National Consultant-Project Mid-Term Review: Namibia Integrated Landscape Approach for enhancing Livelihoods and Environmental Governance to eradicate poverty (NILALEG)

Contract

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

Background

The project was designed to contribute to the forest, savannah and rangeland of Namibia’s northern areas to pilot an integrated landscape management approach, reducing poverty through sustainable nature-based livelihoods, protecting and restoring forests as carbon sinks, and promoting Land Degradation Neutrality (LDN).

Project overall objective: To promote an integrated landscape management approach in key agricultural and forest landscapes, reducing poverty through sustainable nature-based livelihoods, protecting and restoring forests as carbon sinks, and promoting Land Degradation Neutrality.

Project Outcomes:

1. Functioning intra-governmental coordination to guide implementation and monitoring of global targets
2. Enhanced sustainable land and forest management, biodiversity conservation and livelihoods in target landscapes
3. Enhanced access to finance, technical assistance and market information to pilot and scale up the integrated landscape management approach and sustainable enterprises
4. Project results are tracked, and the impact of interventions evaluated, with learning captured and shared

The project duration is 6 years and 3 months (September 2019 to August 2025) with a total budget of USD 10,823,744 and planned co-financing of USD 74,112,844.

The project objectives are achieved by a strategy which develops national and regional capacity for an integrated approach to planning and managing landscapes, monitoring spatial results in reporting on multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), and for compliance with environmental legislation (Component 1).

The project works in a set of focal landscapes to demonstrate how to achieve the related and overlapping spatial targets of these MEAs, implementing the Integrated Regional Land Use Plans through fine-scale participatory land-use planning and management with communities, businesses, and local government and traditional authorities. This landscape-level work will enable a demonstration of the impacts of integrated landscape management for rural development and wealth creation, through sustainable land and forest management interventions on the ground with communities, and nature-based enterprise development (Component 2). Innovative financial mechanisms will be put in place for scaling up nationally (Component 3), based on capturing and sharing of lessons learnt and impact achieved through the new integrated landscape management approach (Component 4).

The project draws together a wide range of stakeholders from the public sector for intragovernmental coordination, in partnership with the private sector, civil society, research organizations, and donor and technical partners, to bring about a shift in the way Namibia approaches rural development, coordinating actions to reverse environmental degradation and maximize nature-based livelihoods.

COVID-19 situation, first cases of COVID-19 in Namibia were registered in March 2020, and the government implemented a national lockdown in the following month. During the crisis, the economy contracted by 11% in 2020 according to the National Statistical Agency (NSA)[1]. Significant impact was recorded in the tourism sector with 96.5% of tourism businesses adversely affected, and the manufacturing and construction sectors contracted by 9.2% and 5.7% respectively in 2020[2]. UNECA estimates show that the COVID-19 pandemic is expected to increase poverty levels from 17.2% to 19.5% in Namibia[3]. From 3 January 2020 to 9 June 2022, there have been 167,565 confirmed cases of COVID-19 with 4,040 deaths, reported to WHO[4]. As of 1 January 2022, a total of 643,829 vaccine doses have been administered.

Duties and Responsibilities

The MTR will assess progress towards the achievement of the project objectives and outcomes as specified in the Project Document and assess early signs of project success or failure with the goal of identifying the necessary changes to be made in order to set the project on-track to achieve its intended results within the available resources (time and finance). Its overall objective is to increase the chance of the project success at the project completion. The MTR will also review the project’s strategy and its risks regarding sustainability. a) Scope of the Services: The MTR team will assess the following four categories of project progress. See the Guidance for Conducting Midterm Reviews of UNDP-Supported, GEF-Financed Projects for extended descriptions. i. Project Strategy Project design:

• Review the problem addressed by the project and the underlying assumptions.
• Review the effect of any incorrect assumptions or changes to the context to achieving the project results as outlined in the Project Document.
• Review the relevance of the project strategy and assess whether it provides the most effective route towards expected/intended results. Were lessons from other relevant projects properly incorporated into the project design?
• Review how the project addresses country priorities.
• Review country ownership. Was the project concept in line with the national sector development priorities and plans of the country (or of participating countries in the case of multi-country projects)?
• Review decision-making processes: were perspectives of those who would be affected by project decisions, those who could affect the outcomes, and those who could contribute information or other resources to the process, taken into account during project design processes?
• Review the extent to which relevant gender issues were raised in the project design (see Annex 9 of Guidance for Conducting Midterm Reviews of UNDP-Supported, GEF
• Financed Projects for further guidelines) Were relevant gender issues (e.g. the impact of the project on gender equality in the programme country, involvement of women’s groups, engaging women in project activities) raised in the Project Document?
• If there are major areas of concern, recommend areas for improvement.

Competencies

• Excellent communication skills;
• Demonstrable analytical skills;
• Project evaluation/review experiences within United Nations system will be considered an asset;
• Experience with implementing evaluations remotely will be considered an asse

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• A Master’s degree in environmental management, development studies, evaluation theory or other closely related field.

Experiences:

• Relevant experience with result-based management evaluation methodologies;
• Experience applying SMART indicators and reconstructing or validating baseline scenarios;
• Competence in adaptive management, as applied to land degradation, specifically Sustainable Forest Management (SFM);
• Experience in evaluating projects;
• Experience working in Southern Africa;
• Experience in relevant technical areas for at least 10 years;
• Demonstrated understanding of issues related to gender, land degradation and SFM; experience in gender sensitive evaluation and analysis.

Language Skills:

• Fluency in written and spoken English.

How to apply:

To apply please access UNDP Jobs site http://jobs.undp.org.

Recommended Presentation of Offer;

• Completed Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;
• Personal CV or a P11 Personal History form, indicating all past experience from similar projects, as well as the contact details (email and telephone number) of the candidate and at least three (3) professional references;
• Brief description of approach to work/technical proposal of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment, and a proposed methodology on how they will approach and complete the assignment (max 1 page).
• Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided (based on the number of working days mentioned ToR.

Note:

• Please group all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows uploading maximum one document.
• Qualified women and members of minorities are encouraged to apply;
• Incomplete applications will not be considered. Please make sure you have provided all requested materials.FAILURE TO SUBMIT A TECHNICAL AND FINANCIAL PROPOSALS WILL LEAD TO CANDIDATES BEING DISQUALIFIED.

Incomplete applications will be excluded from further consideration.

To download the full Terms of Reference (TOR), P11 History Form and The Financial Proposal Template, please access the UNDP Procurement Notice site on the below link: UNDP | Procurement Notices - 93478 - National Consultant-Project Mid-