Antecedentes

In May 2009 as part of the UNDP Evaluation Office 2009-2010 programme of work, an evaluation of UNDP’s Contribution to Environmental Management for Poverty Reduction: The Poverty-Environment Nexus (PEN) commenced. The intent driving the evaluation was that there is a nexus of issues closely linking poverty alleviation and environmental protection, which came from the understanding that:
  • Development schemes run the risk of sacrificing longer term environmental sustainability for short term economic and job creation benefits;
  • Over-exploitation of natural resources adversely effects ecosystem health, and in time reduces economic output;
  • The rural poor disproportionately depend on the availability of natural resources for their subsistence livelihoods;
  • Efforts to reduce pollution, and conserve natural resources, are unlikely to achieve success if the majority of citizens view them as unfairly restricting opportunities for people to work and feed their families, and
  • Integrated programmes can improve the livelihoods of the poor while protecting the environment
The evaluation recommended a strengthened direction for UNDP to ensure that practice follows principles. Apart from following policy and advocacy, there is a need to learn from good practices and to replicate successes. Secondly, the Poverty-Environment Initiative represents good practice and should be scaled up to provide a model of how UNDP does business at the country level. Thirdly, UNDP should provide guidelines and create verifiable indicators in order to further integrate poverty reduction and environmental protection into other UNDP operations. And finally, UNDP must overcome the functional silos that prevent cooperation and integration between focus areas. 
 
In response to this evaluation, UNDP is gearing up its efforts to more rigorously address the poverty-environment nexus, and implement the recommendations and decision of the Executive Board (2011/6)*. UNDP advocates for the notion that poverty is multi-dimensional as established in the current development paradigm, and encapsulated in the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). This notion has, in particular, been enriched by the increasing evidence on the role of ecosystem services in providing livelihoods, good health, habitable environs and decreased vulnerability to environmental shocks for the poor. Or conversely, if ecosystem services degrade or access is denied, poverty is exacerbated in multi-dimensions. Yet despite this increasing evidence and recognition of poverty-environment nexus (PEN) - there are a number of challenges ahead for UNDP to more actively comprehend, engage in and assist in addressing. For example, poverty-environment linkages are not usually mainstreamed or integrated into national development plans or poverty reduction strategies; projects and programmes often remain isolated islands of success and limited in scale-up; even where poverty-environment linkages are mainstreamed or integrated into development plans, or operationalization of the link has been limited or not possible and thus a number of implementation challenges remain.
 
This assignment represents the third phase of a programmatic response, which proposes to develop a more comprehensive view for UNDP on the poverty-environment nexus and respond to the PEN evaluation. More specifically, that UNDP can ensure its ‘practice follows principles’ in relation to programming at the country level thereby, assisting national governments to respond to the recommendations and challenges highlighted above. The following Phases guide this work:
  • Phase I – a systematic review of past and recent literature on the poverty-environment nexus and the implications it has for development programming in terms of new analysis and emerging issues. This review has been conducted by the Swedish Environment Institute and has been completed at the end of July 2011. This report will be made available to the consultant for Phase III.
  • Phase II – is focused on the lessons learnt from the perspective of programming within UNDP. It examines the work of the Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI). The PEI is a global UN-led programme that supports country-led efforts to mainstream poverty-environment linkages into national development planning. The PEI provides financial, technical and capacity support to partner countries to set up an integrated decision-making framework that allows for institutional arrangements, integrated assessment, policy and financing and monitoring and evaluation to address the particular poverty-environment context. The lessons learnt exercise is being undertaken internally to reflect on what drives success and why focusing on the tools and approaches that have been used. This assignment commenced in August 2011 and will be undertaken in conjunction with Phase III – the subject of this assignment. It is envisaged the Phase III consultant will work closely with staff from UNDP.
  • Phase III – will result in an analytical synthesis report based on the information previously collected from academic literature knowledge and practice as detailed in Phases I and II. The report will propose a policy and practice perspective for UNDP with a clear focus on integrating poverty reduction and environment-related issues within the framework of multi-dimensional poverty and human development. It will provide the basis for a guidance note on poverty-environment programming at the country level.  In addition there will be a need to reflect on other information which is available and pertinent to UNDP’s role in environmental management and poverty reduction. This would include, for example, the evaluation on the Poverty-Environment Nexus conducted by UNDP (2010), the Mid-Term Review of the PEI Scale-up Phase which is currently underway and other evaluations conducted by Norway and Belgium on the PEI Pilot Phase (both 2009). Other material may need to be reviewed and brought into the synthesis as required such as evaluations of country projects. 
*For details on the evaluation and management response please consult http://erc.undp.org/evaluation/viewevaluations.html?evalType=6

