The World Food Programme (WFP) is the world's largest humanitarian agency, fighting hunger worldwide. We are currently seeking for a qualified officer to fill the position of Programme Policy Officer to support the work on various Climate Risk Management Initiatives specifically the ARC Replica and microinsurance. This position will be based in the Programme Unit in Antananarivo, Madagascar.

General Background:

Climate change compounds existing threats to food security, hunger and malnutrition. It will make natural disasters more frequent and intense, land and water scarcer and more difficult to access, and increases in agricultural productivity even harder to achieve. It will disproportionally impact the most vulnerable people, the majority of whom live in fragile areas prone to climate hazards, ultimately putting hundreds of millions of people at risk. It is estimated that by 2050, the risk of hunger could increase by 20 percent, and child malnutrition is anticipated to be 20 percent higher than it would have been without a climate change scenario.

WFP approaches the challenge of climate change from the point of view of its impact on hunger and under nutrition. WFP’s work on climate change and climate risk management focuses on enhancing the resilience of food insecure communities and countries, helping them adapt to more frequent and intense climatic events. About 40 percent of WFP’s operations already include activities to reduce disaster risk, build resilience and help people adapt to the effects resulting from climate change. WFP is developing and testing innovative tools and approaches to help Governments and communities to manage disaster risks in a more effective manner.

ARC Replica

One way WFP can drive pro-active risk management instead of re-active disaster response is through its support to the African Union’s African Risk Capacity (ARC), a comprehensive, integrated sovereign drought insurance solution for member states. The available ARC Insurance Policies pay-out to national governments when a drought of a certain magnitude is measured using African Risk View (ARV) satellite monitoring crop models and prior levels of food insecurity. WFP is one of the International Organizations that partners with ARC to provide additional financial and operational capacity to implement and scale up responses following successful ARC insurance pay-outs. ARC Replica is an insurance product offered by ARC Ltd to WFP as an innovative approach to expand climate risk insurance coverage to more people and improve the effectiveness of emergency humanitarian response in vulnerable African countries prone to climate risks. Under ARC’s Replica Coverage, WFP and other partners (Replica Partners) can match the insurance coverage of ARC Member States (Replicated Countries) by purchasing a ‘Replica Policy’.

The Replica policy is a parametric (index) insurance contract which proportionally mirrors the terms and conditions of the policy of the Replicated country up to the amount of coverage taken out by the country itself. This Replica approach to climate risk insurance coverage in an efficient way while building additional capacity to implement national response plans.

Another way is to introduce microinsurance schemes into WFP’s and Government’s programmes, to set up integrated risk management systems. WFP has launched the R4 initiative, with Oxfam America, since 2011 and is currently operating into 6 countries. In 2018, 87,000 households have been insured through this mechanism. More than 6,000 farmers have also accessed the scheme without the support of WFP. Microinsurance is integrated with risk reduction, village savings & loans schemes, but also livelihood diversification systems.

Context:

Given its geographical position, Madagascar is regularly confronted with a great diversity of cataclysms. The frequency of disasters and their scale are such that, whatever the year, it is not rare that one of the Malagasy regions is confronted with a cataclysm. Climate shocks in the recent decades, have severely increased the vulnerability of the households and negatively impacted economic growth. The majority of Malagasy people’s livelihoods are highly climate-sensitive: subsistence agriculture, cash crops, livestock rearing, and daily agricultural labor are the main sources of income. Households had to resort to negative coping strategies such as distress asset sales and reduced consumption and leads to persistent high rates of food insecurity and malnutrition, with intermittent spikes in acute food insecurity and malnutrition.

In line with the strategic objectives WFP implements a range of varied and integrated activities in Madagascar to combat hunger and malnutrition in the country, aligned with the Government's policies and priorities. These activities range from emergency humanitarian response to resilience-building activities with emphasis on support for agricultural value chains, development of community assets, improved market access, support for children's schooling, and prevention of malnutrition. WFP contributes to national capacity building by providing technical and financial support for monitoring and needs assessment efforts, such as the annual SMART Nutrition Survey, the Comprehensive Food and Nutrition Security and Vulnerability Analysis and Harmonised Framework (CH) Analysis.

WFP supports the implementation of the National Response Plan (PNR) developed by the National Bureau for Disaster Risk Management (BNGRC) and provides a response to the most vulnerable people affected by acute food and nutrition insecurity, drought and floods.

Madagascar is one the 4 countries testing the ARC Replica policy.

