Global Practice Senior Director, Environment and Natural Resources
THE WORLD BANK GROUP’S VISION AND STRATEGY
The global development community is at an auspicious turning point in history. Thanks to the success of the past few decades and favorable economic growth, developing countries now have an unprecedented opportunity to end extreme poverty within a generation. This is the vision of the World Bank Group (WBG): to eradicate extreme poverty by reducing the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day to 3 percent by 2030, and promote shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40 percent in every country.
The global development community is at an auspicious turning point in history. Thanks to the success of the past few decades and favorable economic growth, developing countries now have an unprecedented opportunity to end extreme poverty within a generation. This is the vision of the World Bank Group (WBG): to eradicate extreme poverty by reducing the number of people living on less than $1.25 a day to 3 percent by 2030, and promote shared prosperity by fostering the income growth of the bottom 40 percent in every country.
To achieve this vision, this year the WBG Board of Governors approved a strategy for the organization. This strategy leverages, for the first time, the combined strength of the WBG institutions and their unique ability to partner with the public and private sectors to deliver customized development solutions backed by finance, world class knowledge and convening services. The strategy has three components: (1) maximizing development impact by engaging country clients in identifying and tackling the most difficult development challenges; (2) promoting scaled-up partnerships that are strategically aligned with the goals; and (3) crowding in public and private resources, expertise and ideas.
The architecture underpinning the strategy and instrumental to its success is the establishment of fourteen Global Practices and five Cross-Cutting Solution Areas that, in concert with the WBG Regions, will design solutions that address clients’ most pressing developmental challenges, and ultimately, enable the WBG to meet its twin goals of eliminating extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity.
The WBG seeks to recruit a dynamic professional as a Global Practice Senior Director, Environment and Natural Resources, to be based in Washington, DC, under a 4 year renewable term appointment.
THE ROLE OF THE WBG IN THE ENVIRONMENT AND NATURAL RESOURCES
The unsustainable use and degradation of the environment and natural resource base that has accompanied growth in many parts of the world — manifesting itself through land degradation, deforestation, the depletion of fish stocks, the erosion of ecosystem services, the pollution of soil, water and air, and climate change — affects poor people disproportionately. Many of the environmental challenges that threaten development are associated with local, regional, or global externalities and common properties that need strong policy and regulatory frameworks, and coordination across sectors.
The unsustainable use and degradation of the environment and natural resource base that has accompanied growth in many parts of the world — manifesting itself through land degradation, deforestation, the depletion of fish stocks, the erosion of ecosystem services, the pollution of soil, water and air, and climate change — affects poor people disproportionately. Many of the environmental challenges that threaten development are associated with local, regional, or global externalities and common properties that need strong policy and regulatory frameworks, and coordination across sectors.
The World Bank Group’s unique role is its ability to prioritize landscape approaches that cut across sectors and leverage financing and partnerships through investments (loans, grants, guarantees and budget support), financial services and knowledge services. The WBG’s leadership in sectoral, cross-sectoral, and economy-wide knowledge and expertise, complemented by its financing role, places it in a strong position to respond to challenges that are increasingly regional and global in nature, such as coordinating emerging multi-stakeholder approaches to green growth and natural capital accounting.
The WBG assists governments in receiving a return on their investments in natural capital. Activities focus on growing a country’s natural capital and introducing governance regimes that maximize the sustainable use of those assets for green and inclusive growth. Pollution management will also be critical, as investing in activities that will allow countries to accelerate their growth without increasing air, water or land pollution is essential to sustainable development. To this end, a key responsibility of the Practice is to provide professional expertise and operational support to other Practices to implement the WBG environmental policies (the WB’s safeguard policies and the IFC’s Performance Standards) to deliver sustainable development results that ensure that any adverse impacts of WBG interventions are limited and mitigated.
The Global Practice Senior Director will collaborate across technical, geographic and institutional boundaries to help design and deliver development solutions to a diverse range of clients. The Senior Director will be supported by a management team and approximately 280 globally placed staff. The portfolio of the Practice is approximately US $3 billion as of the end of FY13. The Global Practice Senior Director will report to the two Global Practice Vice Presidents.
Details for this vacancy are available in the World Bank Careers site:www.worldbank.org/careers, Vacancy Number 132487. All applications must be submitted through this website. The World Bank Group is committed to achieving diversity in terms of gender, nationality, culture and educational background. Individuals with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. Closing date is December 5, 2013.
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