Background
Central Asia, and in particular Uzbekistan, is recognized as one of the world’s most vulnerable regions to the impacts of long-term climate change. There is growing evidence that more frequent extreme weather conditions such as droughts, heat waves, out of season frosts and storms are occurring and to large extent affecting the agriculture and thus vulnerable populations in rural areas.
In the context of UN’s support to the Government of Uzbekistan’s on efforts to tackle the negative consequences of the Aral Sea crisis, with the financial support of the Government of Japan, UNDP and UNFPA Joint Programme “Building the Resilience of Local Communities Against Health, Environmental and Economic Insecurities in the Aral Sea region” is launched, which is being implemented in Karakalpakstan throughout 2020-2022. The Joint Programme aims to address the most urgent and immediate health and economic insecurities in the most vulnerable areas of the Aral Sea region through brining innovative solutions to healthcare and poverty reduction initiatives.
The Joint Programme has two major objectives as follows:
• Improving the quality of healthcare services, particularly in remote rural areas through strengthening the technical and institutional capacity of local healthcare system for maternal, child and reproductive health service provision with the focus on prevention of ill health (breast and cervical cancer, sexually transmitted infections, malnutrition, etc.) and promotion of healthy lifestyle and positive health seeking behaviour involving also the Community Health Volunteers.
• Enhancing income generation opportunities of the affected population through inclusive business initiatives, promotion of investment for job creation, as well as through improving access to basic services. The programme will select most vulnerable rural communities and help them with participatory decentralized planning and rehabilitation of essential public services such as water supply. It will support the start-up of agricultural cooperatives and small businesses through trainings, funding innovative schemes, establishing pilot “farm field schools”. These will help people, especially women led households to use available resources, mainly land and water in the most efficient way and generate incomes toe sustain their livelihoods.
The programme overall goal is to address the most urgent and immediate health and economic insecurities in the most vulnerable areas of the Aral Sea region through bringing innovative solutions to healthcare and poverty reduction.
Programme combines the mixture of approaches including but not limited to (i) enhancing knowledge, information, innovation and technological exchange; (ii) building people-to-people bonds; (iii) building broad based bottom-up partnerships for impactful implementation of the initiatives of the project; and (iv) enhancing capacity building of local partners to materialize the development dividends.
Programme office is located in Nukus and implements its activities in 10 districts of Karakalpakstan such as Chimbay, Karauzyak, Bozatau, Kegeyli, Hodjeli, Shumanay, Kanlikul, Kungrad, Muynak and Nukus districts
The Programme initial duration was 2 years (January 2020 – December 2021) and as per decision of the Programme Board Meeting it was extended for the period of 6 months until June 2022. Total budget of the Programme is USD 3,211,618 (funded by the Government of Japan).
COVID-19 related note:
The COVID-19 pandemic has significantly slowed or contracted economic growth for most countries globally and halted, or in some cases significantly reversed, progress on the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. Uzbekistan’s GDP growth in 2020 was suboptimal and poverty levels increased for the first time in two decades as a result of impact of the COVID-19 crisis.
The project beneficiaries are rural communities living in ten regions of Karakalpakstan. COVID-19 lockdown impacted all aspects of lives as health, income generation opportunities (agricultural, livestock, SME and other activities), worsened access to basic social services and etc, due to the strict requirements at the beginning aimed to mitigation of the pandemic impacts. As it is already recognized by the Government, COVID19 impacts result in increased unemployment and poverty, decrease of economy development paces and increased demand for access to basic services, social protection needs as well as health protection and urgent pandemic response measures. In this regard, Programme allocated special budget for COVID-19 response measures in the region and it is obvious that proposed solutions become even much relevant and important to mitigate the COVID19 adverse impacts through reducing/avoiding climate change related losses/damages and improving quality of health care services, income generation capabilities of rural population and access to the basic services which will contribute to the post-COVID19 recovery in Karakalpakstan.
COVID-19 outbreak and subsequent quarantine measures imposed by the Government of Uzbekistan in March 2020 have had negative impact on implementation of a number of the project outputs as per approved workplan, particularly on those activities that involve:
• travel, both international and local (study tours, local trainings for target audience, etc.);
• meetings and consultations with local authorities and government organizations;
• practical workshops in the fields planned for early summer and the fall;
• field work on identification and implementation of pilot business projects.
Although, these limitations delayed implementation or completion of some activities, they did not significantly affect the overall results of the project. The project continued implementation of its activities remotely, where and when it was possible.
Starting from March 2021 increasing number of new coronavirus cases were recorded in Uzbekistan, with unexpectedly high rate of growth in the last two months. On 30 June 2021, 476 new cases of the confirmed coronavirus were recorded surpassing 11,153 cases in Uzbekistan with the confirmed death reached 740 (see at https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/uzbekistan/). The Government re-introduced a color-zone approach to track and mitigate the spread of the virus. Based on this approach, Tashkent city (capital) was marked as red, while Tashkent and Samarkand regions are yellow and the remaining part of Uzbekistan is green, although a number of cases are being registered there as well. The vaccination under the national program has started since 3 April and 9.66% of the total of over 20 mln of population to be vaccinated per the national programme have been vaccinated as of 27 June 2021. In Uzbekistan, citizens are obliged to wear medical masks and take other precautions (social distance, disinfection). Starting March 25, 2021 foreigners entering the republic should present a PCR test certificate issued exclusively by laboratories recognized by the Sanitary and Epidemiological Service of Uzbekistan.
Duties and Responsibilities
For detailed information, please refer to Annex 1 – Terms of Reference for International Consultant
Competencies
- Excellent communication skills;
- Demonstrable analytical skills;
- Competence in adaptive management, as applied to climate change adaptation;
Required Skills and Experience
- Master’s degree in environment, climate science, agriculture, economics, natural resources management or other closely related field;
At least ten years of experience in management or review of public finance, conservation finance or environmental finance;
Experience of work in previous Environment, Climate Change, Adaptation, Livelihoods/Community Development projects and activities.
At least three years in the field of working with international and national experts and institutions
Application Process:
Interested candidates need to apply online at www.jobs.undp.org and upload requested documents (Technical Proposal/Methodology/Cover Letter, CV/P11 form, Offeror’s Letter of confirmation) in Part 5 of Procurement Notice no later than end of Feb-25, 2022 (New York time). Please combine all your documents into one (1) single PDF document as the system only allows to upload maximum one document.
Your on-line applications submission will be acknowledged to your email address provided in application. 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.
Link to application at the UNDP Job Site – https://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_job.cfm?cur_job_id=104801
(cut and paste into browser address bar if the link does not work).
You can review detailed Procurement Notice, Terms of Reference and download templates from the UNDP Procurement Notices Site following the link http://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=88216 (cut and paste into browser address bar if the link does not work).
Application submitted via email, incomplete applications or received after the closing date (February 25, 2022) will not be given consideration.
For more detailed information about UNDP Uzbekistan please visit our website at www.uz.undp.org.
UNDP is an equal opportunity employer. Qualified female candidates, people with disabilities, and minorities are highly encouraged to apply. UNDP Balance in Manage Policy promotes achievement of gender balance among its staff at all levels.
Requests for clarification must be sent in writing to pu.uz@undp.org, ensuring that the reference number above is included in the subject line. UNDP shall endeavor to provide such responses to clarifications in an expeditious manner, but any delay in such response shall not cause an obligation on the part of UNDP to extend the submission date of the Proposals, unless UNDP deems that such an extension is justified and necessary.