Rainforest Builder is the leading tropical forest restoration company in Africa, on a mission to restore one million hectares of degraded land to natural forest. We bring together the world’s best scientists and foresters to build a specialized company to rebuild tropical forest at scale. We have well-established partnerships with Fortune Global 500 Companies.

Rainforest Builder employs over 1,500 people today across our operations in Ghana and Sierra Leone. All of our projects are long-term (71+ years) and large-scale (100,000+ hectares). We are fully integrated and design and execute all stages of the project lifecycle, including design, seed collection and storage, nursery management, silviculture operations, forest protection and carbon/biodiversity data collection. Our projects are developed under VM047 VERRA CCB standards.

Your Role

Sharing of carbon revenues with local communities will be key to the economic development of rural communities in Sub-Saharan Africa this century. The successful candidate will play a key role in defining how this will work on the African continent.

The Group Social Performance Manager is one of the most senior roles at Rainforest Builder, reporting directly to one of the founders. This is not a tick box role. Getting community engagement right is key to scaling tropical forest restoration to millions of hectares and will need original ideas and meticulous execution.

You will design and then oversee the flow of more than $500M of benefits to local communities across our projects in West Africa. You will need to convert complicated global social standards into simple operational processes that can be followed across our operation. You’ll work closely with our new project development team to ensure best practices are followed in setting up new projects and acquiring land. You will oversee the ESG Managers in each country to ensure that we deliver positive impact to our local communities. You will define and implement monitoring and reporting framework. You will play a key role in VERRA CCB (the industry standard setting body) validation and ongoing monitoring and verification events.

You will need to love spending time in the field as you will travel often to our operations in Ghana, Sierra Leone and elsewhere to ensure that you are in-touch with the reality on the ground in order to be effective in your role.

You should care deeply about having a real and quantifiable impact, not taking photos of smiling communities.

This is an opportunity for someone with a passion for the positive impact that private enterprise can have when business is done for the benefit of all stakeholders. Your work will directly and positively impact many thousands of lives in Africa, and help define best-in-class standards for a globally significant new industry.

Your Responsibilities

• Benefit Sharing: Responsible for Rainforest Builder’s social performance strategy, including designing, negotiating and signing Benefit Sharing Agreements with local communities and subsequently overseeing their successful execution
• Partnerships: Establish partnerships with relevant organizations to support the economic development of affected communities, such as those focused on improving yield of smallholder farmers
• Land Acquisition: Oversee land acquisition following World Bank Free Prior Informed Consent guidelines, including Vulnerability Assessments, Livelihood Restoration Plans where necessary etc.
• Project Design: Play a key role in designing new projects in an equitable way based on high quality social baseline surveys, detailed stakeholder consultations and ESHIAs
• Monitoring: Measure the socio-economic impact of Rainforest Builder’s projects in a scientifically rigorous and quantitative manner e.g. HH surveys
• In-Country Oversight: Dotted line oversight of in-country ESG managers, defining and implementing standard operating procedures for the department
• VERRA Compliance: Ensure that all projects achieve and maintain VERRA CCB validation at all times e.g. grievance mechanisms, HCV assessments
• Thought Leadership: Establish and maintain Rainforest Builder’s reputation as a thought leader on social performance in the nature-based solutions space
• Expertise: Use the RB scientific advisory board (e.g. Professor Rachael Garrett of Cambridge University) to horizon scan and ensure we stay on course

Requirements

• Minimum of five years’ experience in Social Performance Manager, Country Director / Deputy CD, Social Safeguards Specialist, Programme Manager or a related senior role
• Experience implementing operational processes that are compliant to World Bank / IFC performance standards e.g. experience within a forestry, agriculture or mining company or having worked in an iNGO in a senior capacity (experience in PS1 and PS5 in particular preferred)
• Experienced working with land rights / land acquisition in sub-Saharan Africa (or eager to learn about this topic)
• Demonstrated ability to manage a multidisciplinary and multicultural team across multiple jurisdictions and to manage a significant budget
• Educated to degree level in a relevant field
• Working proficiency in English (required) and French (desirable)

Role Details

• Based in London, Accra, Freetown, Abidjan or Conakry – additional flexibility on location for extremely strong candidates
• Frequent field travel to project locations