Nature Finance Advisor - Southeast Asia Pacific (Part-Time)

The Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) is advancing nature finance across both terrestrial and marine conservation systems in the Southeast Asia–Pacific (SEAP) region. Current nature finance priorities include innovative financial mechanisms for protected areas in support of biodiversity conservation, species, and reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+). Increasingly, WCS programs require robust nature finance strategies - spanning public, private, and blended finance - to ensure the long-term sustainability of conservation investments. To strengthen and sustain program impact and ensure the high-quality delivery of technical inputs, WCS seeks someone with expertise in designing, evaluating, and operationalizing nature finance mechanisms, including those applicable to forest, coastal, and marine contexts across diverse ecological and community settings.

The position will provide short-term technical guidance, analytical support, and strategic recommendations to WCS SEAP Regional and Country Programs to develop and implement nature finance mechanisms, in alignment with international standards and best practice and WCS country program priorities. These mechanisms could include trust funds (permanent or extinguishable), debt for nature swaps, Payments for Ecosystem Services, levies and entrance/access fees, bonds, results-based financing schemes (such as carbon or conservation standards), biodiversity offsets, insurance schemes, or other private or public sector and blended finance instruments intended to generate long-term funding for conservation. WCS Country Programs include Papua New Guinea (PNG), Tuvalu, Solomon Islands, Fiji, the Philippines, Malaysia, and Indonesia.