International Consultant to schedule learn-by-doing seminars to conciliate policies, shortcomings and legal loopholes

Consultant

Overview

Provide consultancy on environmental accounting and valuation in Guinea-Bissau.

You have:

• Holds a Master with expertise in the area of environmental law and economics, environmental or forestry engineering, or related fields.
• Minimum 10 years of proven experience in natural resources laws management and ecosystems environmental law.
• Minimum 10 years of proven experience in financial-economic roles related to natural resources management.
• Experience in environmental accounting, ecosystem services accounting, and natural capital accounting.
• Knowledge of the context and working experience in natural resources management of Guinea-Bissau.
• Fluency in Portuguese and English or French.

Contract

This is a International Consultant contract. More about International Consultant contracts.

Background

Background:

Guinea-Bissau houses a wealth of natural resources that are of local, national, regional and global significance. However, despite its enormous potential, the country embodies some of the world’s toughest development challenges, combining acute and rising poverty with persistent fragility.

Being a coastal country, Guinea-Bissau’s challenges are magnified as a Least Developed Country and Small Island Developing State, due to its environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities, geographical situation and climate conditions.

The Government of Guinea-Bissau has elaborated various plans and reports to safeguard the environment and promote sustainable development, including the National Adaptation Plan of Action (2006) and Second National Communication on Climate Change (2011). The Strengthening natural resource valuation capacities for improved planning and decision-making to conserve the global environment project, a Rio Convention capacity development project, proposes as that sets out to address challenges identified in Guinea-Bissau’s 2011 National Capacity of Self-Valorization (NCSA) and is fully aligned with these plans. Thus, this project and its strategy are consistent with the findings of the NCSA, as well as with Guinea-Bissau’s national plans, priorities and policies. It also considers Guinea-Bissau’s PAN/LCD and National Strategy and Action Plan on Biological Diversity and the National Action strategies.

Indeed, the project will contribute to the establishment of reliable environmental accounting tools and a monitoring system which allows presentation of the state of the environment in understandable terms to policy decision-makers, both national and international, and regularly update the status of Guinea-Bissau capacity to plan its future for sustainable development.

So far, the country has not implemented specific activities regarding environmental accountability, except for the Guide for the economic evaluation of impact assessment, elaborated under the Environmental Assessment framework.

Duties and Responsibilities

The International consultant, under the supervision of the project coordinator, UNDP GEF and UNDP Country Office in Guinea Bissau, will work closely with the government specialists, and take into account the Project Document, the international best practices and standards for environmental accounting and valuation of ecosystem services, with specific references to the following sectors: Law, General Directorate of Environment, General Directorate for Sustainable Development, Competent Environmental Assessment Authority, General Tax and Contributions Directorate, General Directorate of Budget and Tax Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Fisheries, Land and Ecosystems, Biodiversity Institute and Protected Areas, and Water Resources, and all the needed references, on environmental accounting in Guinea-Bissau, including:

• Targeted revision and development of policy and legal instruments to catalyze the use of natural resource valuation in decision-making.

Key Responsibilities and Tasks:

• Present a specific methodology;
• Visit Bissau, to consult the relevant players, attend meetings with the Ministry of Environment and Finance as needed, and discuss the main findings with the Project Management Unit (PMU) and UNDP;
• Convene three learning-by-doing workshops to reconcile policy and legal weaknesses and gaps.These workshops will focus on exercises to negotiate ways and means to better reduce the inherent weaknesses and gaps in current policies and legal instruments as they relate to environmental accounting and natural resource valuation.These exercises will produce worksheets that describe the specific weakness, as well as the systemic, institutional, and technical capacities needs and gaps, and make critical linkages with other policies and legal instruments.These worksheets will also make a set of recommendations that would be followed up in activity 1.2.3, as appropriate;
• Elaborate a final training report.

