Packard Environment Fellow

EDF's Oceans Program aims to restore the world's oceans to abundance by reforming fisheries management worldwide. Overfishing is one of the greatest threats to the world"s oceans and 70% of the world"s fisheries are collapsed or overexploited. The result is declining fish stocks and significant lost economic opportunity. The primary problem is in how we manage our world"s fisheries. The World Bank estimates $50 billion in economic losses annually as a result of poor governance of fisheries. Catch shares are a proven, innovative management approach that gives fishermen a direct financial stake in the health of fisheries. They result in improved environmental and economic performance, with increases in fleet-wide and individual business revenues and profit. EDF is the leading authority on catch shares and we are working worldwide to implement these approaches. There is growing interest in these approaches, including a new World Bank-led "50 in 10" partnership which aims to have 50% of global fisheries under sustainable management in the next 10 years. While implementing catch shares delivers significant financial upside, stakeholders are often not aware of the potential economic gains. There are also costs to transition from the current, broken management to the performance-based approach of catch shares, which thus far have been largely borne by philanthropic funders and governments. The combination of these factors has slowed the transition to catch shares.

  
Overall Function

To solve the global overfishing problem, we need cost-effective solutions that can be easily and quickly applied at scale. And we need appropriate financing to drive the reform. Key to our success is deep understanding of the financials of management reform. We are currently conducting two related projects to better understand the economic return of implementing catch shares: (1) a bio-economic model that calculates the expected economic outcomes of various management approaches, including catch shares and (2) a "return on investment" analysis of catch share management, looking both at fisheries that are already under catch shares, as well as the expected ROI for non-transitioned fisheries.
 
The Packard Environment Fellow will work to advance our knowledge on the financial case for catch shares. The Fellow will build upon our existing projects to understand the economic upside of management reform, calculate the ROI for transitioning to catch shares and identify possible financial vehicles for financing the transition. The Fellow will work with a dynamic team of professionals with backgrounds in science, economics, communications and policy.
 
Qualifications
 

• MBA candidate (required)
• Commitment to the mission of the Oceans Program (harmonizing healthy marine ecosystems, fishing communities, and coastal economies)
• Market research and analysis experience
• Strong analytical skills, including financial analysis, synthesis of ambiguous data, evaluation of markets and opportunities, and ability to identify key issues and risks
• Interest in working with nonprofit agencies and nonprofit-run businesses
• Effective written and oral communication, organizational, and interpersonal skills
• Entrepreneurial attitude
• Self-starter
• Ability to work in a flexible, informal environment

 
Due to the volume of employment applications and queries received, EDF is unable to respond to each application individually. Applicants will be contacted directly if selected as a candidate.

Environmental Defense Fund is an Equal Opportunity Employer