UNEP Mercury Consultant - Planet Gold and Enabling Activities

Role Overview

You will steer the design and delivery of a portfolio of international chemicals and waste projects funded by the Global Environment Facility, with a strong emphasis on mercury reduction and sound chemicals management. Day to day, this means shaping new project concepts, guiding implementing partners through execution, and ensuring financial and technical reporting stays on track for dozens of concurrent initiatives. Your work directly supports countries in meeting their obligations under the Minamata Convention and advancing safer, cleaner industrial practices.

Key Responsibilities

• Lead the development of GEF-9 project concepts and full proposals, coordinating input from national stakeholders, technical specialists, and partner agencies across mercury-added products, non-ferrous metals production, artisanal gold mining, and enabling activities.
• Supervise a mixed portfolio of full-size, medium-size, and enabling-activity projects, providing technical guidance and ensuring compliance with GEF policies and donor requirements.
• Maintain a structured oversight cadence: weekly check-ins with task managers and monthly progress calls with executing agencies, escalating to biweekly reviews for any project showing delivery or financial risk.
• Review and clear quarterly progress and financial reports, annual work plans, budget revisions, procurement plans, and communications strategies, verifying alignment with approved project documents.
• Organize and facilitate Project Steering Committee meetings, lead the annual Project Implementation Review (PIR) cycle, and process no-cost extensions, legal agreement amendments, and project closures.
• Support the planetGOLD global program by reviewing project identification forms and PPG (project preparation grant) packages, and help prepare Minamata Convention Initial Assessments and National Action Plan projects as required.
• Commission and manage terminal evaluations for completed Minamata enabling activities, using lessons learned to shape future programming.
• Promote cross-focal-area integration, connecting chemicals and waste objectives with biodiversity, climate, and other GEF programming where synergies exist.

Requirements & Qualifications

• An advanced university degree in chemistry, chemical engineering, environmental science/engineering, social science, or a related field; a bachelor’s degree combined with two additional years of qualifying professional experience will also be considered.
• At least two years of hands-on project management experience, including work in an international or multi-country context.
• Demonstrated working knowledge of GEF project cycles, from concept and project identification through implementation, monitoring, and evaluation.
• Proven experience implementing projects specifically related to mercury management, such as reduction in products, emission controls, or artisanal and small-scale gold mining.
• Familiarity with the Minamata Convention on Mercury and its reporting, enabling activity, and national action plan requirements is strongly preferred.
• Strong ability to coordinate diverse stakeholders, including government agencies, executing partners, NGOs, and private-sector actors, in a diplomatic and results-oriented manner.
• Excellent written and verbal communication skills in English, with the capacity to synthesize complex technical and financial information for varied audiences.