World Wide Fund for Nature, WWF, the global conservation organization, active in almost 100 countries, has been working in the Congo Basin in Central Africa for more than 20 years, with a focus on forest conservation through developing and managing protected areas, while promoting sustainable forestry practices and community conservation for the benefit of the populations.
The Congo Basin is under increasing pressure from large scale commercial poaching, extensive habitat alteration and rising illegal human encroachment into fragile protected areas. The Green Heart of Africa (GHoA) Global Initiative, the conservation delivery mechanism for Central African Regional Programme Office (CARPO), was conceived in part to tackle these and many other problems facing wildlife populations in Central Africa today.
While WWF teams continue to support field based ranger activities throughout the Congo Basin, recent successful enforcement models have emerged aimed at tackling the poaching problem from multiple sides, necessitating a strategic expansion of this traditional approach. A more holistic approach which focuses not only on traditional anti-poaching methods but which also encompasses establishing and maintaining a deterrent at the judiciary level by increasing the ratio of wildlife prosecutions per arrest while eradicating rampant corruption within the system, is urgently needed.
In an effort to build upon the Network's global strategy to strengthen its core conservation efforts aimed at ensuring sustainable wildlife populations, particularly those focusing on fragile WWF priority species including great apes and elephants, the WWF CARPO aspires to adapt the regional law enforcement model in the WWF Asia programmes to the GHOA context in Central Africa. As law enforcement assurance is ultimately the responsibility of national governments, WWF traditionally supports enforcement efforts by providing both technical and financial support to partner Ministries (eg, Forests, Environment, etc.). Consequently, WWF CARPO is launching a new post aimed at providing strategic leadership to its regional law enforcement support efforts.
Location: The position is based in Yaoundé, Cameroon, with possible shift to Kinshasa, Democratic Republic of Congo after integration induction into CARPO/GHoA. The scope of responsibilities extend to a major part of the sub-region, i.e. Cameroon, Central Africa Republic (CAR), Gabon, Congo, the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC), Equatorial Guinea and Sao Tome & Principe.
Under the supervision of the Regional Conservation Director, the Law Enforcement Coordinator's major duties and responsibilities are:
Convene WWF conservation directors, field programme managers and other key partners to develop WWF's regional and national law enforcement support strategy and action plan. As a part of the strategy and its action plan:
- Establish, propose, or build on mechanisms to ensure full follow-up on all wildlife cases entering the judiciary system.
- Define the responsibilities and commitments of different partners, including the role of WWF in law enforcement support efforts.
- Create a system of accountability whereby financial support to third parties is performance based, dependant upon mutually agreed deliverables.
- Supervise results oriented capacity building measures (including clear indicators of success or failure) with field staff, including wildlife rangers and WWF staff assigned to support investigations, arrests and judiciary follow-up of wildlife cases.
- Supervise the elaboration of a harmonized data collection and storage protocol (e.g., SMART/MIST), facilitating the timely submission of country and region wide analyses/reports and building local and national ownership of data.
- In close collaboration with conservation directors, field programme managers and other key partners, support the design of effective, cost efficient surveillance strategies at priority field sites, starting with Salonga NP, DRC.
- Work closely with regional partners including COMIFAC, TRAFFIC, RALF, a WWF led law enforcement project in the Central African Republic, LAGA, AALF, PALF, Interpol, etc.
- Support and approve the elaboration of proposals related to wildlife protection support, as a member of the proposal approval team and identify and foster funding opportunities.
- Approve law enforcement components of project management plans and WWF's contribution to national office law enforcement strategies in collaboration with Conservation Directors.
- Provide support to CARPO and country senior management teams on ensuring effective law enforcement strategy and judiciary assurance at the regional and policy level.
- Support COMIFAC in the development, adoption and implementation of its Central African Wildlife and Trade Law Enforcement Action Plan.
Profile:
Required qualifications
- At least 5 years experience working in the field of law enforcement (anti-corruption, anti-poaching, wildlife law or/and protected area management)
- Good budgeting and financial management capacity
- Proven capacity building skills, lesson planning and training of trainers
- Proven fundraising ability
- Experience in project implementation
- Experience in Congo Basin beneficial
- Ability to manage enforcement databases
- Proven capacity in institutional relationship building
Skills and competencies
- Strong communication skills - both written and verbal (English and French) as appropriate for the needs of the audience
- Culturally aware and able to work effectively in various cultural environments
- A team player but also very capable of working with minimal supervision
- Ability to develop high quality and locally appropriate protected area management plans
- Strategic planning and capacity assessment skills for effective law enforcement approaches
- Thorough understanding of legal system
- Adheres to WWF's values, which are: Passionate & Optimistic, Challenging & Inspiring, Credible & Accountable, Persevering & Delivering Results.
Interested candidates who meet the above requirements should send a cover letter and a detailed CV to the address recruitcarpo@wwf.panda.org by November 1st, 2011 at the latest. The subject should read 002LEC.
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