UNDP Jobs - 56106- National Consultant to Carry out a Study to Establ

National Consultant to Carry out a Study to Establish Livestock Mobility Patterns Nationally and Factors Influencing Sustainable Pastoral Livelihoods to Inform Development of a Pastoral Code

Location :

KAMPALA, UGANDA

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

Application Deadline :

19-May-15 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

National Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

30 Working days

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

30 Working days

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

The cattle corridor of Uganda has experienced dramatic land and vegetation degradation driven by a combination of inappropriate land use (agricultural encroachment into reserves) and the weakening of pastoralism as a production system. These are in turn driven by high population growth, high dependence on natural resources coupled with poor resource management, and poor economic development, poverty and more recently climate change. Pastoralism is the main economic activity in the corridor.

The Government of Uganda through the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) with support from United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) is implementing the project "Enabling environment for sustainable land management (SLM) to overcome land degradation in some of Uganda’s Cattle Corridor Districts, namely Kamuli and Nakasongola.

The overall goal of the project is Sustainable Land Management providing the basis for economic development, food security and sustainable livelihoods while restoring the ecological integrity of the Cattle Corridor ecosystem. The objective of the project is to provide land users and managers with the enabling policy, institutional and capacity environment for effective adoption of SLM within the complexity of the cattle corridor production system. This objective will be achieved through strengthening the policy, regulatory and institutional frameworks to support sustainable land and charcoal management in the cattle corridor, use of Knowledge as a basis for land use planning and improvement of dryland farming and pastoralism, and, facilitation of Local economic development through diversification and access to finance and insurance.

Objective of assignment

Overall the assignment is to identify a a system of service provision that does not force the settlement of herds, a system that would include mobile veterinary and health services, systems of effectively transporting milk and other livestock products to market regardless of the location of the herds. The study will lay foundation for provision of mobile services and inclusive financial services t boost sustainable pastoralism and climate adaptation mechanisms.

The specific aim of this consultancy is to:

Establish livestock mobility patterns at national level and more specifically utilise the target districts for more details and also document the associated land tenure regimes for effective mobility;
Identify mobile pastoralists groups, their stocks and migratory routes;
Document existing traditional systems of resource use by pastoralists and conditions that support pastoral mobility as an adaptation strategy to more effective sustainable land management;
Identify priority social services needed by the pastoral groups and any other needs of the mobile pastoral communities,
Identify and hold discussions with key sectors that could provide services to meet the needs of the mobile pastoralists and sensitise relevant service providers to develop a system for provision of mobile services and incentives; and, propose best approaches to sustain mobility;
Create awareness among local leaders and other support groups about the importance of pastoral mobility;
Propose ways to strengthen and provide incentives for the private sector to provide service delivery to mobile pastoralists.

The project stakeholders include farmers, who are the direct beneficiaries, government agencies namely: The MAAIF, National Environment Management Authority (NEMA), the Ministry of Energy and Mineral Development (MEMD), the Ministry of Lands and Urban Development (MLUD), Nakasongola and Kamuli district local governments and the National Agricultural Research Organisation (NARO) who are the implementers.

Duties and Responsibilities

The geographical scope of this consultancy is national because the intention is to develop a pastoral code for the country but the specific project districts are Kamuli and Nakasongola districts. The technical coverage is mainly on building capacity of project beneficiaries in focussing on pastoral mobility as a strategy to enhance sustainable land management. It is expected that the assignment shall be completed in a period of three months starting July 2014.

The consultant will be expected to perform the following specific tasks:

Review documentation relevant for sustainable pastoralism (e.g Gufu Oba, lessons from other dryland countries such as Botswana and Ethiopia) and generate an acceptable inception report for the assignment. A stakeholder workshop should be held to approve/validate the inception report;
Engage with stakeholders in order to assess the extent of pastoralism in the country as well as assess the pastoralist mobility needs;
Develop proposals for effective pastoralism in the Uganda context taking into account the land tenure regimes;
Map out pilot areas and engage with the selected communities for demonstrative pastoralism mobility;
Propose a mechanism for implementation of the approaches to effective pastoralism mobility.

Deliverables:

An inception report explaining the approaches, schedules of the detailed activities and expected time of delivery of the assignment;
A report of the stakeholder Analysis and service providers for effective pastoralism mobility;
Guidelines for pastoral mobility (Booklet);
An implementation strategy for pastoral mobility developed;
Policy brief on the process, the pastoral mobility plan and the guidelines.

The consultant shall report to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) through the UNCCD focal point and will work closely with and supervised by the SLM steering committee. The Project management unit in the Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries shall monitor progress against planned activities/deliverables and report to UNDP. Disbursement of funds from UNDP to the consultant shall be made upon receipt of certification from the PMU. The consultant shall liaise with district Agricultural officers, District Veterinary officers, SLM coordinators, district land officers and district planners and will report to the UNDP Country Director on all contractual obligations.

