Manager – Water Strategy & Partnerships

Position Overview

This position may be based in either Mato Grosso do Sul (MS) or Mato Grosso (MT), Brazil. RARE OVERVIEW

Rare inspires change so people and nature thrive. For over 45 years, across 60 countries, we have inspired and empowered millions of people and communities to shift their behaviors and practices to protect our shared planet. Rare’s organizational culture is results-oriented, entrepreneurial, and defined by our five core values: Courage to Take Risks, Commitment to Accountability, Mindset of Solutionology, Investments in People, and Spirit of Celebration.

THE PANTANAL WATER PROGRAM

Rare is now building a dedicated water program to address challenges and bridge existing efforts in water security, water contamination and watershed conservation:

• Inclusive governance structures for water management, with a formal seat for traditional communities.
• Unified upper and lower watershed strategies, connecting plateau and floodplain efforts into one basin approach.
• Participatory and AI-supported data for decision making, co-designed and laboratory-validated with research partners.
• Behavior change campaigns for water source protection (“Guardiões da Água”).
• Municipal government engagement for policy development and implementation.

 POSITION OVERVIEW

Rare is looking for an innovative, solution-oriented team member to lead the in-depth scoping, partnership building and program design that turn these five lines of action into a validated, fundable pilot — ideally at the scale of one full sub-basin, from water source to community, rather than spread thin across the Upper Paraguay River Basin.

This is a design-and-build role, not the management of an existing program. In the first months, the position entails deepening the diagnosis, identifying focus communities and priority headwaters (nascentes), and negotiating who leads what across a landscape where most water-related niches already have an active organization. From there, the role shifts toward testing the model in the field: adapting Rare’s community-based conservation and behavior-change approach to watershed governance and ensuring that community members participate meaningfully in decision-making and advocacy over the watershed’s natural resources — including a clear pathway for community-generated data to reach basin governance and the state public-policy agenda.

Reporting to the Executive Director, Brazil, the Manager, Water Strategy & Partnerships coordinates partners and consultants across the program’s fronts with universities, non-governmental organizations, communities and government.

ESSENTIAL FUNCTIONS

The Manager, Water Strategy & Partnerships will lead and own the following areas of responsibility. The allocations below reflect the first year: in the first six months, program design and partnerships carry the heavier share; from month seven onward, pilot testing and implementation oversight take on more weight.

Program Design and Strategy — 30%

• Lead the in-depth scoping: identify focus communities in the upper and lower watershed, map priority nascentes and pollution sources, and close the data gaps flagged in Rare’s 2026 strategy.
• Recommend the pilot geography and scale, with a documented rationale and a go / no-go recommendation.
• Confirm and document the theory of change, outcome indicators and baseline requirements, adapting Rare’s community-based conservation approach to watershed governance.
• Sequence the five lines of action into an implementation-ready pilot design, including the hand-off pathway to communities, municipalities and basin committees from day one.
• Define what stays outside Rare’s scope — where Rare would duplicate what others already do better, or create dependency.

Partnerships and Multi-Stakeholder Articulation — 30%

• Negotiate and formalize partnership agreements with anchor and complementary organizations working on water in the basin, clarifying roles and boundaries before any public- or government-facing step.
• Build research partnerships with universities and institutes to co-design and laboratory-validate a participatory water-quality monitoring protocol, including clear agreements on data ownership, access and use.
• Map basin committees (comitês de bacia) in priority sub-basins and support activation where they are weak or absent, including capacity building for community representatives.
• Engage municipal governments as implementers of water and sanitation policy, and lay the groundwork for a mayors’-network approach to local policy development.
• Convene upper- and lower-watershed actors around a shared diagnosis, positioning Rare as facilitator and bridge rather than as another implementer.

Community Engagement — 25%

• Lead community consultations in focus communities, applying free, prior and informed consent and respecting each community’s own protocols and collective decision-making processes.
• Facilitate co-design and capacity-building sessions so that communities hold decision-making roles rather than consultative ones, and so that pantaneiro leadership is visible throughout.
• Support community associations, including formalization where the lack of legal status blocks access to programs and to formal representation.
• Adapt Rare’s behavior-change methodology to water source protection with community associations and local partners: household water use, storage and protection; headwater and riparian practices; waste and wastewater management.
• Ensure community-generated data flows into basin governance and public policy with community consent over its use.

Institutional Representation, Funding and Internal Alignment — 15%

• Represent Rare with government, research, donor and civil-society audiences, and communicate program strategy, progress and scientific concepts to non-technical audiences.
• Support funder mapping and proposal development — starting with active payments-for-ecosystem-services windows — presenting the program as a coalition rather than as Rare alone; contribute to donor reporting.
• Build the internal case for the pilot within Rare’s global portfolio, and coordinate with Rare Brasil and global teams on behavior change, monitoring and evaluation, and program design.
• Deliver a scoping report and pilot recommendation as the first year’s core written output. 

REQUIRED EXPERIENCE AND EDUCATION

• A minimum of 7 years designing and managing social, economic or environmental programs — ideally in community-based conservation, natural resource management or rural development — including experience leading multi-stakeholder processes that brought communities, civil society and government to the same table.
• Demonstrated experience working with traditional and/or Indigenous communities in Brazil, including consultation and consent processes, community protocols and collective decision-making.
• Proven track record building and formalizing partnerships with non-governmental organizations, research institutions and public agencies, including negotiating scope and boundaries between organizations with overlapping mandates.
• Demonstrated ability to diagnose complex challenges, seek input from diverse stakeholders, and adapt strategy based on field realities — with comfort operating in a program that does not yet exist.
• Experience managing multi-component projects, working both independently and collaboratively across geographies, cultures, and levels of an organization.
• Strong written and verbal communication, including the ability to explain scientific and technical concepts to non-scientific audiences — from donors to mayors to community members.
• Bachelor’s degree required in environmental management, social sciences, public policy, international development, or a related field; a postgraduate qualification is a plus.
• Willingness to travel regionally in rural, remote field settings up to 50% of the time, including river travel and multi-day stays in communities.
• Native-level Portuguese required; strong proficiency in English required for donor reporting, global team communication and institutional documentation.

PREFERRED QUALIFICATIONS

• Established relationships and networks in the Pantanal and the Upper Paraguay River Basin, and deep knowledge of its communities and institutions.
• Working knowledge of Brazil’s water and sanitation governance: the National Water Resources Policy and the role of comitês de bacia, the Sanitation Legal Framework (Lei 14.026/2020), and the Pantanal Law (2024).
• Technical familiarity with water quality, sanitation or watershed restoration — enough to be a credible interlocutor with researchers and public agencies; a technical specialization is not required.
• Experience with participatory monitoring, citizen science or community data systems, including digital or AI-supported tools.
• Experience engaging municipal governments, or with mayors’ networks and local policy implementation.
• Experience with behavior-change or social-marketing approaches applied to conservation or public health.
• Experience with international donors — relationship management, reporting, and communicating strategy and impact — and familiarity with payments-for-ecosystem-services or climate finance mechanisms.

Commitments

• To Rare’s mission and values; 

Rare is an equal-opportunity employer that is committed to diversity and inclusion in the workplace. We prohibit discrimination and harassment of any kind based on race, color, gender, religion, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, genetic information, pregnancy, or any other protected characteristic.

Applicants must be legally authorized to work on a full-time basis in the country where the position is based. We are unable to provide visa or work authorization sponsorship