Environmental Compliance Officer USAID Project Job Vacancies – Mercy Corps
Job Title: Environmental Compliance Officer
Organization: Mercy Corps
Duty Station: Uganda
Reports to: MEL Advisor – Apolou Activity
About US:
Mercy Corps has been present in Uganda since 2006, focusing its interventions on economic and agricultural development, maternal child health and nutrition, governance, conflict management and humanitarian response. With funding from USAID, DFID, BPRM, Master Card Foundation and other donors Mercy Corps has been able to work together with communities in Uganda to respond to the needs of our target population, which is focused on women, youth and more specifically adolescent girls. In 2018, Mercy Corps had an impact on almost 1 million beneficiaries in Uganda through our work focusing on building resilience and enabling economic growth, improving opportunities to attain better health and nutrition, and improving governance and conflict management. Common themes include social behavior change, inclusive development, gender, and working in partnership with local government, the private sector and civil society actors.
Program/Department Summary
Mercy Corps Uganda is implementing a five year USAID funded Activity named ‘Apolou’ in the Eastern Districts of the Karamoja sub-region of Uganda. The Activity operates in accordance with US Government environmental regulations and guidance, including Initial Environmental Examination (IEE), Pest Management Plan (PMP), Water Quality Assurance Plan (WQAP), Environmental Status Reports (ESR), Safe User Action Plan (SUAP), and Environment Management and Mitigation Plan (EMMP) among others. The Activity is implemented in five Districts of Karamoja: Karenga, Kotido, Kaabong, Moroto and Amudat. It covers programmatic areas including: crop production, agricultural input sales, livestock production, veterinary pharmaceuticals, construction of household latrines, construction of small market infrastructure, WASH infrastructure repair, storing of commodities among other areas.
Job Summary: The Environmental Compliance Officer will lead and be accountable to ensure full compliance to USAID environmental regulations and associated deliverables under the Apolou Activity, as well as GoU environmental regulations. This includes being comfortable with these regulations and deliverables and understanding their operationalization within the Karamoja context. The position will also be expected to generate and regularly update Apolou’s environmental deliverables as required. As environmental compliance is not the sole responsibility of one person, staff capacity building and orientation is essential across a large and diverse team. On site monitoring of activities and tracking of associated indicators in Apolou Districts must be implemented in close partnership with the broader monitoring, evaluation and learning team. When necessary, the team member will coordinate with external stakeholders.
Key Duties and Responsibilities:
- Conduct regular monitoring of Apolou consortium activities to ensure full compliance with USAID environmental compliance regulations. Share the results of this monitoring in a timely manner and follow-up on recommendations given.
- Conduct climate risk screening on program activities.
- Lead on the development, updating and review of all environmental compliance deliverables for the Apolou Activity.
- Work closely with team members, partners and local government to build their capacity on environmental compliance, environmental safeguarding and climate adaptation.
- Work in close collaboration with the MEL team to track indicators as part of the Environmental Monitoring and Mitigation Plan.
- Conduct assessments and advise teams on the environmental implications of planned activities.
- Coordinate with external stakeholders and contractors.
- Participate in relevant technical working groups or meetings, as required.
- Organizational Learning
- As part of our commitment to organizational learning and in support of our understanding that learning organizations are more effective, efficient and relevant to the communities they serve – we expect all team members to commit 5% of their time to learning activities that benefit Mercy Corps as well as themselves.
Qualifications, Skills and Experience:
- The ideal candidate should have 3-5 years of experience working in Uganda on environmental compliance related issues
- Demonstrated experience and knowledge of GoU environmental regulations, USAID environmental compliance experience is a big advantage
- Demonstrated experience working in some or all of the following: environmental safeguarding, climate screening, conservation, biodiversity management, capacity building.
- Knowledge of and experience working with complex MEL systems, tool development and indicator tracking
- Experience working on technical sectors covered under the Apolou Activity
- Experience working with USAID as a donor preferred
- Experience working in Karamoja sub-region a plus
- Good self-management and interpersonal skills
- Excellent written and oral communications skills in the English language
How to Apply:
All candidates should send their applications online through the Mercy Corps recruitment portal at the link below.
Deadline: 18th February 2020