Background

Azerbaijan belongs to the world’s water stress countries. With current deficit of water resources being about 5 km³, the additional pressures on water resources due to climate change will seriously affect the rural water supply. The region of Greater Caucasus has been identified as particularly vulnerable in this regard.

Water is unevenly distributed across the seasons and geographic areas in Azerbaijan. Despite an overall trend of rainfall reductions in the country, the mountainous regions of Greater Caucasus experience increasingly prolonged inundations and flash floods during the wet season and extended dry spells during the dry seasons. Variation of water flow may reach 30% between the dry and wet seasons. Paradoxically, most of the quality ground waters are formed in foothills of the Greater and Lesser Caucasus and constitute 24 million m3 (8.8.km3) per year. However, currently, only 20% of a total resource has been used. And as Azerbaijan's Second National Communication (SNC) suggests, with the view of increasing water deficit, the country will have to increase ground water extraction both for irrigation and fresh water supply needs.

The project aims to reduce vulnerability of the mountain communities of the Greater Caucasus region of Azerbaijan to climate change induced water stress and flood hazards by improved water and flood management through addressing the management framework at the legislative and policy level, strengthening institutional capacity by introducing new non- structural methods and providing training and empowering communities to actively participate in water and flood management.

Azerbaijan already has considerable experience of structural measures and therefore the proposed project focuses on non-structural measures. These measures mainly address institutional and management challenges, as well as improving public understanding of the problems and potential solutions, developing both organizational and community involvement in the process and pilot actions to improve micro-watershed management practices with a direct engagement of affected communities. The project proposes to sensitize water management policies and practices to the long term risks of, and adaptation to, climate change. Other aspects of flood mitigation and reduction of water stress, such as improved land use management and flood zoning, also require the sensitization of both government and civil society and these tend to have become very much secondary considerations in water management.

• Water and Flood management policy and regulatory frameworks to respond to climate change risks;
• Technical capacities to improve climate risk management in the Greater Caucasus;
• Water and Flood management practices demonstrated to lead to community resilience.

• Water and Flood management framework is modified to respond to adaptation needs and improve climate risk management on over 22,067 sq. km ³of land in highly vulnerable region of Greater Caucasus;
• Key institutions have capacities, technical skills, tools and methods to apply advanced climate risk management practices for water stress and flood mitigation;
• Community resilience to floods and water stress improved by introducing locally tailored climate risk management practices benefiting over 1,000,000 people on total land area of 22,067 km² of the Southern slopes of the Greater Caucasus.

Duties and Responsibilities

• Provide technical and strategic assistance for project activities, including planning, monitoring and site operations, and assuming quality control of interventions;
• Provide hands-on support to the NPM, project staff and other government counterparts in the areas of project management and planning, management of site activities, monitoring, and impact assessment;
• Finalize Terms of Reference for consultants and sub-contractors, and assist in the selection, procurement and recruitment process;
• Coordinate the work of all consultants and sub-contractors, ensuring the timely delivery of expected outputs, and effective synergy among the various sub-contracted activities;
• Assist the NPM in the preparation of project annual reviews, quarterly financial reports for submission to UNDP, the GEF, and others as required;
• Provide technical overview of  the preparation of all technical reports;
• Assist in mobilizing staff and consultants in the conduct of a mid-term project evaluation, and in undertaking revisions in the implementation strategy, based on evaluation results;
• Assist the NPM in liaison work with project partners, donor organizations, NGOs and other groups to ensure effective coordination of project activities;
• Document lessons from project implementation and make recommendations to the Steering Committee for more effective implementation and coordination of project activities;
  
• Perform other tasks as may be requested by the NPM, Steering Committee and other project partners;
• Contribute to the review of existing flood warning systems;
• Confirm the identification of a hydrometric network to optimize the number of stations required for the basin monitoring of all meteorological and hydrological variables of interest, based on the data frequency requirement, safety and security of equipment, accessibility, manpower availability and suitability of the equipment. Provide inputs in design of an upgraded hydrometeorological network and assist to prepare all necessary documentation (including specification for purchasing of gauging station);
• Provide detailed specification including costs of all equipment and each component of the hydrometric network specified including the detailed design and bid document for those prioritised (6+3) stations for future rehabilitation / new installation;
• Prepare an operational plan for the hydrometric network including transmission of data (in collaboration with the Telecommunications expert), data management, data analysis and reporting procedures. The maintenance plan will cover the role of various aspects such as manpower, capacity, material and finance;
• Produce guidance for the design and implementation of a hydrometric station;
• Review the existing coverage, physical condition and data collection procedure including the quality of data;
• Work with Telecommunications expert and institutional expert in the assessment of the existing telecommunication system, institutional arrangements and protocols for the collection,transmission, sharing, storage and use of the observed data.

Competencies

• Excellent analytical skills;
• Capability to work under deadline pressure and to take on a range of tasks;
• Ability to work in a team, to motivate other team members, and to balance the inputs and work of team members;
• Self-motivation and ability to recommend options for resolutions of issues;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Highest standards of integrity, discretion and loyalty.

Required Skills and Experience