Post Doctoral Fellow (Inclusive Governance and Nutrition)

Post-Doctoral Fellow (Inclusive Governance and Nutrition)

Location: Phnom Penh, Cambodia

Application Deadline: 18 September 2022

Postlevel: Internationally Recruited Staff

Type of contract: 24 months fixed-term contract

Language(s) required: English (Proficient/fluent writing and oral skills)

About the Organizations

WorldFish is an international, non-profit research and innovation organization reducing hunger, malnutrition and poverty across Africa, Asia and the Pacific. For over 45 years, our work on sustainable aquaculture and fisheries has improved the lives of millions of women, men and youth.

Fish and other aquatic foods grown in and harvested from oceans, lakes, rivers and ponds provide income for more than 800 million people and provide 3.3 billion with 20% of their animal protein intake. Our focus on sustainability makes sure that the way we produce and use these foods today means a plentiful future of generations to come.

Our evidence-based solutions range in scale from households to global policies and spans across six interlinked themes: nutrition, gender, climate, sustainability, economy and COVID-19.

We champion aquatic foods for healthy people and planet and believe that a sustainable blue planet of well-nourished children, women and men is within our reach.

The International Water Management Institute (IWM) invites applications from dynamic early career, post-doctoral researchers with expertise in gender equality and social inclusion in relation to natural resources management and/or agri-food systems governance and nutrition. We invite candidates with transdisciplinary, gender-transformative research skills and a strong publication record.

The candidate will be based in Cambodia and be part of an exciting cross-CGIAR Asian Mega-Deltas research initiative The candidate will work in Cambodia and Myanmar under the guidance of senior researchers in relevant CGIAR centres. The initial period of contract will be two years, starting no later than October 2022.

About Asia Mega Deltas Initiative

Home to 177 million people, the densely populated Asian Mega Deltas are biodiverse, fertile, and productive food baskets dominated by rice, fisheries and aquaculture that also support millions beyond the deltas. National governments in the Asian Mega Deltas (AMD) regions rely on the deltas to achieve national development goals for food security, nutrition, and poverty alleviation. The Delta food systems are however, fast reaching a tipping point, aggravated by inappropriate development pathways. The Asian Mega Deltas are also most likely to experience climate risks and impacts, including more frequent and more intense floods, salinization, water shortages. Climate extremes can erode national food security, slow down economic growth and trigger new poverty traps in these emerging climate hotspots.

CGIAR’s Securing the Food Systems of the Asian Mega-Deltas for Climate and Livelihood Resilience (AMD) research initiative aims to support governments, NGOs, private sector and local communities in the Mekong, and Ayeyarwady Deltas to transition to more diverse, resilient, and inclusive food systems. At its core, we recognize that Deltas are strongly interconnected systems, and AMD sees transdisciplinary approaches as key to the design of transformative food systems solutions. Our aim is to work collaboratively with strategic public, private and other stakeholders to co-design and implement actionable pathways out of poverty for millions in the five countries of focus – Cambodia, Vietnam, Myanmar, Bangladesh, and India.

Research, implementation, and investments under the AMD are grouped into five Work Packages (WPs). The initiative takes a systemic approach to: support accelerated adaptation locally (WP1), ensure that deltaic food systems can sustain and enhance nutrition security equitably (WP2), explore financially viable and sustainable investments strategies (WP3), emphasize the need for sustainable, inclusive governance of natural resources on which diverse food system depend (WP4), and provide regional foresight to advise of longer-term threats and opportunities (WP5).

Purpose of Post

The Postdoctoral Fellow (PDF) will work on achieving goals of WP4. This WP identifies three key barriers to more inclusive, sustainable and climate resilient food systems governance: policy disconnect, lack of institutional coordination and capacity of various natural resources (NR) and food systems sectors, and lack of capacity and agency of grassroots actors, particularly marginalized communities to engage effectively in NR-water-agriculture governance. The PDF will design and implement WP4 research to:

• Support research to identify gaps and disconnects between contemporary, strategic natural resources (water, land, environment) and agriculture, food-systems policies, programs, and strategies, on the basis that healthy and well-managed natural systems provide the foundation for diverse and resilient food production.
• Support research to develop a ground-up and stakeholder-differentiated understanding of how policies and nested administrative structures affect specific groups of women and men and their access to water and land resources to engage in food production in the contexts of climatic and other risks.
• Explore how existing collective action models contribute to community-level capacities to manage water and land resources that underpin diverse food production systems. An important element of this will be to what extent any collective action ensures that women and men food producers across different sectors (e.g., agriculture, fisheries. livestock) are effectively represented as appropriate and are able to equitably gain access to productive water and land resources.
• Support data management, analysis and writing of reports, journal articles as other communication products, along with IWMI, WF and IRRI colleagues.
• Facilitate dialogue between public, private and civil society actors and enable the co-design of more inclusive, sustainable and climate resilient food systems.
• Along with senior researchers, identify ways to strengthen capacity of national and local implementing partners, including NARES, NGOs and private sector.
• Identify and work with grassroots actors to strengthen capacity and agency of local communities, particularly marginalized women, and youth.

The PDF will conduct and support primary research in Cambodia and Myanmar under WP4 to ensure uniformity in conceptual framework, research approach, methodologies and in the analysis of comparative data-sets. S/He will have a key coordination role, ensuring connect between WP 4 and other AMD WPs as well as relevant strategic partners and stakeholders. The PDF will work with IWMI and WF colleagues in transdisciplinary teams. The PDF will have the important role of supporting senior IWMI and WF staff to backstop junior national researchers in data collection, analysis and writing.

In Cambodia, the geographical focus of the research will be the Tonle Sap floodplain, especially the area covering the Mekong Delta, whilst in Myanmar, it will be the Ayeyarwady Delta.

General Duties and Responsibilities.

• Prepare annual operational plan and budget for WP4 related to the present JD.
• Lead the operational plan and report against the M&E indicators.
• Oversee tasks related to WP4 in Cambodia and Myanmar.
• Contribute to designing gender transformative and socially inclusive conceptual frameworks, research methods, and tools for WP4 work in Cambodia and Myanmar, but with complementarity for WP4 research in other AMD locations.
• Undertake primary and secondary research to provide evidence and data on barriers, challenges, and opportunities to gender transformative and socially inclusive governance of food systems with a focus on nutrition security for the marginalized.
• Work with, mentor and supervise research of junior national researchers, research assistants and enumerators on inclusive governance and gender/ social inclusion.
• Lead, coordinate and manage qualitative and quantitative data collection and analysis using statistical software (where necessary) to ensure high quality evidence-based data.
• Proactively support IWMI and World Fish’s efforts in establishing and strengthening strategic partnerships with public, private and grassroots institutions at national and regional levels.
• Support WP4 senior researchers to undertake dialogue and discussions with relevant stakeholders to co-design integrated, inclusive innovations in sustainable food systems by establishing a database of stakeholders, coordinating, and organizing meetings and workshops, and managing relevant data and information.
• Through due diligence help ensure that WP4 outputs and outcomes/results are actionable for local partners to tackle key governance and nutrition challenges.
• Innovatively and proactively lead effective communication and outreach of research results – ensuring outreach to AMD WPs as well as to strategic stakeholders.
• Substantially contribute to the authorship of key research outputs including, but not limited to, research papers and journal articles, blogs and webcasts/podcasts, multimedia presentations and social media.
• As an AMD team member, contribute to exploring bilateral funding opportunities and with senior researchers and relevant local partners support new proposal/ project development.