Background

Cambodia’s specific geographical location and long history and complicated topographical, ecological and social features has resulted in it becoming a prosperous, rich and diverse plant genetic resource country. While diverse climatic conditions diversified the country’s flora with both tropical and temperate plants, thousands of years of agricultural practice by ethnic groups enriched its crop genetic resources with large numbers of local cultivars and land races. In terms of medicinal plants, the high level of genetic diversity makes Cambodia an attractive country for bio-prospecting, especially given that there are approximately 800 known medicinal plants, many of which have associated traditional knowledge.  However, Cambodia faces a wide range of issues that threaten its biological diversity and ecological security. These threats emanate from the transition from a subsistence-based agrarian economy to a consumption-based cash economy, competing land use from urbanization and infrastructure development, poaching of wild plants and animals, localized overharvesting of timber, fuel wood and non-wood forest products, human-wildlife conflicts, and climate change. Because of the threat to biological resources, the traditional knowledge of local communities that is associated with genetic resources is disappearing rapidly, due to the change of traditional lifestyles. A large volume of traditional knowledge, such as medicinal use of biological resources, is being replaced by modern technology. The National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) of Cambodia was adopted in 2002. The NBSAP identified equity as the most important thing biological resources sustainably in the long run and calls for consideration of poor and economically disadvantage group to secure their access to common resources.

To counter the various threats to biodiversity, the country has planned various strategies for the conservation and sustainable use of biological resources for socio-economic development. However, making use of its biodiversity and traditional knowledge for the promotion of bioprospecting and of access and benefit- sharing (ABS) national regime that is constrained by several factors. Cambodia has no existing policy or legislation on ABS, the government recognizes the importance of establishing innovative schemes to derive equitable benefits through economic activities that are linked to sustainable utilization of natural resources and the institutional and personal capacity to carry out bio-prospecting beyond basic level and develop and manage ABS schemes that are compliant with Nagoya Protocol.

The project aims at strengthening human resources, legal frameworks and institutional capacities on access and benefit sharing of genetic resources to facilitate the implementation of the Nagoya Protocol on Access and Benefit Sharing. The project’s goal is to contribute to the conservation and sustainable use of globally significant biodiversity in Cambodia. The project’s development objective is to strengthen the conservation and sustainable use of genetic resources and associated traditional knowledge in Cambodia by developing a national Access and Benefit Sharing (ABS) framework, policy and legislation consistent with the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Nagoya Protocol. The above objective would be achieved through two components, namely

Component 1:   Developing a national framework and legislation on Access and Benefit Sharing consistent with the Convention on Biological Diversity and its Nagoya Protocol

Component 2:   Building capacity for developing and implementing the national Access and Benefit sharing framework and legislation

The project is a UNDP supported and funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) with a total grant  of US$ 843,242 with a  co-financing of US$ 1,961,062 from National Council for Sustainable Development. The project duration is for 3 years (from April 2019 – April 2022). The Project implementing partner is Department of Biodiversity of the National Council for Sustainable Development

COVID-19 has seriously impacted the progress project in view of restrictions imposed on travel of project team and consultants to conduct consultations with the stakeholders while developing ABS legislation. However, this also provided opportunity to implementing partner and project team to adopt virtual mode of conducting meetings.

Duties and Responsibilities

The TE will assess project performance against expectations set out in the project’s Logical Framework/Results Framework (see TOR Annex A). The TE will assess results according to the criteria outlined in the Guidance for TEs of UNDP-supported GEF-financed Projects.  

The Findings section of the TE report will cover the topics listed below.

A full outline of the TE report’s content is provided in ToR Annex C.

The asterisk “(*)” indicates criteria for which a rating is required.

Findings

1. Project Design/Formulation

• National priorities and country driven-ness
• Theory of Change
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Social and Environmental Safeguards
• Analysis of Results Framework: project logic and strategy, indicators
• Assumptions and Risks

• Lessons from other relevant projects (e.g. same focal area) incorporated into project design
• Planned stakeholder participation
• Linkages between project and other interventions within the sector
• Management arrangements

2. Project Implementation

• Adaptive management (changes to the project design and project outputs during implementation)
• Actual stakeholder participation and partnership arrangements
• Project Finance and Co-finance
• Monitoring & Evaluation: design at entry (*), implementation (*), and overall assessment of M&E (*)
• Implementing Agency (UNDP) (*) and Executing Agency (*), overall project oversight/implementation and execution (*)
• Risk Management, including Social and Environmental Standards

