Rainforest Alliance is seeking a motivated and results‑driven Senior Associate, Deforestation Risk Monitoring to support efforts in Côte d’Ivoire to preserve and restore degraded landscapes, reversing decades of deforestation and degradation of forests, conserve biodiversity and promote carbon‑positive landscape initiatives. The Senior Associate will help design and deliver high‑impact, donor‑funded projects, ensuring technical quality, timely execution, and solid financial reporting.
The Senior Associate, Deforestation Risk Monitoring fosters a culture of deep collaboration amongst the Côte d’Ivoire team, with colleagues from all relevant units across the region and globally and ensures excellence in all aspects of our mission delivery within Côte d’Ivoire, including safeguarding the quality of our commitments to companies, donors and partners, and compliance with policies and procedures. This position carries out no supervisory responsibilities. As a world-class organization committed to sustainability and environmental conservation, Rainforest Alliance offers a unique opportunity for individuals who are passionate about making a difference.
WHAT YOU WILL BE DOING:
The Rainforest Alliance’s Core Values are Impact, Change, Collaboration, Openness and Trust and as such they form the basis of the behaviours we demonstrate;
• Contribute to the development of learning materials, case studies, and knowledge products on deforestation, community forestry, agroforestry and carbon topics, ensuring alignment with organizational messages;
• Organise and participate to field missions to analyse the gaps between production practices and sustainability requirements, with a focus on monitoring the risk of deforestation linked to agricultural production;
• Co-develop work plans, budgets, and MEL frameworks (including geospatial and carbon indicators); ensure high quality data collection, result tracking, and timely reporting;
• Participate to meetings with partners in climate smart agriculture, deforestation risk monitoring and prevention, and integrated community forest management to share RA experience in the sectors;
• Build and maintain partnerships with cooperatives, community forest managers, government entities (such as OIPR, SODEFOR, MINETE, and MINEF) civil society, and private sector actors to advance sustainable supply chains and climate smart land use;
• Contribute to the development and implementation of innovative approaches to forest conservation that enhance ecosystem services and support community livelihoods;
• Ensure strong financial execution and compliance with donor and organizational protocols across assigned projects;
• Document lessons learned and best practices; feed insights into regional and global learning processes; and
• Collaborate with the Producer Support Manager, Quality of Implementation Manager and any other relevant departments’ team to propose, design and implement improvements for producers in their certification process and assurance system to avoid deforestation in projects supported landscapes.
WHAT WE ARE LOOKING FOR:
• Master’s degree in Environmental Science, Natural Resource Management, Forestry, or a closely related field.
• Minimum 5 years of experience in project management or technical advisory roles in environmental sustainability, forestry, agroforestry, or natural resource management — including essential experience in monitoring and preventing deforestation.
• Experience working with local communities, government agencies, and private sector partners in Côte d’Ivoire or similar contexts;
• Good mastery of deforestation monitoring tools and familiar with the use of IT technologies and/or various farm management and landscape management applications. Ability to use GPS and GIS softwares;
• Knowledge of Rainforest Alliance Certification Programme is mandatory;
• Ability to develop and maintain strong relationships of trust and confidence with farmers, farmer organizations and local stakeholders, including ability to adapt appropriately to different cultures, and social contexts;
• Experience in managing donor-funded projects, including budget management and reporting, is desirable;
• Proven expertise in Côte d’Ivoire’s water, forest, environmental policies, institutional frameworks, and legal requirements related to water, forest and environmental protection; knowledge of cocoa agroforestry systems is a plus.
• Excellent writing, editing and verbal communication skills, written and verbal proficiency in French and English is required;
• Ability and willingness to travel at least 30% of the time nationally and internationally; and
• Demonstrated commitment to the Rainforest Alliance mission and values.