Background

Duties and Responsibilities

•  Provide advice and support to MONRE and UNDP in planning, technical quality assurance, M&E, and reporting of the project;
• Coordinate and ensure quality inputs to the revision or/and newly formulation of natural resources and environment (NRE) legislative frameworks and policies supported by the Project; Initiate and provide quality assurance on policy analysis/researches, and ; and contribute to knowledge generation and advocacy;
• Contribute to the partnership development and coordination, including support to Viet Nam’s effective contribution to in the international and regional forums, and contribute to the development of the UNDP Viet Nam’s Sustainable Development Progamme;
• Provide capacity building and knowledge transfer to the government counterpart and project staff.

•  Project planning: Provide advice and assist the NPD, National Project Manager/ Coordinator, and UNDP Programme Officer in charge of the project to ensure quality and timely preparation and submission of annual and quarterly project work-plans; Identify potential risks and emerging issues that may affect project outputs and outcomes, and initiate the revision of project plans and project’s Resource and Results Framework (RRF);
• Technical review and quality assurance: Assume the responsibilities of technical quality assurance for job descriptions, terms of references, and bidding requirements/ requests for proposal, and project outputs/products; design and put in place quality control/ peer review mechanisms to ensure highest quality of documents and project outputs/products before review and approval by the NPD and UNDP;
• Monitoring, review and evaluation: Lead to prepare, update and revise indicators, baselines, targets, and means of verifications for project outcomes, outputs, and activities; design necessary tools and mechanisms for regular and ad-hoc project progress reviews/ meetings, evaluations, and ensure proper implementation and follow-up of recommendations/actions from such reviews/evaluations;
• Reporting and documenting lessons and good practices: Provide inputs to the preparation of progress project reports, including reports to donors (if any), focusing on capturing results and lessons, and undertake necessary reviews to ensure quality reports; initiate and ensure proper documentation of project lessons, experiences, best practices, and human interest stories; 
• Publishing and disseminating project results/ products: Ensure publication of project products, including policy briefs, research results/ products, and proceedings of policy dialogues/ technical meetings, and wide disseminations of these outputs.

• Coordinating to the legislative and policy revision and formulation: Thorough reviews to identify gaps and discrepancies among legislative frameworks and policies that need to address, and support UNDP in advocacy for policy changes. Lead in mobilizing inputs and make contribution to the revision of and formulation of new legislation and policies for NRE sector, notably the Law on Environmental Protection,
• Initiating researches/ policy analysis and ensuring quality: Identify the needs of policy analysis, and researches on natural resources and environment protection related areas. Formulate research proposals, terms of references, requests for proposals for such policy analysis/ researches, and provide guidance and quality assurance to ensure quality and timely productions of highest quality products; Actively facilitate and participate in research partnerships with relevant institution within MONRE, line ministries, services providers, other UN organizations, relevant donors and NGOs;
• Generating knowledge and information: Based on policy analysis and research results in Viet Nam, experiences and practices elsewhere, prepare policy summary papers, focusing on policy recommendations, advocacy messages/ statements, and media information;
• Knowledge sharing:Participate in events to share knowledge/information acquired from the project and join UNDP and other international knowledge networks to extract good practices learned elsewhere in natural resources and environment protection and share those in Viet Nam;
• Contributing to advocacy, policy dialogues, and media relations: Identify opportunities for advocacy, policy dialogues, technical discussions; and dissemination through media; Provide substantive inputs to the preparation of advocacy messages/ policy statements for important events, and UNDP’s policy positions on substantive issues for policy dialogues and forums. 
• Contributing to policy and tools formulation: Provide quality advice and substantive inputs to the formulation of policies in NRE sector; support the development of the provincial Environmental Performance Index in Viet Nam;

•  Supporting coordination and partnership development: The ITS is expected to assist UNDP and MONRE to enhance partnership with donors and development partners (notably the ADB, JICA, the World Bank), businesses and international and national NGOs for better information sharing, to ensure synergies, coherence and complementarities of programme/project activities; advise the Government and UNDP on areas of possible cooperation with other donors and development partners in the field of NRE management;
• Contributing to UNDP Programme: Actively contribute to the development and implementation of the UNDP Viet Nam’s Sustainable Development Programme; Ensure synergies and coherence between the responsible project and other projects and related activities in order to materialize benefits and impacts of the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Programme in Viet Nam.

