Senior Consultant – REDD+ and Forest Finance

Overview

Role Title: Senior Consultant – REDD+ and Forest Finance

Location: London/Didcot/Manchester/Madrid/Italy/Home-working

Job ID: 2023-1914

Ricardo is Creating a world fit for the future

Ricardo Energy & Environment is a leading sustainability consultancy combining energy, climate change, environmental and chemical risk expertise with strong IT and economics capability. Operating across the world, we work in partnership with our customers to help transform the way they work, empowering business leaders with award winning consultancy advice. With unrivalled sector insight and a reputation for producing innovative solutions, we offer a stimulating and rewarding environment in which to work. Start your career with Ricardo, a consultancy that respects, innovates, has integrity and passion for the environment. We empower, develop, and trust you to deliver your best work. We’ll provide a culture that will enable you to evolve, grow and succeed.

Our vision is to create a safe and sustainable world

Are you passionate about sustainability and looking to make a meaningful impact in the fight against climate change? We are seeking to appoint a Senior Consultant within our Energy & Carbon Regulation Team to take a lead role in our advisory work focused on finance for reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation (REDD+).

Ricardo plc is a global strategic, environmental, and engineering consulting company. Every day, we enable our customers to solve the most complex and dynamic challenges to help achieve a safe and sustainable world.

As a Senior Consultant, you will be responsible for delivering projects and building a pipeline of work focused on REDD+ policy frameworks and financing schemes. A significant focus will be the delivery of a high-profile 2-year programme that provides technical assistance to governments in Latin America, Africa and Asia and the Pacific to establish Jurisdictional REDD+ carbon crediting schemes. In addition, you will help to shape Ricardo’s strategy and build business in this new and important area of growth.

We’d love to hear from you if you have the following competencies and experience:

• Have practical career experience and be able to demonstrate relevant technical capability, effective project management and excellent communication skills.

• Demonstrate technical expertise and ability to lead across several of the following technical areas:

• Reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+)

• Carbon markets and payments for ecosystem services in the forestry sector, including forestry carbon credit standards

• Quantification of forestry emissions and removals

• Monitoring, Reporting and Verification (MRV) systems

• REDD+ strategies and investment plans

• REDD+ social and environmental safeguards

• Emission Reduction Purchase Agreements

• Have a higher education qualification (Bachelor’s Degree) in an environmental, legal or economics discipline, or otherwise to have a good track record working in an environmental role, so that you can demonstrate your knowledge.

• Ideally have experience of working in the consultancy sector, or organisational responsibility for the outputs from contracted consultants, to demonstrate that you have the necessary commercial awareness. We are also interested to talk to candidates currently performing environmental roles directly within government or industry especially where they have a strong commercial awareness.

• Have demonstrated experience of working face-to-face with clients and managing their expectations.

• Experience of identifying and developing business opportunities.

As a Senior Consultant in REDD+ and Forest Finance you need to have the following skills and behaviours:

• Analytical skills with ability to identify, develop and implement solutions.
• Excellent writing skills to communicate clearly and without errors – accuracy and attention to detail are vital.
• Ability to review the work of more junior team members, providing constructive feedback and supporting development.
• Strong client and stakeholder communication skills (e.g. influencing, negotiation, presentation and relationship management skills).
• Ability to develop client propositions (e.g. understanding of client challenges and develop and propose suitable solutions).
• Ability to manage project and teams; and to coordinate and prioritise activities to ensure delivery of agreed targets.
• Ability to work autonomously and pro-actively.
• A flexible approach – able to see where help is needed and support colleagues as necessary.
• Be comfortable juggling a variety of tasks in a sometimes fast-paced operational environment.

As a Senior Consultant in REDD+ and Forest Finance your main responsibilities would be:

• Providing technical expertise for projects that support governments with REDD+ and the design and implementation of forest finance schemes.
• Liaising with specialist sub-contractors and building relationships internally and externally.

Supporting with business development and the design of project methodologies focused on REDD+ and forest finance.

Our Culture

This is an exciting and rewarding place to work, with the opportunity to make a difference. What sets us apart is our People. You will work with an exceptional team of talented, dedicated, and supportive individuals. You will have a fantastic opportunity to develop your career with us through our broad range of projects, mentoring opportunities and a personalised approach to your learning and development. We are always keen to hear from people who have driven, ambition and a flair for innovative thinking.

Flexibility wellbeing and work life balance

We offer flexible approaches to work, whether that’s working from home, being in the office, or as a hybrid worker. We’re happy to discuss flexible working arrangements. Wellbeing is at the core to our culture, allowing employees to flourish and to achieve their full potential.Our People are important to us and we take pride in our wellbeing programmes and policies that support individuals including flexible working, carers policy, mental health first aiders and readily available support through our extensive Employee Assistance programme.

Diversity, Equality and Inclusion

Statement Ricardo Energy & Environment is an Equal Opportunity Employer, we believe in each person’s potential, and we’ll help you reach yours. We have an ambitious diversity, equality, and inclusion approach as explained here. We value diversity; recognising that a more diverse workforce creates a richer and more varied working environment. Diversity also drives innovation, by allowing us to offer our clients the best consultancy service that we can. As part of our commitment to engage positively and proactively with all our employees and ensure a culture of inclusivity, we are a recognised as a 'disability confident’ employer.

Benefits

We want you to know how much you are valued. Your remuneration and benefits package will reflect that. You will receive a range of benefits which include support for your physical and mental health.

Our core benefits include 25 days' annual leave, plus 8 flexible bank holidays, a competitive company pension scheme, life assurance and professional subscriptions reimbursement. We also offer a wide range of flexible benefits to suit your lifestyle.

Next Steps

If our application process does not align with your requirements, please email recruit.ee@ricardo.com and we will make necessary arrangements to meet your needs.

Once you have submitted your application a member of our Recruitment Team will be in touch. Please be aware that the timing can vary dependent on the volume of applications that we receive for each role and in some cases, we may start to review applications prior to the closing date.