Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Nature-Based Climate Solutions (NBS) Lead

Collaborative Earth (CE) is hiring an expert in Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) and Nature-Based Climate Solutions (NBS) to take on a vital leadership role in an interdisciplinary and potentially paradigm-shifting initiative to enable landstewards in the Southeastern United States to regenerate wetland forests by accessing emerging opportunities for PES. The initiative is currently being piloted in Prairie View, Texas, and its surrounding areas, with the campus of Prairie View A&M playing an important early role. We will expand to other communities, leveraging a multi-layered and data-rich map of habitat suitability and socio-economic need, which was developed in CE’s Coastal Forested Wetland Lab.

Key responsibilities of the new hire will include:

• Prospect, create, and maintain relationships with potential corporate and municipal buyers of ecosystem services, including carbon sequestration, biodiversity support, and flood mitigation.

• Work closely with CE’s Legal Lead, Maureen Eldredge, who is spearheading the effort to create legal structures for private land-stewards to participate as a group in PES transactions.

• Work closely with CE’s science team, as well as the Plan Vivo Foundation, a key organizational partner, to help develop the first methodologies and standards for carbon and biodiversity crediting specifically designed for coastal forested wetlands.

• Collaborate in project management of the many interrelated parts of this initiative, including teal-carbon standards development, design of legal structures to allow land-stewards to participate together in PES transactions, and development of educational materials and curriculum on PES.

• Work with other key team members to meet the sometimes-complex reporting requirements of governmental and private philanthropic funders.

• Work creatively and collaboratively with other CE Labs and Projects, such as our Bison Project or our Ganges Lab, to envision and develop PES and NBS opportunities in their distinctive settings and systems.

The new hire will also work closely with multiple CE personnel and partners, including:

• Sarah Bergmann, CFW Lead and Labs Development Lead

• CE’s CFW Advisory Group, including Elliott White Jr, of Stanford University; David Kaplan, of the University of Florida; and Lindsey Smart, of North Carolina State University and the Nature Conservancy

• Richard Griffin, Professor, Prairie View A&M University

• Elliott Washington, Forestry Extension Specialist, Prairie View A&M University

• Maureen Eldredge, CE Legal Lead

• Plan Vivo Foundation

• Aaron Hirsh, CE Org Lead

Collaborative Earth is a distributed, remote-working organization. While we’d love to work together in person on a daily basis, it’s often not possible, given the diversity of locations in which we work and the wide variety of expertise we’re eager to draw on. For this project, the hired individual may live anywhere, but we will have a preference for individuals in the Southeastern United States; somewhere not-too-far from Prairie View would be ideal. However, candidates from all locations will receive serious consideration!

We will consider hiring at 50% to 100% of full-time-employment, depending on the applicant’s situation and preferences. Most importantly, we’re looking for the right fit for the project and our organization. We will begin reviewing applications immediately, so if you’re seriously interested, please don’t delay. We’re excited to hear from you!

Salary and benefits will be competitive, negotiable, and commensurate with experience.

A bit more on Collaborative Earth: An innovative and rapidly growing organization, Collaborative Earth brings people across disciplinary and cultural boundaries to form teams focused on actionable research at the interface of ecology and society. These teams, which we call CE Labs, draw on various areas of leading-edge science and technology, as well as deep local understanding, to chart novel and powerfully incentivized pathways to systems in which both society and ecology can thrive. CE Labs may follow several different trajectories to impact: They might simply deliver the product of their work—a powerful digital tool, for instance, or a visionary plan, or immediately actionable research—into the hands of those best-positioned to use it in pursuit of socio-ecological regeneration. Or they might spin out as an independent organization. Or they might transition into being a Collaborative Earth Project, in which the Collaborative itself works closely with a community to foster socio-ecological regeneration. An example of this third trajectory is CE’s CFW Project, which will be a primary focus of the new hire’s work.

To apply, please send a letter and a CV or resume to team@collaborative.earth. In your letter, please address the following questions:

• How do your education and experience to date prepare you to fill this leadership role, grow the project, and grow the organization as a whole?

• How do your own interests and goals align with those of the CFW Project specifically and with CE as a whole?

• CE is a distributed organization. How do you think you’ll do with remote work?

• And please feel free to tell us something else about yourself: Who is one of your heroes? What is one of your favorite books? What do you do when you’re not advancing PES and NBS?

We look forward to hearing from you!