Policy & Impact Lead (f/m/d)

About the Flock

We are an inclusive community welcoming Toucans of all backgrounds, shapes and sizes. We want Toucan to be where we do the best work of our lives. We work flexibly and autonomously, trusting one another to deliver world class results.

At Toucan, we are building the Web 3.0 infrastructure for a regenerative economy.

The climate crisis stems largely from a misalignment of incentives. Polluters don’t pay for their emissions. The carbon market are addressing this by enabling companies to offset their emissions, paying projects to capture carbon. Today, this market is opaque and inefficient due to a lack of liquid markets, forcing projects to go through layers of financial middlemen which capture most of the value or upside.

Toucan is enabling a web3 regenerative finance ecosystem, by bridging carbon credits into crypto and pooling them in standardized categories. We have created the first globally accessible and liquid market for voluntary carbon credits. Working with T1 DeFi protocols and the community we enable carbon credits to be used in a variety of use cases, including green assets, NFTs, treasury assets, collateral and yield generation. In the last months, our Carbon Tonnes – Base Carbon Tonne and Nature Carbon Tonne – got a lot of traction and we have bridged over 21m tonnes of CO2. We are just getting started, and need top talent that want maximum leverage in solving the climate crisis to join us to build this regenerative finance ecosystem. This is where you come in!

Your role

As our new Policy & Impact Lead you will support Toucan’s Chairman and broader Executive team, ensuring we have a solid Policy & Impact function*.*

The successful candidate will be expected to produce product policy blueprints, reports & analysis on the market’s policy drivers and co-develop the next set of products that support the impact creators and project originators/developers/owners in the carbon market and enable an accelerated scaling of the market and regenerative action.

Your responsibilities will include the following:

• Lead the research agenda on carbon policy carbon markets, with a focus on the voluntary market and its convergence with other carbon markets under Article 6.
• Work with Product & Engineering in operating existing products and launching new ones in line with Toucan’s theory of change for carbon markets and policies.
• Represent Toucan in the relevant fora and help extend the company’s policy network
• Work both independently and as part of a broader team to de-risk policy developments
• Write white papers on new initiatives, policies and programmes and engage with the Toucan Ecosystem on upcoming changes relevant to the market
• Work with other functional leads to translate policy developments into workable solutions for the Toucan Protocol and its Ecosystem.
• Provide the research and intellectual grounding for future product development focused on environmental/climate/carbon markets policy and finance.

You most likely have the following experience and skills:

• Strong knowledge of carbon markets and international carbon pricing/trading, particularly understanding of international carbon trading as governed by Article 6 of the Paris Agreement, as well as the potential use of voluntary standards.
• Master’s or doctoral degree relevant to climate action, carbon markets, and/or environmental policies design and preferably work experience with an entity that has demonstrated the intent to be an innovator in the carbon market.
• Ideally an understanding of Web 3.0, crypto markets, stable-coins and their treasury functions, DeFi, ReFi, Liquidity Strategies etc. to be able to translate carbon market mechanisms into new Web 3.0 infrastructure based solutions.
• Data literacy – able to competently interpret and handle quantitative and qualitative data set
• Good knowledge on co-benefits estimation and understanding of how a Regenerative Carbon Market can be catalyzed that captures the value of Biodiversity, Water, Soil Health etc. and channels value to players in the value chain, that add the most value in generating the desired outcomes/impacts.
• Understanding of Digital MRV initiatives in the carbon markets and how AI/remote sensing, blockchain, IOT, are or can be embedded in carbon methodologies.
• Knowledge or interest in new emerging climate investment and climate action frameworks that are alternatives to or complementary to carbon credits/offsets or go beyond offsetting, e.g. SBTi framework, Insetting, Climate Contribution.

Toucan aims to build products for the global majority and especially want to encourage applicants from diverse backgrounds to apply and help us shape the regenerative finance movement. This role feeds directly into Toucan’s Product & Engineering & Growth teams from a strategic level to support the Protocol design, it’s governance and next product launches for the voluntary carbon market, ensuring Toucan remains at the forefront of on-chain carbon markets while underlining its Brand claims.