Manager, Carbon Finance

This is a hybrid position which requires 8 days per month in our office in Washington DC. Existing work authorization is required at the time of application submission as WRI is unable to sponsor any visa work sponsorship for this position. To be eligible for this position, you must be a resident of DC, Maryland or Virginia at the start of employment.

About the Program:

WRI’s Global Restoration Initiative informs, enables, and invests in people that restore degraded land. The team’s flagship investment program for locally led enterprises and community non-profits, TerraFund, currently finances, trains, and monitors 200+ growing organizations across Africa, Latin America, and South Asia. The program operates three funding windows: In Africa, TerraFund for AFR100 finances 200+ organizations through grants and low-interest loans, with a focus on the Lake Kivu & Rusizi River Basin in Burundi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda; the Greater Rift Valley of Kenya; and the Ghana Cocoa Belt. In India, Harit Bharat Fund, a new landscape restoration fund, is funding its first cohort of restoration champions in the states of Chhattisgarh, Madhya Pradesh, and Maharashtra. And globally, the Priceless Planet Coalition is financing large-scale restoration projects that benefit the climate, biodiversity, and communities. These portfolios are built through the TerraMatch platform, an end-to-end system that hosts open calls for proposals, connects champions with technical assistance, and tracks the progress of funded projects through a standard monitoring, reporting, and verification protocol. With targeted investments in locally led champions, the Global restoratoin initiative seeks to demonstrate the impact and investability of restoration economies around the world.

Job Highlight:

Reporting to the Director, Restoration Finance, you will develop projects, tools and partnership that result in additional finance for tree-based land restoration for these champions. With respect to carbon finance, to date, partnership with carbon project investors, potential off takers and technical partners are in place. A recent screening consultancy assignment to scan the carbon finance potential of the projects in the current portfolio resulted in a significant percentage of projects showing medium to high carbon finance readiness. In relation to this, initially focused on Africa, you will design and manage TA projects that enable transactions that will bring robust and measurable results and capital to local organizations and communities. You will also analyse and support other results-based finance innovations that are under development, including outcome-based payment schemes and blended finance investment partnerships. As the program is developing innovative finance and supply chain partnerships that enable restoration champions to mobilise more private sector funding for land restoration.

What will you do:

Program Management (75%):

• Manage WRI’s carbon and results-based finance strategy for locally led land restoration projects, coordinating staff and partners to deliver through clear work-plans
• Validate the carbon readiness vetting framework, and select (clusters of) promising projects, and explore their potential and interest for carbon finance
• Contribute to the development of a “carbon readiness technical assistance revolving fund
• Develop and manage Technical Assistance projects for carbon readiness
• Contribute to building, structuring and deepening partnerships with carbon and blended finance operators, standards, developers and advisors
• Work with the TerraMatch product team to integrate carbon finance data into the product suite
• Work with the director restoration finance on identifying, developing and managing other (results-based) innovative finance mech