Climate Monitoring Associate

BACKGROUND

The Kennemer Group (Kennemer) is a Southeast-Asian socially minded agribusiness founded in 2012 that specializes in growing, sourcing and processing high quality agricultural crops, such as cocoa beans. The founder Simon Bakker won the Schwab Foundation Award for Social Entrepreneur in 2016.

Kennemer Group is a leading developer of sustainable agriculture, nature conservation and restoration programs in the Philippines and the APAC region. Its agricultural subsidiary Kennemer Foods International (KFI) is the leading exporter of cocoa beans in the Philippines and a leading banana trader. Its subsidiary for ecosystem services, Kennemer Eco Solutions, launched the Philippines’ first nature-based carbon credit from its agroforestry reforestation project MinTrees in 2023.

POSITION OVERVIEW

The Climate Monitoring Associate (CMA) will support forest & agriculture carbon project certifications, working with the existing Climate, Community, and Biodiversity monitoring team. The CMA will support the existing Climate Monitoring Supervisor in overall certification processes of climate projects like reforestation, forest conservation and other project types under international certifications like Verified Carbon Standard.

This innovative and exciting topic will include a lot of learning, but also sharing to the existing KenEco team. Uniquely for the Philippines, this position will be embedded in a team that is already operating and monitoring climate projects in ecosystems and led by nature-based GHG experts.

The position requires familiarity with ecosystem functions and climate change. Skills required include statistics and excel. Experience in project monitoring & reporting, greenhouse gas fluxes, or certifications are helpful. The capability to think through new complex systems and to learn will be just as important as existing knowledge and experience.

The position mixes detailed statistical work with real-work project implementation for sustainable development, conservation and restoration of ecosystems and communities. From agriculture, to forest conservation, to mangroves and other topics this is a diverse portfolio of tasks for people who enjoy learning and are happy to dive into diverse topics.

Main output of the work are successfully completed annual certification steps for each project with high quality monitoring, documentation, and reporting. A keen eye for detail and thorough preparation is the basis of every successful certification effort. The work happens in a positively spirited, young and diverse team in across the Philippines and Indonesia.

This is a junior role for candidates who want to learn and be trained on the job with quick absorption of new skills sets.

MAIN RESPONSIBILITIES

• Support the existing team of Climate, Community & Biodiversity specialists
• Support development Project Description (PDs) / Project Design Documents (PDDs), Monitoring Plans and Monitoring Reports of the relevant project types
• Support development of early-stage assessments of the relevant project types via e.g. Feasibility Studies, Environmental & Social Impact Assessments, Stakeholder Consultations or Technical Due Diligence processes
• Conduct field visits in rural and forestry sites
• Support completion of successful validation & verification processes of nature-based carbon credit projects under international carbon credit certification such as Gold Standard, Verra or Plan Vivo in tropical developing countries
• Get to know different GHG accounting protocols and methodologies for different ecosystems and project types
• Support development of Climate Monitoring Plans for different relevant project types, including sampling and data recording procedures implemented by field teams
• Be adaptive, flexible and focused on hands-on job experience and learning

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REQUIREMENTS

• Passion for environmental conservation and a commitment to protecting natural resources for future generations.

• B.Sc. in Biology, Forestry, Climatology, Geography, Agriculture, Agronomy, Environmental Sciences, Business Administration or related field

• Minimum 2 years’ experience working on monitoring & reporting of projects in agriculture & forestry

• Strong mathematical and statistical knowledge

• Strong familiarity with Excel

• Quick learner and curious to learn new scientific topics, even when challenging

• Good remote collaboration skills in emails, chat, online calendars & meetings, cloud drives

• Additional benefit: Familiarity with Clean Development Mechanism (CDM), Verified Carbon Standard (VCS), Gold Standard (GS), Plan Vivo (PV) or other carbon credit certification schemes

• Additional benefit: Familiarity field monitoring techniques like tree biomass inventory, soil sampling, GIS-based field data collection or other field data collection.

• Additional benefit: Experience in certification processes such as greenhouse gases or agriculture or other project certifications.

• Additional benefit: Experienced in developing nature-based carbon credit projects under international certifications such as Gold Standard, Verra, Plan Vivo or similar in tropical developing countries (= the relevant project types).

Benefits:

• Paid training
• Promotion to permanent employee

Work Location: In person