Water strategy & partnerships manager – Brasil

Responsabilidades

• Lead the in-depth scoping: identify focus communities in the upper and lower watershed, map priority nascentes and pollution sources, and close the data gaps flagged in empresa’s 2026 strategy.
• Recommend the pilot geography and scale, with a documented rationale and a go / no-go recommendation.
• Confirm and document the theory of change, outcome indicators and baseline requirements, adapting empresa’s community-based conservation approach to watershed governance.
• Sequence the five lines of action into an implementation-ready pilot design, including the hand-off pathway to communities, municipalities and basin committees from day one.
• Define what stays outside empresa’s scope — where empresa would duplicate what others already do better, or create dependency.
• Negotiate and formalize partnership agreements with anchor and complementary organizations working on water in the basin, clarifying roles and boundaries before any public- or government-facing step.
• Build research partnerships with universities and institutes to co-design and laboratory-validate a participatory water-quality monitoring protocol, including clear agreements on data ownership, access and use.
• Map basin committees (comitês de bacia) in priority sub-basins and support activation where they are weak or absent, including capacity building for community representatives.
• Engage municipal governments as implementers of water and sanitation policy, and lay the groundwork for a mayors’-network approach to local policy development.
• Convene upper- and lower-watershed actors around a shared diagnosis, positioning empresa as facilitator and bridge rather than as another implementer.
• Lead community consultations in focus communities, applying free, prior and informed consent and respecting each community’s own protocols and collective decision-making processes.
• Facilitate co-design and capacity-building sessions so that communities hold decision-making roles rather than consultative ones, and so that pantaneiro leadership is visible throughout.
• Support community associations, including formalization where the lack of legal status blocks access to programs and to formal representation.
• Adapt empresa’s behavior-change methodology to water source protection with community associations and local partners: household water use, storage and protection; headwater and riparian practices; waste and wastewater management.
• Ensure community-generated data flows into basin governance and public policy with community consent over its use.
• Represent empresa with government, research, donor and civil-society audiences, and communicate program strategy, progress and scientific concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Support funder mapping and proposal development — starting with active payments-for-ecosystem-services windows — presenting the program as a coalition rather than as empresa alone; contribute to donor reporting.
• Build the internal case for the pilot within empresa’s global portfolio, and coordinate with empresa Brasil and global teams on behavior change, monitoring and evaluation, and program design.
• Deliver a scoping report and pilot recommendation as the first year’s core written output.

Requisitos

• QUALIFICAÇÕES MÍNIMAS
  • A minimum of 7 years designing and managing social, economic or environmental programs — ideally in community-based conservation, natural resource management or rural development — including experience leading multi-stakeholder processes that brought communities, civil society and government to the same table.
  • Demonstrated experience working with traditional and/or Indigenous communities in Brazil, including consultation and consent processes, community protocols and collective decision-making.
  • Proven track record building and formalizing partnerships with non-governmental organizations, research institutions and public agencies, including negotiating scope and boundaries between organizations with overlapping mandates.
  • Demonstrated ability to diagnose complex challenges, seek input from diverse stakeholders, and adapt strategy based on field realities — with comfort operating in a program that does not yet exist.
  • Experience managing multi-component projects, working both independently and collaboratively across geographies, cultures, and levels of an organization.
  • Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain scientific and technical concepts to non-scientific audiences — from donors to mayors to community members.
  • Bachelor’s degree required in environmental management, social sciences, public policy, international development, or a related field; a postgraduate qualification is a plus.
  • Willingness to travel regionally in rural, remote field settings up to 50% of the time, including river travel and multi-day stays in communities.
  • Native-level Portuguese required; strong proficiency in English required for donor reporting, global team communication and institutional documentation.
• QUALIFICAÇÕES PREFERENCIAIS
  • Established relationships and networks in the Pantanal and the Upper Paraguay River Basin, and deep knowledge of its communities and institutions.
  • Working knowledge of Brazil’s water and sanitation governance: the National Water Resources Policy and the role of comitês de bacia, the Sanitation Legal Framework (Lei 14.026/2020), and the Pantanal Law (2024).
  • Technical familiarity with water quality, sanitation or watershed restoration — enough to be a credible interlocutor with researchers and public agencies; a technical specialization is not required.
  • Experience with participatory monitoring, citizen science or community data systems, including digital or AI-supported tools.
  • Experience engaging municipal governments, or with mayors’ networks and local policy implementation.
  • Experience with behavior-change or social-marketing approaches applied to conservation or public health.
  • Experience with international donors — relationship management, reporting, and communicating strategy and impact — and familiarity with payments-for-ecosystem-services or climate finance mechanisms.

Marcado como: Água, Comunidades Tradicionais, Desenvolvimento Sustentável, Gestão Ambiental, Recursos Hídricos, Saneamento, Sustentabilidade