The Sustainable Soy Coordinator establishes the Conservancy as a major conservation partner among soy traders operating in Argentina, defines priorities and long-term strategies that interest, engage and educate corporations on their role in delivering conversion-free soy from global markets, attracts and incorporates strategic, scientific, and technical capacity into innovative approaches with soy traders, and develops key partnerships with public and private organizations to identify and resolve technical issues and to widely communicate solutions and best practices for reducing conversion attributed to soy trade that originates in the Gran Chaco region. They develop and/or deploy innovative scientific methods, analyses, tools and frameworks to address the natural system needs, engage local community support for local conservation efforts, and negotiate complex and innovative solutions with companies and other key stakeholders to ultimately conserve and protect natural communities.

RESPONSIBILITIES & SCOPE

• Geographic size and scope is the Gran Chaco region of Argentina.

• The programmatic scope requires significant cross-boundary work and relationships, including close coordination with a peer position in Brazil engaging with many of the same actors, collaboration with a Gran Chaco Foodscape Coordinator who focuses on other aspects of conservation with development in the Gran Chaco region, relationships across the CMI team both within Argentina and in Brazil, the US and Europe, and keeping abreast of trends and tendencies of soy growth in Paraguay.

• Responsible for leading TNC´s approach to the corporate engagement of the soy industry in Argentina to reduce the conversion of natural habitat. May periodically involve support in engaging traders on complementary enabling initiatives, such as regenerative agriculture, as a pathway to increase production on the current footprint while halting further conversion.

• Develop strategies and tactics that harness and accelerate corporate momentum and action in reducing and eliminating deforestation and conversion associated with soy and other related commodities production in Argentina to 2023 and possibly beyond, including but not limited to:

  • Identifying partnerships with relevant sectoral organizations and agribusinesses along soy supply chains in the Argentinian Gran Chaco

  • Continued engagement with civil society organizations active in the soy space, to strengthen and/or consolidate the various relevant sectoral platforms and initiatives in Argentina to help deliver coordinated or complementary results and secure long term impact and scale

  • Maintain institutional relationships, and act as a TNC ambassador in CMI forums. 

• Support the Argentina Gran Chaco Zero Conversion Commodities Lead in articulating a narrative that integrates the efforts and goals of the CMI project with those of TNC Argentina’s Nature & Agriculture work in the Gran Chaco.

• Manage one professional staff (Nature & Agriculture Stakeholder Engagement Specialist), with responsibility for performance management, training, and career development.  Establish clear directions, assign/coordinate responsibilities, and set stretch objectives.

• Establish and maintain optimal standards of performance for the department or program while controlling costs and administering budgets.

• Periodically support proposals for additional and complementary funding. May be responsible for constructing and managing additional supply chain projects with individual traders that are complementary to CMI project objectives. 

• Over time and as new projects beyond CMI emerge, this position´s scope may expand or evolve to include similar duties in/with other countries (ie Paraguay, Bolivia), a broader group of stakeholders (ie government agencies), and/or other commodities, industry sectors or value chains.

• Builds cooperation from outside parties to accomplish program goals

• May work in variable weather conditions, at remote locations, on difficult and hazardous terrain, and under physically demanding circumstances, consistent with occasional farm/field visits.

• Frequently makes independent decisions based on analysis, experience, and context.

• Once the COVID-19 threat is over, the ability to travel in Argentina to meet with partners and stakeholders, and periodically beyond: Brazil and perhaps other neighboring countries. Travel expectations are flexible but anticipated to be 1 domestic trip per month and 1-2 international trips annually.