Jobs and Careers

TERM: 

This is a full-time position.

JOB DESCRIPTION: 

The Water Governance Specialist will provide strategic and technical leadership under Objective 2 in Armenia. This individual will also coordinate with the other Objective leads and the cross-sectoral team and report to the country director.

RESPONSIBILITIES: 

The Water Governance Specialist is responsible for the following:
- Understand and evaluate the political, social, economic, and administrative dimensions of national and transboundary water governance;
- Identify, support, and provide technical assistance and training for adoption of IWRM principles (such as water user participation) and tools (such as river basin entities);
- Lead or contribute to studies of the water sector, including the initial transboundary Political Economy Analysis;
- Identify and engage champions and detractors of water governance reforms among water administrations and agencies, water user associations/ groups (including businesses), universities, media, and the civil society at large;
- Engage strategically other recent/ ongoing transboundary and national water projects. Find synergies on impactful actions to be carried out, extended, replicated, or revived to combine efforts with other donors on drafting new legal documents, policies, or other instruments to promote concrete implementation and enforcement of IWRM principles;
- Facilitate concrete agreements for sharing water and environmental information on transboundary rivers and aquifers, and set up public information/ awareness tools;
- Support institutional and policy development efforts to further transboundary water cooperation, advise on the drafting of new legal texts, implementation decrees, policies, white papers, and studies that promote IWRM, and conducting training on principles and benefits, notably transparency, accountability, and subsidiarity;
- Develop activities to improve water governance at transboundary, national, and regional levels, looking at new policies (e.g., water rights), approaches (IWRM and RBM processes and principles), management plans (e.g., RBMPs and allocation plans), etc.;
- Promote organizational restructuring and reforms of water institutions to concretely apply stakeholder engagement and other IWRM principles and expand WRM responsibilities and resources of decentralized entities such as municipalities, River Basin Committees, WUAs, consumer advisory boards, and others water user entities, notably engaging women, youth, and vulnerable populations.

REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS: 

- Master’s degree in a discipline related to water resources management, international affairs, international development, political science, local governance, or related;
- Ten (10) years of relevant, senior subject matter expertise experience related to water governance, including experience with USAID or other international donors, preferably in South Caucasus region;
- Demonstrated technical capacity to design and implement water management programs and interventions in collaboration with local and international experts;
- Preferably comes with a current professional in-country network in the most relevant ministries and offices, private entities, and non-government organizations in the water/ environment sector.

Key Skills:
- Proven understanding of water governance issues and reforms across political, social, economic, and administrative dimensions;
- Ability to engage government and civil society organizations, public and private sector counterparts, and other key stakeholders to create collaboration and synergies toward achieving concrete results;
- High level of technical and analytical skills across multiple aspects of water management to effectively develop and adjust activities to achieve expected results;
- Proven ability to drive networks and partnerships, including a demonstrated ability to interact effectively and collaborate with a broad range of stakeholders;
- Effective communication skills, both oral and written, to support communication with USAID, public and private sector counterparts, and colleagues;
- Full Professional Proficiency in spoken and written English is required, as well as in Armenian.

APPLICATION PROCEDURES: 

If you are interested, please email your CV with the Cover Letter to: *************@********.*** and ******@********.*** before 5 p.m. on November 25, 2023.

Please clearly mention in your application letter that you learned of this announcement through Career Center and mention the URL of its website - www.careercenter.am. Thanks.

REMUNERATION/ SALARY: 

Based on salary history

ABOUT: 

The SCRWM (South Caucasus Regional Water Management Program) Activity is a five-year project funded by USAID and meant to support effective transboundary cooperation and water management among Azerbaijan, Armenia, and Georgia. This will set an example of successful regional cooperation on shared priorities, mitigating conflicts, and contributing to peacebuilding in the South Caucasus. This project will also concurrently achieve social, economic, environmental, and climate change objectives.
The project will implement three cross-related objectives:
- Objective 1 - Transboundary environmental and water management networks developed at various levels across the South Caucasus.
- Objective 2 - South Caucasus stakeholders take a harmonized approach to transboundary water governance.
- Objective 3 - Communities incentivized by introducing new technologies, approaches, and economic models to rationally use water in a manner that demonstrates the benefits of improved water resource utilization across boundaries.