White paper: linking soft commodity sourcing and JREDD+ (Global position)

Rainforest Alliance

26d

About The Position

Jurisdictional REDD+ (JREDD+) and supply chain initiatives to deliver deforestation-free or sustainable agricultural and forestry commodities are both approaches that aim to curtail deforestation and associated greenhouse gas emissions in forest-rich regions. However, to date these strategies have been almost entirely siloed from one another. This creates risks of misaligned policies and actions as well as missed opportunities to increase private sector investment, political support, and effective jurisdictional policies and programmes for forest conservation.

This project aims to establish an analytical and practical foundation for strengthening synergies between JREDD+ and sustainable supply chain strategies. Specifically, it will identify, assess, and communicate how companies that source soft commodities can invest in, engage with, or benefit from JREDD+ programs to advance their business objectives and sustainability mandates while supporting forest conservation.

These insights will be developed through technical analysis, stakeholder interviews, and review of real-world examples, and documented in a white paper. This white paper is expected to be published at or around New York Climate Week to help catalyze near-term action by supply chain companies as well as ongoing discourse, development, and innovation to strengthen synergies between sustainable supply chain initiatives and JREDD+.

This initiative is a core focus of the workstream on “Linking supply chain strategies and JREDD+ to protect tropical forests” established under the COP30 Action Agenda launched in Belém and convened under the auspices of the Scaling Jurisdictional REDD+ Coalition and the Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP).

The white paper will be oriented primarily to the audience of companies that source agricultural and forestry commodities, and additionally to the JREDD+, forest carbon, and carbon market communities (including JREDD+ implementers and stakeholders as well as those involved in standard-setting, carbon methodologies and accounting, and service provision). Its main purposes are to:

Raise awareness of opportunities to strengthen synergies between JREDD+ and
sustainable supply chain strategies to protect tropical forests.
Educate supply chain companies (ie, soft commodity offtakers) about JREDD+
and its potential relevance to their business.
Identify specific modalities through which companies can invest in, engage
with, or benefit from JREDD+ to advance key business mandates (eg, regulatory
compliance, achieving goals for deforestation-free supply chains and
emissions reductions, risk mitigation, and supply chain security and
resilience).
Establish a foundation for further dialogue, investment, and policy design to
bridge the JREDD+ and sustainable supply chain spaces to strengthen forest
protection.

Requirements

• Expertise on JREDD+, its associated frameworks and standards, and its implementation.
• Close familiarity with climate target-setting and accounting frameworks for the private sector, including SBTi FLAG and the Greenhouse Gas Protocol Land Sector and Removals Standard.
• Familiarity with sustainable supply chain policies, standards, and practices for the agri-food sector.
• Demonstrated ability to produce high quality work products on strict deadline.
• Demonstrated ability to translate and communicate detailed technical concepts into concise and business-relevant information and narratives.

Responsibilities

• Lead research and writing of the white paper
• Conduct research on the range of potential modalities by which supply chain companies can invest in, engage with, or benefit from JREDD+.
• Conduct semi-structured interviews with approximately 20 key stakeholders representing supply chain companies (ie, commodity traders and large downstream buyers), jurisdictional leaders, and experts on JREDD+, emissions accounting, and carbon markets.
• Consolidate the findings from Components 1 and 2 into a “consultation brief” that the AFi Secretariat can use to vet and refine preliminary ideas for the white paper.
• Prepare a draft white paper that fulfils the purposes outlined in the “Project context and objectives” section
• Refine the white paper into a final version, including text and any supporting tables, boxes, and figures where useful to clearly present the material.

What This Job Offers

• Education Level: No Education Listed
• Number of Employees: 501-1,000 employees