The Senior Natural Resource Management (NRM) Officer will be part of Mercy Corps Nigeria's Resilience and Climate Adaptation portfolio and will provide technical leadership for natural resource management and ecosystem restoration activities under the Protecting Food Security Against Flood & Drought Cycles project in Katsina State. The project aims to strengthen community resilience to climate-induced flooding and prolonged drought through integrated watershed restoration, sustainable land management, climate-smart agriculture, rehabilitation of degraded ecosystems, and community-based natural resource governance. Major interventions include soil and water conservation, vegetative restoration, dune stabilization, sustainable rangeland management, and community capacity strengthening to improve food security and climate resilience. The Senior Natural Resource Management Officer will lead the design, implementation, quality assurance, and monitoring of all natural resource management interventions while ensuring alignment with Mercy Corps' resilience programming standards, national environmental policies, and donor requirements.
The Senior Natural Resource Management Officer is responsible for providing strategic and technical leadership for the planning, implementation, supervision, and quality assurance of natural resource management and ecosystem restoration activities across the project. Working under the supervision of the Technical Project Manager, the incumbent will oversee field implementation of sustainable land management, watershed restoration, climate adaptation, and community natural resource governance interventions while providing technical guidance to project staff, government counterparts, contractors, and community institutions. The position plays a critical role in ensuring that nature-based solutions effectively reduce flood and drought risks, restore degraded landscapes, improve agricultural productivity, and strengthen community resilience.
Essential Responsibilities
Technical Leadership and Program Management
- Lead the technical design and implementation of all Natural Resource Management (NRM) activities.
- Develop annual and quarterly implementation plans for NRM
- Ensure implementation of technically sound, climate-resilient, and environmentally sustainable approaches.
- Integrate ecosystem restoration and landscape management principles across all project
- Ensure compliance with Mercy Corps technical standards, donor requirements, and national environmental regulations.
- Provide technical support to project management in planning, implementation, adaptive management, and reporting.
- Lead implementation of NRM and ecosystem restoration interventions
- Ensure interventions improve ecosystem services while protecting productive agricultural and grazing lands from climate-related hazards.
- Provide technical leadership for sustainable agriculture and rangeland management
- Support integration of natural resource management into agricultural productivity and food security interventions.
Community-Based Natural Resource Governance
- Strengthen community institutions responsible for natural resource
- Support establishment and strengthening of Natural Resource Management
- Facilitate participatory land-use
- Promote inclusive governance involving women, youth, farmers, and
- Support development of community natural resource management
- Strengthen local conflict resolution mechanisms around land, water, and grazing
- Promote sustainable management of shared natural
- Design and facilitate relevant capacity-building
- Develop practical training materials and field demonstration sites for communities and extension workers.
Environmental Safeguards and Compliance
- Ensure environmental safeguards are integrated throughout project
- Conduct environmental screening of project
- Monitor environmental impacts of infrastructure and restoration
- Promote biodiversity conservation within project
- Support compliance with donor environmental
- Ensure restoration activities contribute to long-term ecosystem
Monitoring, Evaluation and Learning
- Work closely with the MEAL team to develop technical indicators for NRM interventions, monitor ecosystem restoration outcomes, assess vegetation recovery and land rehabilitation.
- Support the MEAL team in tracking adoption of sustainable land management
- Support the MEAL to conduct field monitoring and technical
- Support the documentation of innovations, lessons learned, and best
- Support the preparation of technical reports and case
Stakeholder Coordination and Partnership Management
- Develop and maintain effective relationships with all key stakeholders
- Represent Mercy Corps in technical working groups and environmental coordination
- Provide technical supervision to Natural Resource Management Officers, Agriculture Officers, Community Facilitators, and Field Assistants.
- Build technical capacity of project
- Promote knowledge sharing and continuous
- Support multidisciplinary collaboration across programme
- Identify innovative approaches for landscape restoration and climate
- Contribute technical input to proposal development and business development
- Promote evidence-based programming and adaptive
- Strengthen partnerships for scaling successful natural resource management
Minimum Qualifications & Transferable Skills
- Bachelor's degree in Natural Resource Management, Forestry, Environmental Management, Environmental Science, Agriculture, Range Management, Geography, Climate Change, or a related discipline.
- Master's degree in Natural Resource Management, Environmental Management, Climate Change, Watershed Management, or a related field is highly desirable.
- Minimum of 5 - 7 years of progressively responsible experience implementing donor-funded natural resource management, climate adaptation, watershed management, environmental restoration, or resilience programmes.
- Demonstrated experience implementing ecosystem restoration and sustainable land management projects.
- Strong technical knowledge of Watershed management, Climate adaptation, Nature-based Solutions (NbS), Ecosystem restoration, Soil and water conservation, Sustainable rangeland management, and Community-based natural resource
- Experience working with rural communities and local government
- Excellent facilitation, stakeholder engagement, and community mobilization
- Strong analytical, planning, and technical reporting
- Proficiency in GIS, remote sensing, or environmental monitoring tools is an added
- Fluency in English is required; knowledge of Hausa and local languages spoken in Katsina State is highly desirable.