Senior Associate, Conservation

The Pew Charitable Trusts seeks a Senior Associate for its Conservation team in British Columbia, Canada. The role focuses on addressing global environmental challenges through science-based solutions, collaborating with various stakeholders to protect ecosystems and promote sustainable practices. The Conservation Canada project aims to protect significant areas of land and sea, while initiatives like the Seaweed Farming project foster community-led sustainable development.
Location: Sanborn

The Environment Portfolio at The Pew Charitable Trusts

For more than 30 years, Pew has been a major force in engaging the public and policy makers about the causes, consequences, and solutions to some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges. Our environment work spans all seven continents with more than 250 professionals working at the local, national, and international levels to reduce the scope and severity of global environmental problems, such as the erosion of large natural ecosystems that contain a great part of the world’s remaining biodiversity, and the destruction of the marine environment.

Pew’s global environmental program focuses on science-based, nonpartisan, and sustainable solutions to help protect the planet and people. We work in partnership with governments, Indigenous rights holders, intergovernmental organizations, non-governmental organizations, local stakeholders, scientists, and other researchers to advance public policy so that nature and communities can thrive.

Since 1990, Pew has worked in North America, South America and Australia to protect large and critically important terrestrial ecosystems, including rivers and other freshwater resources, coastal temperate rainforests, interior mountain ranges, the northern boreal forests, Australia’s Outback, and Chilean Patagonia. We work to ensure these natural systems remain bountiful, functioning, and resilient, providing essential ecological services such as clean air and clean water, sustenance and food security for local communities and more broadly for the welfare of current and future generations.

Our work relies on the sciences of conservation, sociology, biology, and economics to advocate for practical and durable solutions to the loss of biodiversity.

In the sea, reforms to how our oceans are managed are essential to address overfishing, pollution, and loss of habitat. Pew began its oceans program in the United States, focusing on ending overfishing and protecting fragile marine habitat. Starting in 2005, Pew’s ocean conservation program expanded around the world and played a significant role in reforming marine fisheries management in the European Union and on the high seas and creating large scale marine reserves around the world.

Our work is grounded in the best available science and pursues domestic and international conservation measures that are long-term and provide permanent, durable protections for marine ecosystems. We also work to address systemic threats to the ocean, including from plastics, over-and-illegal fishing, seabed mining, and climate change.

Conservation Canada

Through collaborations with Indigenous peoples and other partners, Pew’s Conservation Canada project aims to protect between 5% and 7% of Canada's lands and seas—roughly 160 million acres of land and 120,000 square miles of ocean—to bring the total level of protection of its terrestrial and marine resources up to at least 20% by 2028. In addition, the project promotes science-based fisheries and ecosystem conservation measures for depleted and threatened marine life.

Seaweed Farming

The Seaweed Farming project aims to establish the foundation for the sustainable and inclusive development of seaweed farming in Alaska and British Columbia by creating community-led visions for growth in major farming regions, building baseline ecological data and monitoring schemes, expanding precautionary safeguards, and supporting Indigenous and other small-scale producers’ engagement in farming and government consultation processes.

Position Overview

The senior associate collaborates with project leadership to support Pew’s work in British Columbia, Canada as it relates to the objectives of two, distinct but overlapping efforts – the Seaweed Farming and Conservation Canada projects. Reporting to the senior officer, Conservation Canada in Portland, Oregon, the senior associate will work in support of other Pew staff and in-country partners, especially Indigenous People and Governments, to support conservation and sustainable development initiatives through efforts to:
1) advance sustainable and inclusive growth of the local seaweed farming…