The Community Conservation Lead – Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance shall be primarily responsible for the implementation and coordination of the project’s activities related to community-based natural resource management and governance. The position will be based in TNC’s Mumbwa Office and will report to the Chief of Party, with additional technical oversight and guidance provided by the TNC Zambia Community Conservation Manager. This is a 5-year term limited position, dependent on the duration of funding from USAID, and extension of tenure will be subject to performance and availability of funds.

The Community Conservation Lead – Eastern Kafue Nature Alliance will provide expert technical support to the project’s primary target beneficiaries, being the local communities that depend on the landscape for their livelihoods and survival, and to the public and private collaborating partners and private market actors with which the project will engage. The Community Conservation Lead works as a part of the project implementation team and as part of the broader TNC Zambia’s conservation team, ensuring close communication, collaboration and learning with peers across project and teams. Specifically, they will provide hands-on strategic guidance and technical oversight for community conservation capacity building and practices for natural resource and land use governance, management, planning and sustainable utilization activities. These activities will involve strong liaison and collaboration with local community institutions such as the Community Resource Boards and Community Forest Management Groups, local natural resource Government agencies (Wildlife, Forest and Fisheries), private market actors and other NGOs in the landscape.

• Cultivates and develops partnerships with key stakeholders in the landscape, including communities, government agencies, project implementing partners and private sector actors.
• Develops and strengthens community conservation institutions and provides direct support to community resource management planning and governance strengthening processes.
• Supports communities and their partners to develop, implement and enforce land and resource use plans and governance models related to forestry, fisheries and wildlife resources.
• Supports the engagement of communities and community governance structures with the Department of National Parks and Wildlife, the Department of Forestry and the Department of Fisheries.
• Brokers the development of mutually beneficial commercial partnerships between communities and private market actors in the natural resources sector that can improve livelihoods and local economies through the inclusive development of the conservation tourism, forest carbon, forest products and fisheries markets.
• Oversees tracking of community conservation activities, ensuring activities and deliverables meet USAID requirements, identifying any implementation challenges and providing the necessary support to address them.
• Leads the recruitment, training, and oversight of chiefdom-based Community Liaison Assistants as they mobilize community institutions in project activities, facilitating cross-cutting activities with other project components.
• Contributes to developing terms of reference for community conservation-related subawards and contract and reviews reports submitted by relevant subrecipients.
• Works with the project’s monitoring, evaluation research and learning (MERL) staff to implement the MERL Plan, report on project activities, measure outcomes in accordance with project requirements and document key lessons learned from stakeholder engagements and community interactions.
• Ensures that all principles of participatory dialogue, planning and decision making include Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) in natural resource governance and management are adhered to throughout the project management cycle.
• May require frequent travel to remote locations and evening and weekend hours.
• May work in variable weather conditions, at remote locations and under physically demanding circumstances.