Specific responsibilities and tasks:

The role of the Programme Policy Officer (SC) will be to provide technical support, to the programme unit to develop, refine and manage implementation of climate related activities and the WFP ARC Replica Operational Plan in Madagascar. The Programme Policy Officer (SC) will also lead the implementation of the microinsurance scheme integrated with other WFP’s activities, and to scale it up. The Programme Policy Officer (SC) will also contribute to the elaboration and implementation of the CO’s fundraising activities for climate finance.

S/he will support the country office in implementing ARC replica. S/he will lead the implementation of microinsurance scheme. S/he will support the coordination of the CO’s climate change adaptation, climate risk management and resilience programming in close coordination with the Country Office Prog Unit, OSZIR team in HQ, and Regional Bureau, as well as the Emergency Management Prevention and Support Unit (CPGU) and/or relevant external partners (including research institutes). The Programme Policy Officer (SC) will be provided with supplementary hands-on training and exposure to enable him/her to undertake these functions.

Specific tasks will include:

Support the implementation of the ARC Replica Operational Plan in Madagascar
Support country capacity assessments and capacity building requirements for WFP’s Replica contingency plans in consultation with the CPGU and partners as required, this includes participating in field missions, including national and community consultations.
Support the collaboration with ARC and relevant research institutes in the process of development, testing and customization of indices (parameters) used in the drought insurance policy.
Train the local team (particularly WFP programme unit) to ensure a good participation in the technical working groups, ensuring quality control in the final customization of the index.
Liaise with HQ units (e.g. Legal, VAM and M&E etc.) to support the compliance checks of the insurance policies
Reporting, monitoring and evaluation, including support on documenting lessons learnt and best practices; WFP ARC Replica pilot work and other partner’s climate risk management initiatives and support communications in updating WFP website content
Information sharing with other CO’s engaged in Climate risk management activities and support communications with partners as required
Coordinate and share information with NGOs and institutions involved in ARC Replica in the region and in country
Lead the implementation of the microinsurance pilot. In particular:
- Ensure a good integration of microinsurance with ARC Replica activities
- Ensure a good integration of microinsurance with asset creation and market access activities
- Ensure the insurance product is correctly capturing the risk experienced by communities.
- Ensure all stakeholders and participants in particular are properly trained on the system, on insurance, and on the integrated risk management strategy
- Develop an integrated strategy of insurance with other tools (risk reduction, village saving & loans, livelihood diversification, market access, improvement of farming practices, financial inclusion…) in order to ensure a progressive increase in cash contribution over time
- Liaise with all admin units to ensure a smooth process
- Liaise with M&E in order to ensure a robust monitoring system
Review project proposals through a climate sensitive lens to ensure that climate adaptation is sufficiently considered from initial design phase
Any other related duties as required

Organisational Capabilities:

Purpose – ability to align individual purpose to WFP’s mission.
People - support our people to be the best equipped to serve our beneficiaries.
Partnership – lead across boundaries to deliver the best for our beneficiaries.
Performance – deliver practical, sustainable, solutions to achieve WFP’s mission.

Qualifications and experience:

Advanced University degree, or University degree with experience and training/courses in one or more of the following disciplines: insurance/finance, climate change adaptation, environmental studies, agriculture and food security, development studies or related area. Index Insurance skills will be very valuable to be able to provide the right support to country teams
5 years post graduate, progressively responsible, job related experience in climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, food security analysis, policy and/or, disaster risk finance or related area.
Knowledge or experience in climate risk management in Madagascar and/or macro and micro insurance policies would be considered an asset.
Proficiency in Windows, MS Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Outlook)

Working Languages:

Working knowledge of French (proficiency/level C), English (intermediate/level B) required and intermediate knowledge (intermediate/level B) of another UN official language (Arabic, Chinese, English, Russian and Spanish) desirable.

Supervision:

The Programme Policy Officer (SC) will work with the overall supervision of the Resilience Officer in collaboration with the VAM and M&E units. And with HQ in Rome

Fighting Hunger Worldwide

Les candidats intéressés sont priés de soumettre leurs candidatures SEULEMENT EN LIGNE aux liens ci-dessous :

Pour les candidats internes au PAM via : http://newgo.wfp.org/services/e-recruitment

Pour les candidats externes via : http://www1.wfp.org/careers/job-openings

Deadline : 11 MARS 2021

LES CANDIDATURES FEMININES QUALIFIEES SONT FORTEMENT ENCOURAGEES

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Added 3 years ago - Updated 3 years ago - Source: wfp.org