Project Officer – Environmental Governance Programme

£24,000 - £27,500 (pro rata) depending on qualifications and experience

Part Time, 3 days per week

Location: Moreton-in-Marsh, Gloucestershire, UK (remote working considered)

Do you want to join a multi-disciplinary team working to highlight the issues being faced by indigenous and forest peoples across the world?

About us

Forest Peoples Programme (FPP) is an international NGO that supports indigenous and forest peoples to assert their rights to control and manage their territories and forests. Our work is built on long-term relationships with local communities and we create political space for forest peoples to secure their rights, control their lands and decide their own futures.

We work with forest peoples in South and Central America, Africa, and Asia, to help them secure their rights, build up their own organisations and negotiate with governments and companies to ensure that any economic and conservation activities on their lands respect their rights to self-determination. For more information see  www.forestpeoples.org.

FPP is made up of more than 50 dedicated and diverse staff from around the globe, all committed to working together with forest peoples, allies and partners. Within FPP, you will have the opportunity to input into multiple projects and ideas through regular knowledge exchange with other staff and partners, and a passion for working with people from many and varied backgrounds is essential.

The role

We are looking for a detail-oriented and self-motivated administrator to assist and support our team engaged in a long-term, multi-country project on promoting the diverse cultural values of biodiversity and ecosystems.

At the grassroots we are supporting indigenous and local communities to protect their lands and resources so that they are free to govern, sustainably use and manage them using their own practices and traditional knowledge. This includes empowerment around community-based monitoring and information systems for their territories; support for local practices on sustainable use and conservation of natural resources and adaptation to climate change impacts; and for initiatives to strengthen traditional knowledge, governance, indigenous languages and sustainable livelihoods.

At the national, regional and international levels we seek to facilitate and support indigenous peoples and local communities’ effective, coordinated engagement and inputs in policy-making processes on biodiversity issues which are directly relevant to them. This includes the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which is currently negotiating a new strategic plan for 2020-2050, and the Inter-Governmental Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES), which in recent years has highlighted the importance of indigenous and local knowledge as equal to science in assessing key global biodiversity challenges.

We provide accompaniment, training, and support to partners and a wider indigenous network of organisations involved in biodiversity and climate-related processes, to raise awareness among policy-makers and the general public, and influence setting and implementation of relevant policies, laws, and programmes. We co-organise events and support production of knowledge products and materials, for instance to highlight the important contributions of indigenous peoples and local communities to global conservation and sustainability goals, and the value of indigenous knowledge.

We are looking for someone who is keen to get stuck in and support the wider programme. The role is a support function for the overall coordination of the programme, including supporting meetings, grant tracking and reporting and general administrative tasks. This post is guided by FPP’s core principle of peoples’ right to self-determination.

For further information and to apply, please visit: https://www.forestpeoples.org/en/node/50876

Closing date for applications: 25th May 2022

Interviews: tentatively early June