Institutional Arrangement

The International consultant will work under the supervision of the project coordinator, UNDP GEF and UNDP Country Office in Guinea Bissau. The Head of the Sustainable Development Cluster in Guinea-Bissau is in charge of approving/accepting outputs and deliverables from the consultancy; decisions will also be based on the positive evaluation of the consultant’s performance by the National Project Coordinator.

The international consultant will interview the required institutions, including, at least: Faculty of law, General Directorate of Environment, Directorate General for Sustainable Development, Competent Environmental Assessment Authority, general tax and contributions directorate, general directorate of budget and tax affairs, agriculture, energy, fisheries, land and ecosystems, biodiversity institute and protected areas, and water resources.

Duration of the Work and Duty Station

The consultancy is expected to start in 21/09/2020, and to be completed in 21/11/2020. It requires 25 working days to be carried out within a 60 days contract period. The duty station will be Bissau, workshops places and home-based.

Proposed period Location N° of working days

xxx 2020 Home/UNDP 10

xxx 2020 Training place 3

xxx 2020 Training place 3

xxx 2020 Training Place 3

Xxx 2020 Home based 6

xxxx - xxxx 2020 TOTAL 25

Competencies

Corporate Competencies

• Demonstrates integrity by modeling the UN’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Treats all people fairly without favoritism.

Functional Competencies

• Knowledge Management and Learning
• Ability to provide top quality policy advice services on environmental issues;
• In-depth practical knowledge of interdisciplinary development issues.

Development and Operational Effectiveness

• Ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing in order to communicate complex, technical information to technical and general audiences;
• Good negotiation skills for difficult situations;
• Ability to achieve results by persuading, influencing and working with others;
• Meeting facilitation and conflict resolution skills.

Management and Leadership

• Focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to critical feedback;
• Encourages risk-taking in the pursuit of creativity and innovation;
• Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
• Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills.

Required Skills and Experience

Qualifications:

• Holds a Master with expertise in the area of environmental law and economics, environmental or forestry engineering, environmental or natural science or related fields assessed as suitable to carry out the appointment.
• Language requirement: Portuguese and English or French

Experience:

• At least 10 years of proven experience in natural resources laws management and ecosystems environmental law and biodiversity management;
• At least 10 years of proven experience in financial-economic jobs related to natural resources management, protected areas, environmental law and biodiversity conservation
• Previous professional experience in environmental accounting, ecosystem services accounting, natural capital accounting
• Knowledge of the context and previous working experience in natural resources management of Guinea-Bissau is an asset

Evaluation:

Applicants will be screened against qualifications and competencies specified below through a desk review or an interview process. Applicants will be evaluated based on: Cumulative analysis based on a combination of the Technical and Financial Scores.

Technical Evaluation Criteria: 70%

Financial Evaluation Criteria: 30%

Technical Evaluation Criteria

Offers will be evaluated according to the Combined Scoring method, where the technical criteria will be weighted a max. of 70% (70 points, out of total 100 points), and combined with the price offer which will be weighted a max. of 30% (30 points out of total 100 points).

Applicants obtaining 49 points (70% of available points) or more of the total technical evaluation points will be considered for financial evaluation.

The financial evaluation score (max. 30 points) shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal of those technically qualified.

Applicants receiving the Highest Combined Score who have accepted the UNDP’s General Terms and Conditions will be awarded the contract.

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

• Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by the UNDP;
• Personal CV and P11 form, duly signed and contact details (email and telephone number) of the candidate and at least three (3) professional references;
• Brief description of why the candidate considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment;
• Technical Proposal, proposing a methodology to carry out the assignment in accordance with this ToR;
• Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price. The term “all-inclusive” means that it has to include international travels, fees, insurance, living allowance, in-town transportation, and other related costs. The Financial Proposal has to be supported by a breakdown of costs, as per the template provided. Preferred Currency of Offer: United States Dollars (US$). If an Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under the Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate such point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.

Incomplete applications will be excluded from further consideration.

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Added 5 years ago - Updated 1 year ago - Source: jobs.undp.org