investments in decarbonization of the palm oil sector based on the interview and consultation.

                        2nd month

                        1. Development of policy acceleration workshop/training program

                           Concept design of policy acceleration workshop/training series for key government actors including agenda, curriculum, modules; speakers; presentations; list of mentors; list of participants

                           3rd month

                           1. Deployment of peer-to-peer learning and capacity building for policy acceleration (series)
                              • Report on the progress of policy acceleration dialogue along with the series of workshops/training/FGD with stakeholders and key government actors
                              • Support the project lead in documenting the minutes of meetings, the progress of policy discussion, and recommendation.

                                8th month

                                1. Deployment of the capacity building for policy acceleration (workshop)

                                   Updated the progress of policy acceleration dialogue based on the implementation of workshop/ training/ capacity building series for Policy acceleration workshops

                                   8th month

                                   1. Follow-up technical assistance on the priority policy bottlenecks