Nature Opportunities Engagement Associate

Global Canopy; Oxford; On-site; GBP 40,000 - 50,000; Full time

Job summary

Global Canopy in Oxford is seeking an Engagement Associate to lead the engagement workstream within the Nature-Positive programme. You will build and maintain a network of private wealth holders and institutional asset owners, coordinating with the Nature Positive Lead and GC Communications to align messaging and outcomes.

The role focuses on relationship management, events planning, and strategic fundraising, aiming to translate environmental finance opportunities into practical investor

Qualifications

• Excellent relationship management and external communications experience working with demanding stakeholders.

Responsibilities

• Engagement and network building (70%)
• Events and communications support (20%)
• Strategy and fundraising (10%)

Job description

About Global Canopy

Global Canopy is a data-driven not for profit delivering real transparency and accountability for market impacts on nature and people. Our special focus is on ending deforestation - an essential step in achieving urgent global goals on climate, nature and human rights. Shifting financial flows from enabling nature destruction towards activities that credibly support nature protection and restoration is crucial. Global Canopy is working to enable the mobilisation of investment at scale into activities that deliver positive outcomes for nature and people, and to reverse the current imbalance, where financial flows to nature-destroying activities sit at USD7 trillion while financial flows towards Nature-based Solutions remain at USD230 billion. Turning this tide requires both reducing financial flows to nature-negative activities and significantly scaling up finance for activities that deliver for nature and people.

About Nature-Positive

Nature-Positive is a new, exciting and extremely ambitious programme within Global Canopy and we work closely with likeminded partners, including Oxford University, UNEP Finance Initiative, and UNEP's State of Finance for Nature initiative. We also work closely with other teams across Global Canopy, bringing the organisation's longstanding expertise and market-leading data for finance and corporate supply chains, and nature, deforestation and human rights impacts. Our very first project under the Nature-Positive Transitions programme, in partnership with the Nature Positive Hub at the University of Oxford, focuses on building the data infrastructure to enable credibility and comparability in assessing nature-related opportunities. To ensure that the data infrastructure we deliver supports investor decision-making, we are establishing an engagement workstream to steer the technical work, inform the final data offering, and build capacity in the sector to test new modalities of nature investing. The engagement workstream will bring together a small but ambitious group of private wealth holders, operating as champions, and a wider group of institutional asset owners, initially as observers.

About the Role

We are looking for an Engagement Associate to manage the engagement workstream in close collaboration with the Nature Positive Lead and suits someone who believes in the financial sector's role in supporting the transition to a nature-positive economy, prioritises business models that deliver for nature and people, and has experience conveying nature-related, finance-relevant matters to the financial sector. The project's engagement workstream is key to supporting the successful development and delivery of the technical workstream, and we are seeking someone to play a leading role in developing and maintaining a network of key target audiences throughout the project.

Responsibilities

Engagement and network building (70%)

• Develop, maintain and deliver the project's engagement plan in alignment with the project strategy Plan and organise the meetings, one-to-one engagements and events associated with the engagement workstream to enable the delivery of the project's strategy.


• Identify and recruit relevant investors (both private wealth holders and institutional asset owners) to participate in the project working groups and committees, in consultation with the Nature Positive Lead.


• Coordinate consultations, information sharing, and involvement of project partners, including the University of Oxford and Just Climate, as appropriate.


• Keep the investor network informed of relevant project progress and maintain buy-in to the project's objectives.


• Maintain decision-useful information on project-related engagement progress in the CRM system.


• Maintain a map of programme-relevant initiatives and allies and include relevant engagement priorities with these stakeholders in the engagement plan.


• Coordinate project consultations with the network of initiatives and allies, particularly to ensure methodological alignment, support and avoid duplication with these allies and initiatives.

Events and communications support (20%)

• Organise programmatic events involving the network of investors convened by the project, in collaboration with the project team and GC Communications team.


• Collaborate with the Communications team on opportunities to showcase the project, to produce and advise on messaging and mentions about the project (e.g. on social media), and to review relevant statements as necessary.

Strategy and fundraising (10%)

• Contribute to funder reporting and MEL, especially on the engagement workstream.


• Contribute to programmatic fundraising efforts and the ongoing development of the Nature-Positive Strategy.


• Represent Global Canopy as an organisation in external meetings and events.

To be successful in the role, these are the things that will matter most:

Excellent relationship management and external communications experience working with demanding stakeholders. Ability to id