• Capacity assessment and capacity building:Provide advice in assessing capacity needs in the NRE sector rand of project staff. Develop plans and terms of references for capacity development, curricula of trainings; and assist in identifying appropriate training partners/organizations. 
• Transfer of technical knowledge and experiences:Identify knowledge gaps that exist in MONRE, related ministries and local agencies and suggest necessary measures for addressing such gaps, including suggestions for policy research and data survey; the ITS is expected to transfer and dynamically apply technical knowledge and experiences from his/her academic background and professional experiences to enhance technical knowledge at ISPONRE and participating departments in MONRE for sustainable management, efficient uses, and increased investment for natural resources, and environmentally sustainable economic growth. 
• Coaching and on-the-job training: Mainstream lessons and best practices learned elsewhere into capacity building activities for the Project Management Unit, staff at ISPONRE participating departments in MONRE; Lead, deliver and provide on-the-job training on low carbon development relevant aspects, research methodology, and writing and publication of results

Impact of Results

• High quality project work-plans (annual and quarterly), M&E tools, technical assurance/review mechanisms, and project reports;
• High quality guidance to international and national consultants, contractors/ service providers, research-partners; and technical inputs and reviews to ensure high quality project outputs;
• High quality research proposals and policy dialogues; quality outputs, and publications of research results, policy briefs, focusing on recommendations; and documentation of lesson learns and human-interest stories;
• Quality inputs to the preparation of advocacy messages, policy development media information;
• Quality inputs to the devlopment and operation of the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Programme in Viet Nam;
• Quality advice and facilitation for capacity building of the government counterparts, related authorities, and project staff;
• Effective and active (knowledge, coordination relevant) networking;
• High quality advice on capacity building needs and plans.

Competencies

• Contributes to the elaboration of advocacy strategies by identifying and prioritizing audiences and communication means;
• Uses the opportunity to bring forward and disseminate materials for advocacy work.

• Effectively networks with partners seizing opportunities to build strategic alliances relevant to UNDP’s mandate and strategic agenda;
• Sensitizes UN Partners, donors and other international organizations to the UNDP’s strategic agenda, identifying areas for joint efforts;
• Develops positive ties with civil society to build/strengthen UNDP’s mandate;
• Identifies needs and interventions for capacity building of counterparts, clients and potential partners;
• Displays initiative, sets challenging outputs for him/herself and willingly accepts new work assignments.

• Makes the case for innovative ideas documenting successes and building them into the design of new approaches;
• Identifies new approaches and strategies that promote the use of tools and mechanisms;
• Develops and/or participates in the development of tools and mechanisms, including identifying new approaches to promote individual and organizational learning and knowledge sharing using formal and informal methodologies.

• Understands more advanced aspects of primary area of specialization as well as the fundamental concepts of related disciplines;
• Continues to seeks new and improved methods and systems for accomplishing the work of the unit;
• Keeps abreast of new developments in area of professional discipline and job knowledge and seeks to develop him/herself professionally;
• Demonstrates comprehensive knowledge of information technology and applies it in work assignments;
• Demonstrates comprehensive understanding and knowledge of the current guidelines and project management tools and utilizes these regularly in work assignments;
• Good advocacy and communications skills, able to take a forward looking strategic views;
• Good interpersonal skills and teamwork to work in a multi-cultural environment;

• Develops promotional activities based on monitoring/evaluation information identifying areas requiring higher visibility;
• Develops messages for use by UN staff when working with partners, internationally and nationally;
• Reviews documents and materials intended for use within and outside the organization in order to ensure consistency and validity of messages;
• Creates and cultivates networks of partners to promote UNDP’s image.

• Performed analysis of political situations and scenarios, and contributes to the formulation of institutional responses;
• Uses the opportunity to bring forward and disseminate materials for global advocacy work and adapts it for use at country level.

Conceptual Innovation in the Provision of Technical Expertise

• Leverages different experiences and expertise of team members to achieve better and more innovative outcomes;
• Leverages multi disciplinary, institutional knowledge and experience of other countries and regions to promote UNDP’s development agenda;
• Participates in dialogue about conceptual innovation at the country and regional levels.

• Anticipates client needs;
• Works towards creating an enabling environment for a smooth relationship between the clients and service provider;
• Demonstrates understanding of client’s perspective.

• Promoting ethics and integrity, creating organizational precedents;
• Building support and political acumen;
• Building staff competence, creating an environment of creativity and innovation;
• Building and promoting effective teams;
• Creating and promoting enabling environment for open communication;
• Creating an emotionally intelligent organization;
• Leveraging conflict in the interests of UN & setting standards;
• Sharing knowledge across the organization and building a culture of knowledge sharing and learning. Promoting learning and knowledge management/sharing is the responsibility of each staff member;
• Fair and transparent decision making; calculated risk-taking.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Advanced university degree (Master's) in environmental sciences, natural resources and environment management or related fields.

Experience:

• Proven knowledge in natural resources and environment protection, NRE policy formulation and implementation;
• At least seven (7) years working experience in in conducting policy analysis and providing policy advice to the government agencies to enhance national and provincial policies in relevant topics;
• Excellent conceptualization and analytical skills and proven experience in leading policy researches in relevant topics;
• Prior experience with UNDP or another UN or international organizations will be an asset;
• Relevant experience of Viet Nam or South East Asia countries is an advantage.

IT requirements

• Good skills in standard software (Word processing, spreadsheets) are expected;
• Experience with the use of databases is an important asset.

• Strong written and spoken skill of English is a must.