Senior Peatland Restoration Project Developer (m/w/d)

Senior Peatland Restoration Project Developer (m/w/d)

 – Full- or part-time | Remote possible (or Berlin/Munich)

Aeco is a start-up that aims to become one of the leading private, collaborative developers and financiers of peatland restoration projects across Europe, and beyond.

Why peatlands? 

Because they are essential, and it’s urgent. Healthy peatlands are incredible carbon stores. Despite making up only 3 % of the world’s land area, they contain nearly 30 % of global soil organic carbon - twice as much as all the world’s forests. Drained peatlands however release their carbon into the atmosphere. In Europe, more than 50% of peatlands are degraded. Restoring peatlands to avoid and, in the ideal case, remove emissions is crucial to fight the climate crisis as they make up around 5% of total global emissions. In addition, they are super important for biodiversity and restoring a functioning water household at landscape level. But currently, neither the speed nor the scale of peatland restoration are anywhere near to what is needed to meet the Paris Agreement goal of limiting global warming to well below 2°C. In Germany, for example, we would need 200 years to rewet all peatlands at the current speed, while we only have 15-20 years.

How do we make a difference?

In a slow-moving sector dominated by subsidies, entrenched interests, and public / philanthropic approaches to rewetting the occasional lighthouse project, we inject private sector dynamics and collaborative approaches to incentivize all stakeholders. More precisely, aeco covers all costs for the implementation and certification of outcomes and shares yearly revenues from the sale of carbon certificates with the landowner (in the future we will also assess and monetize other ecosystem services). Farming can be continued in many cases and can be adapted to gradually rising water tables.

Our core expertise lies, next to building a strong network of strategic partnerships (such as regional restoration and conservation NGOs), in the evaluation, planning, supervision of implementation, monitoring, certificate sales and funding at project and portfolio levels. Our current geographical focus is on Germany, Poland, the Baltics, and the UK - while we are also starting to explore the potential in Ukraine. 

We have already rewetted the first peatland, are preparing the implementation of five additional projects under international carbon standards and together with our partners have already screened more than 75 potential project sites. To speed up implementation time and improve the current state of technology in accurately monitoring the state of our rewetted sites we are in the process of developing new carbon methodologies for peatland restoration and a state of the art remote peatland MRV system with our partners.

Your tasks

We need your expertise as a senior project developer to scale up our first peatland projects under various carbon standards to new partners, regions and countries. More precisely we need you to handle the following tasks:

• Sourcing, screening and assessing suitable carbon project sites across Europe in collaboration with our regional partners based on remote data and on-site visits

• Guiding our partners through the process from first project idea to project implementation and long-term monitoring

• Guiding us through all scientific needs to assure high quality and integrity across all our projects

• Contribute to developing a standardized process of peatland rewetting with us

• Coordinate feasibility studies, planning and approval as well as technical implementation processes of our partners and third parties

• Do the above in a standardized, digital way, interfacing with our restoration process software and building up datasets

Requirements

• Strong peatland restoration experience with vegetation, hydrology and GIS understanding

• Strong autonomous problem-solving skills

• Strong English language capabilities (optional additional language is German)

• High motivation to contribute to nature based solutions fighting multiple environmental crises

• Optional: experience in the quantification of other ecosystem services next to carbon 

• Optional: experience in carbon emissions assessment based on GEST or water levels

What we offer

• Passionate team trying to crack important, but hard problems in the field of peatland restoration

• Flexible and results-based work style, remote possible

• Competitive remuneration package (incl. options)

• Ability to shape an organization early on and grow personally

Please send applications to Flora Kwong: f.kwong@aeco.earth