Deberes y responsabilidades

The task of this consultancy is to analyze and synthesize the information which has been prepared in Phases I and II, building on the experience of the PEI and integrating other relevant information. The main focus of this assignment is on zeroing in on key aspects for poverty-environment programming so that UNDP responds most effectively in delivering its services to partner countries. Such programming must be based on the latest advances in the literature as well as lessons learnt from practical experiences on mainstreaming poverty-environment linkages. The synthesis report should therefore:
  • Draw out and examine key existing and emerging issues from the literature review that have implications for poverty-environment programming, including where UNDP is likely to add most value;
  • Draw out and analyze the key factors that drive or trigger success in poverty-environment mainstreaming through an examination of whether these can be traced back to the set-up of an integrated decision-making framework;
  • If integrated decision-making frameworks were the triggers of success, trace back further to find out the factors that allowed for success, or in case integrated frameworks did not clearly emerge what were the factors that led to lack of success of these frameworks, including:
  • An assessment of institutional approaches and drivers and how focusing on the poverty-environment nexus can assist institutions to focus on sustainability of resources and livelihoods with a direct bearing on economic social and environmental progress. This will include focusing on the role of capacity development and the main drivers which lead to a range of institutional actors coming together to improve public policy in this area.
  • An assessment of the economic tools and approaches which have been applied for poverty-environment mainstreaming – recognizing potential gaps and weaknesses in these tools and providing recommendations on applicability and consistency for the range of tools available across a range of contexts and entry points. Through this approach it would be suitable to perhaps focus on quality of tools and making them more robust rather than breadth of tools available. This section of the consultancy would also provide the basis of a UN forum on economic tools for sustainable development in the context of poverty environment mainstreaming. Therefore, it should identify the basis of what has worked and what needs to be improved;
  • An analysis of the qualitative and quantitative indicators that have been developed for assessing change processes (mainstreaming) and outcome change in poverty and environmental conditions. This will include recommendations for usefulness of a range of indicators specifically for application at the country level.
The main output of this assignment is an analytical synthesis report which will form the basis for improving the way UNDP delivers its policy services related to the PEN. Therefore, the report should be framed in a suitable manner to allow UNDP to strengthen its delivery at the country level. This means that it will focus on analysing current experiences and on setting out practical recommendations in particular on the three elements mentioned above (tools, indicators, institutional drivers), but it should not be restricted in this regard. That is, using the broad literature on the poverty-environment nexus from Phase I the consultant should also address the key question of: how the delivery of support through PEI has addressed the key narratives on poverty and environment and whether this can be reinforced to provide added value in support of sustainable development opportunities.
 
Deliverables
  1. Annotated outline of report;
  2. Preliminary Draft;
  3. Final Draft;
  4. Final report.
The consultancy will be home based with two visits to New York. One at inception and one to present the findings of the assignment. The period of contract will be 30 days. Expected delivery of a draft report would be the mid-January 2012

Competencias

  • Strong organizational and management skills;
  • Strong interpersonal skills with ability to multi-task and establish effective work relationships with people of broad cultural backgrounds;
  • Ability to work as part of a team as well as take initiative to work independently where necessary;
  • Excellent communication skills with ability to express ideas clearly, concisely and effectively, both orally and in writing;
  • Have a history of ability to deliver high-quality outputs on schedule.

Habilidades y experiencia requeridas

  • Master's Degree in Economics, International Development, Public Administration, Environment or a relevant technical field;
  • A minimum of 15 years of relevant work experience in the fields of environment and development;
  • Some familiarity with UNDP operations and programmes at the country level would be beneficial;
  • Research experience and collaboration with a university or technical institution would be considered an advantage;
  • Fluency in written and spoken English, including excellent report-writing skills; knowledge of Spanish or French would be an advantage;
  • Proficiency in the use of computers and office software packages (word processing, e-mail, presentations, spreadsheets, etc).