Payment terms against the deliverables:

20% upon approval of the inception report;
35% upon completion of the Stakeholder Analysis report and guidelines for Pastoral mobility;
35% upon completion of an implementation strategy for pastoral mobility;
10% upon presentation of an acceptable policy brief on the process, the pastoral mobility plan and the guidelines.

Working arrangement

Evaluation Criteria

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology:

Cumulative analysis.

The award of the contract shall be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

Responsive/compliant/acceptable; and
Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation. 70%-30%.

Technical Criteria weight; [70%]
Financial Criteria weight; [30%]

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70% of the total technical points) would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

Technical Criteria – Maximum 70points

Relevance of education – 10 Points;
Language skills – 5 Points;
Knowledge of the area of work and expectation from the activities being covered-15 points;
Relevance of professional experience in conducting assignments of similar nature and scope especially in the area of agriculture- 30 points;
Experience in writing/publication- 10 points.

Financial proposal (Maximum 30 points): appropriateness shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal’s offer to the lowest price among the proposals received by UNDP.

Financial assessment

A lump sum amount approach shall be used with the following expectations

The lump sum amount must be “all-inclusive”;
The contract price is fixed regardless of changes in the cost components;
For duty travels, UN’s Daily Subsistence Allowance (DSA) rates prevailing at the time of sourcing, for the duty station and all other cities indicated in the TOR as part of duty travel destinations will be used. This will give offerors an indication of the cost of living in a duty station/destination, to aid their determination of the appropriate fees and financial proposal amount, but it does not imply that Offerors are entitled to DSA payment; and
The initial payment includes the actual cost of the IC’s travel to arrive at the designated Duty Station. This implies that the completion of the journey can be considered as one of the deliverables payable upon arrival.

Interested individual consultants must submit the following ocuments/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document:

Personal CV, 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;
Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP (Annex II).

Technical proposal bearing following:

Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment and the offerors interpretation of the assignment;
A methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment, including a work plan; Financial proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided (Annex II)

Application process

Applicants are requested to apply online at http://jobs.undp.org by 19 May, 2015. Individual consultants are invited to submit applications together with their CV for these positions. UNDP applies a fair and transparent selection process that will take into account the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals. Qualified women and members of social minorities are encouraged to apply. Interested applicants can also find this advert on http://procurement-notices.undp.org/(Reference #22035) to download Annex II and the Terms Of References (TORs). In case you fail to access the above links directly, please go to google and type in UNDP jobs or UNDP notices and search for the relevant job.

Interested applicants should send an email to: agnes.kintu@undp.org; justine.naiga-bagonza@undp.org and copy diana.nabbanja@undp.org, for any inquiries.

Competencies

Mature judgment and initiative;
Ability to think out-of-the-box;
Ability to present complex issues in simple and clear manner;
Demonstrates integrity and ethical standards;
Ability to work under pressure and deliver high quality results on time;
Initiative and independence;
Good communication and organizational skills, with demonstrated evidence of capacity to produce and present good reports;
Analytic capacity and demonstrated ability to process, analyses and synthesize complex, technical information from different disciplines;
Ability to innovate, combining methodological approaches and data from various levels and disciplines including economics, finance, development and conservation;
Ability to draft concise and informative documentation in English for a range of uses from detailed progress reports to media releases including ability to analyse complex information and to draw out the key points and issues and to present these in a way that can be easily understood;
Strong inter-personal, networking and team-building skills; competent in leading teams and creating team spirit, management of inter-group dynamics and conflicting interests of various actors, stimulating team members to produce quality outputs in a timely and transparent fashion;
Knowledge and skills in communicating Early Warning products and services;
Designing, and implementing communications strategies;
Monitoring and conceptual skills;
Demonstrates integrity and ethical standards;
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Ugandan National holding at least a Master’s Degree in Environment Sciences/Economics, Land Use planning, Rangelands Ecology, Agriculture with a bias in Animal Production, or any related fields from a recognized and reputable institution.

Experience:

The consultant must have undertaken similar or related assignment in Uganda in the last 5 years;
The consultant should be a qualified land use planner with knowledge in land use planning, Agriculture /Animal husbandry or Natural Resources Management and with facilitation skills;
A solid track record in in rural planning and use of GIS, with at least seven years of experience;
Familiar with socio-economic set up of pastoralist communities in semi-arid / dry land farming systems;
Demonstrated experience of working with government agencies, national researchers and communities will be an added advantage;
Publications in the field of environmental science research (including at a working paper level) in areas relevant to the assignment will be an asset.

Language:

The language of the assignment shall be English;
All deliverables shall be presented in the English language;
Therefore, excellent English communication skills (Oral, written, and presentation) are essential.