LANDESA JOB VACANCIES 2025
About Landesa
Grounded in the knowledge that having legal rights to land is a foundation for prosperity and opportunity, Landesa partners with governments and local organizations to ensure that those experiencing the most extreme forms of poverty have secure rights over the land they steward. Founded as the Rural Development Institute in 1967, Landesa has helped more than 100 million families living in poverty gain legal control over their land. With secure land rights, these families can eat better, earn more, educate their children, practice conservation, and achieve dignity for generations.
Landesa supplements its regular staff with the expertise of skilled consultants. We maintain and periodically review an active roster of consultants in support of our program needs. This vacancy is posted for anticipated consulting positions: we encourage consultants with specialized skills in legal, policy, and monitoring and evaluation issues related to land access and tenure security to submit their qualifications to be considered for inclusion in our roster.
When Landesa has specific consultant opportunities, they will be posted below on our website, or our staff will reach out to the consultants included in the roster to verify their interest.
Summary
Based in Jakarta, Indonesia, the employee will serve as a Land Tenure Specialist (LTS) and will support our mangrove and tenure focused initiatives. The employee will engage in technical work, including with a focus on policy work, stakeholder engagement, and capacity development, to contribute to our goals to (1) secure land rights for rural women, men, and communities; (2) promote community-centred mangrove/environmental conservation and climate action; (3) strengthen mangrove-related tenure, livelihoods, and participation of coastal communities and their women and youth members; and (4) contribute to gender equality and social inclusion (GESI).
Working under the Sr. National Policy Manager, and in close collaboration with our team and partners, the employee will:
- Produce high quality technical memos, policy briefs, study reports, blogs, and other work products for a variety of audiences (e.g., Landesa, government bodies, NGOs, the public).
- Present and explain the results of the research and analysis and advance policy and implementation recommendations that promote inclusive, secure tenure to protect mangrove ecosystems and/or other relevant ecosystems.
- Contribute to Landesa and government partners’ efforts to formulate policy, draft legal instruments, support design and implementation of related processes, and other technical efforts to secure land and resource rights and improve mangrove/environmental conservation, through fair, transparent, and inclusive processes.
- Conduct legal and applied social science research, analysis, and synthesis on law and policy and tenure issues as well as their intersection with mangrove conservation, coastal management, climate change, and GESI issues.
- Provide focused support to advance secure tenure and community mangrove conservation through priority law and policy efforts, including:
- Coastal policy and pilot work to promote GESI-responsive community conservation and tenure security
- National and sub-national development planning and spatial planning that is tenure- and GESI-responsive and explicit about mangrove conservation
- Contribute to site-based activities for various purposes, such as participating in field-based assessments, designing and implementing capacity development for local-level government and CSOs, supporting policy-focused strategy development in new sites, and advancing key initiatives at our pilot-policy nexus, in coordination with Sr. National Policy Manager and Sr. Site Manager.
- Liaise and nurture relationship with government partners and other stakeholders (at the national level and contribute at sub-national levels), as assigned.
- Proactively support internal collaboration, especially around policy efforts (amongst Indonesia- and US-based team members as well as key partners), and internal learning; includes but is not limited to contributing to Landesa Indonesia monitoring, evaluation, and learning (MEL).
- Across the work (described above), progressively mainstream GESI.
- Perform other land tenure work and administrative tasks, including to contribute to project management and activity planning in assigned areas.
The Land Tenure Specialist is expected to work full-time, plus additional hours as necessary to complete work. The position requires 30% of their working time for travel purposes.
Required Knowledge, Skills, and Abilities
- A deep commitment to the mission of a better, safer future for the world’s marginalised people —especially indigenous and local communities and women—through secure rights to land
- Solutions oriented self-starter with a proactive attitude, able to engage unfamiliar, complex issues and operate effectively even amidst uncertainty and ambiguity
- Effective problem solver and quick learner, who understand concepts that can be applied to law and systemic change
- Collaborate with and bridge relations among government, non-government, and community stakeholders, as needed, to advance policy change
- Comfort and ability to work collaboratively with a range of people, and skilled at nurturing relationships with key government ministries, agencies, and officials, local and adat communities, and non-governmental organizations
- Strong (written and oral) presentation skills and an ability to think on one’s feet when defending policy recommendations.
- Ability to develop concrete work plans and manage elements so that work is performed according to agreed budgets and plans
- To be stationed in Jakarta
Required Education / Experience
- Indonesian national with a minimum of a Master’s degree in a related field is required (e.g. law, economics, sociology, geography, anthropology, or related social sciences or fields focused on local and indigenous communities).
- At least 5 years of relevant land tenure experience in the arena of policy, government engagement, and/or field-based engagement.
- Bahasa Indonesia fluency and English working proficiency (full professional proficiency desired)
Desired Qualifications
- Experience in promoting women’s empowerment and rights and experience with gender mainstreaming.
- Demonstrated ability to work at a distance and take on a variety of assignments.
- Schedule & Process The contract will be initially 6 months commencing in the fall of 2025.
The contract may be extended on a yearly basis by mutual agreement, over the course of the five-year program. Kindly send your application letter and CV’s format to recruitment.idn@landesa.org with Subject: Land Tenure Specialist _ Indonesia.