3. Project Results

• Assess the achievement of outcomes against indicators by reporting on the level of progress for each objective and outcome indicator at the time of the TE and noting final achievements
• Relevance (*), Effectiveness (*), Efficiency (*) and overall project outcome (*)
• Sustainability: financial (*)    , socio-political (*), institutional framework and governance (*), environmental (*), overall likelihood of sustainability (*)
• Country ownership
• Gender equality and women’s empowerment
• Cross-cutting issues (poverty alleviation, improved governance, climate change mitigation and adaptation, disaster prevention and recovery, human rights, capacity development, South-South cooperation, knowledge management, volunteerism, etc., as relevant)
• GEF Additionality
• Catalytic Role / Replication Effect
• Progress to impact

4. Main Findings, Conclusions, Recommendations and Lessons Learned

• The TE team will include a summary of the main findings of the TE report. Findings should be presented as statements of fact that are based on analysis of the data.
•  The section on conclusions will be written in light of the findings. Conclusions should be comprehensive and balanced statements that are well substantiated by evidence and logically connected to the TE findings. They should highlight the strengths, weaknesses and results of the project, respond to key evaluation questions and provide insights into the identification of and/or solutions to important problems or issues pertinent to project beneficiaries, UNDP and the GEF, including issues in relation to gender equality and women’s empowerment.
• Recommendations should provide concrete, practical, feasible and targeted recommendations directed to the intended users of the evaluation about what actions to take and decisions to make. The recommendations should be specifically supported by the evidence and linked to the findings and conclusions around key questions addressed by the evaluation.
• The TE report should also include lessons that can be taken from the evaluation, including best and worst practices in addressing issues relating to relevance, performance and success that can provide knowledge gained from the particular circumstance (programmatic and evaluation methods used, partnerships, financial leveraging, etc.) that are applicable to other GEF and UNDP interventions. When possible, the TE team should include examples of good practices in project design and implementation.
• It is important for the conclusions, recommendations and lessons learned of the TE report to include results related to gender equality and empowerment of women.

The TE report will include an Evaluation Ratings Table, as shown in the ToR Annex.

Interested offeror must  read  the Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice, which can be viewed at https://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=80157 for more  detail information about term  of references, instructions to offeror, and to download the documents to be submitted in the offer through online.

Competencies

Required Skills and Experience

Education: 

Master’s degree in natural resource management or environmental science, genetic resources, legal, ecosystem services, and/or related field.

Experience:

• 10 years of relevant experience in the technical areas of access and benefit-sharing of genetic/biological resources.
• Minimum 10 years of relevant experience with results-based management and gender responsive evaluation methodologies.
• Experience in evaluating projects preferably GEF financed.
• Experience applying SMART indicators and reconstructing or validating baseline scenarios;
• Experience working in Southeast Asia or Asia Pacific region;
• Project evaluation/review experience within United Nations system will be considered an asset;
• Experience with implementing evaluations remotely will be considered an asset.

Language Requirement: Fluency in written and spoken English.

UNDP reserves right to reject any applications that is incomplete.

Please be informed that we don’t accept application submitted via email.

Interested individual offeror must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

1. Explaining why they are the most suitable for the work

2. Financial proposal

3. Personal CV including experience in similar projects, list of publication written by Candidate and at least 3 references.

Interested Offerors are required to submit application via UNDP jobsite system as the application screening and evaluation will be done through UNDP jobsite system. Please note that UNDP jobsite system allows only one uploading of application document, so please make sure that you merge all your documents into a single file. Your on-line applications submission will be acknowledged where an email address has been provided. If you do not receive an e-mail acknowledgement within 24 hours of submission, your application may not have been received. In such cases, please resubmit the application, if necessary. Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.

Any request for clarification/additional information on this procurement notice shall be communicated in writing to UNDP office or send to email aphikovith.phin@undp.org and cc procurement.kh@undp.org . While the Procurement Unit would endeavor to provide information expeditiously, only requests receiving at least 5 working days prior to the submission deadline will be entertained. Any delay in providing such information will not be considered as a reason for extending the submission deadline. The UNDP's response (including an explanation of the query but without identifying the source of inquiry) will be posted in Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice page as provided above. Therefore, all prospective Offerors are advised to visit the page regularly to make obtain update related to this Individual Consultant (IC) Procurement Notice