Environmental Economist – Full-Time, Vancouver, BC or Ottawa, ON

The Opportunity
If you are an environmental economist who enjoys exploring how environmental change impacts human wellbeing in a variety of ecological and social contexts, this posting is for you! This is a full-time opportunity where you will apply your advanced knowledge of environmental management and economics using welfare- and impact-based approaches. We require a strong mix of quantitative skills for ecosystem services valuation, climate change impact assessment, modelling, and tool building combined with excellent written and verbal science communication skills.

You will work on a wide variety of engaging projects with a seasoned inter-disciplinary team dedicated to applying a holistic perspective to complex social-ecological interactions. Your goal will be to harness science-driven analyses and technical facilitation to deliver rigorous professional-level advice to clients, partners, and internal staff, helping to resolve uncertainties blocking good environmental decision-making

ESSA provides a competitive compensation package with medical benefits, flexible working arrangements, professional development support, future advancement opportunities, interoffice travel support to visit colleagues, and three weeks’ vacation annually plus paid time off between the Christmas and New Years statutory holidays.

About Us
ESSA Technologies Ltd. (ESSA) is an employee-owned Canadian environmental consulting company with offices in British Columbia and Ontario. We envision a world where creativity, a focus on learning, and systems thinking are the foundation of innovative solutions to environmental challenges. Our corporate mission is to “bring together people, science and analytical tools to sustain healthy ecosystems and human communities”. We achieve this mission by helping clients deal with tough, emerging problems, applying a neutral, thorough evaluation of evidence, encouraging diverse participatory processes, and collaboratively guiding our clients to make informed decisions that are designed to learn over time. Learn more about us at www.essa.com.

At ESSA, we are passionate about what we do and enjoy working with professionals who share our values and mission. ESSA’s staff are purpose-driven problem solvers, big-picture critical thinkers, evidence-driven and motivated by an aspiration to become trusted advisors to our clients and make a difference in the world. The magic of ESSA’s mission is “bringing together” diverse groups of clients around our three pillars: people, science and tools. ESSA is a bridging organization with progressive values focused on providing impartial, rigorous scientific advice striving to maximize our positive impact in the world. We do this by being inclusive to a diversity of perspectives, worldviews and ways of knowing to help build a sustainable future. Diversity of perspectives also arises from considerations including experience, race, gender identity, age, disability status, sexual orientation, and religion amongst others. Another way we are inclusive is welcoming a diversity of clients. We know that having these varied perspectives generates better, more innovative ideas to secure a sustainable future for humanity and the rest of the living world.
In addition to diverse clients and our passion for what we do at ESSA you will be surrounded by a rich intellectual inheritance and colleagues committed to collaboration and mentorship.

Your Responsibilities
As Environmental Economist you will support project work aligned with your strengths and interests and will work collaboratively with your colleagues to develop exciting new business opportunities. Your role will focus on helping government, Indigenous, not-for-profit, private, and international clients answer challenging questions about how human wellbeing is affected by environmental decisions using models and tools you build or adapt that simulate changes in a range of socio-economic metrics.

Your day-to-day responsibilities may include:

• Project work
  • Conducting scenario-based cost-benefit analyses that include market and non-market values (e.g., exchange values, consumer surplus, cost-based) using a range of valuation techniques for assessing impacts to societal welfare resulting from environmental change
  • Building coupled biophysical and economic models, or working with biophysical modelers to design approaches and production functions that will produce the right metrics for socio-economic assessment and ecosystem services valuation
  • Designing methods and implementing economic valuation techniques across a wide range of ecosystem services, including provisioning (food from fish, timber, hydropower), regulating (e.g., carbon storage/sequestration, water quality regulation, inland and coastal flood and erosion mitigation), and cultural (recreation & tourism opportunities, cultural heritage/identity, education and research opportunities) services
  • Conducting literature reviews and preparing annotated bibliographies to support modelling and valuation and to stay up to date on emerging research
  • Responding to data poor situations and devising creative solutions for quantification and/or qualitative analyses that are realistic within project budgets
  • Designing and implementing economic impact assessments, including working with multipliers from government input-output models, and adjusting those data for region-specific analyses
  • Creating decision support tools that help clients select and prioritize among possible management actions using biophysical, economic, and social indicators
  • Occasionally travelling to attend and participate in client meetings, workshops, and study site visits in North America and abroad
• Business Development Support
  • Contributing to proposal writing (e.g., developing and writing the study design or approach)
  • Participating in brainstorming sessions about strategic directions for economic services at ESSA
  • Contributing to the development of thought leadership articles, promotional brochures, outreach, and presentations for targeted clients

Education / Experience

• You possess or are about to complete a Master’s or Ph.D. degree in Economics with an environmental management focus or Resource/Environmental Management with an economics focus, and have worked with at least two of: freshwater systems, marine/coastal systems, terrestrial forested systems, terrestrial agricultural systems, peatlands
• You are experienced applying both economic welfare (cost-benefit analysis) and economic impact (regional impact assessment) techniques in different natural resource management sectors and contexts (e.g., fisheries, forestry, agriculture, watershed management, hydropower, tourism)
• You have prior experience with private consulting or in a research institute where multiple projects happen at once

Skills / Abilities

ESSA’s general skill requirements include excellent communication in written and spoken English, strong interpersonal skills and self-awareness, a flexible demeanor, confidence in small group facilitation settings both in-person and remotely, excellent time-management skills, demonstrated ability to multi-task/prioritize, and the ability to deliver professional technical presentations and reports within time and budget constraints.

Your differentiating skills may include the following:

• Experience conducting cost-benefit analyses that apply creative solutions to capture many ecosystem services within a single study
• Familiarity with core concepts associated with nature-based solutions, natural asset management, and ecosystem-based adaptation
• Experience with ecosystem services valuation and assessment in an Indigenous context
• Experience working with government census and other data to develop social/community wellbeing indicators
• Experience conducting studies that incorporate climate change quantitatively
• Experience working with clients to develop conservation or climate adaptation financing options
• Experience working within the UN System of Environmental Economic Accounting (SEEA) and ecosystem service classification schemes like TEEB, CICES, NESCS, and FEGS
• Experience with the InVEST suite of economic valuation tools, or other models dedicated to coupling biophysical and economic components for ecosystem service valuation
• Aptitude with coding (e.g., R, Python)
• Experience conducting stated preference surveys and/or choice experiments
• Experience with agent-based modelling (e.g., for assessment of recreation and tourism benefits)
• Experience working in urban and non-urban environmental settings
• Experience conducting distributional analyses (i.e., how welfare is distributed across societal groups)
• Experience using environmental economics for policy/program appraisal
• Aptitude with spatial analysis
• Spanish-language and/or French-language skills

Applying
Please email a cover letter and résumé to [email protected] by February 3, 2023 with “Environmental Economist” in the subject line. We will review applications and contact selected candidates by February 8, 2023. Interviews will be conducted on the week of February 20, 2023. The expected start is March 27, 2023.

All applicants must be eligible to legally work in British Columbia and/or Ontario at the time of applying.

Salary range $70, 000 – $86, 000