Background

The Project “Supporting Developing Countries to Integrate Agriculture Sectors into National Adaptation Plans (NAP-Ag)” is Directly implemented by UNDP and FAO in Uganda and 7 other countries. The project has goal of integrating climate change concerns related to agriculture-based livelihoods within existing national planning and budgeting processes of the selected countries. The integration of adaptation options in planning frameworks and budgets is expected to contribute to the enhancement of:

• Institutional capacities and processes for operationalizing climate response strategies in the agricultural sector;
• Access to international financing opportunities, such as the climate finance sources from GEF and Green Climate Fund; and
• More strategic allocations of national budgets earmarked for adaptation investments;
• The results and processes used will be highly relevant to inform other sectors of good practices in integrating adaptation needs into national planning and budgeting;
• Lessons and experiences from the other 7 countries where similar interventions are being implemented.  

 The Uganda component of the three-year program in is supported by the German Federal Ministry of the Environment’s (BMUB) and International Climate Initiative (IKI); with USD$700,000 earmarked to support interventions. This project responds to UNFCCC conclusions that invited UN organizations, specialized agencies, and bilateral organizations to enhance financial and technical support to the NAP process for developing countries. Through the NAP-Ag project, FAO and UNDP will extend technical assistance to the Government of Uganda and other partners in developing and implementing a National Adaptation Plan (NAP) for the Agriculture Sector.

The NAP process in Uganda will build on previous government responses to climate challenges, such as developing the National Adaptation Programmes of Action (NAPAs) in 2007.  The NAPAs were considered as immediate interventions that have to be implemented in response to climate change challenges.  Priority interventions were identified by agricultural stakeholders in the country, to cushion the country from climate change impacts and effects.  The NAPA projects were implemented and have provided lessons that can be used for development and implementation of NAPs process.

Results of this consultancy shall contribute to Outcome 4 - Advocacy and knowledge-sharing on NAPs promoted and to Output 4.1 Convened exchanges on science and technology and economics of adaptation to support the integration of adaptation options into national investment plans managed. The target will be use the information to Sensitize technical staff and public service providers on the work that government is already doing, review existing materials and develop awareness and training materials to address the knowledge gaps on NAPs, NAPAs and the NAP process, Conduct cost benefit analyses for the different interventions in NAPA projects.

Objectives:

To create awareness on what government and other partners are already doing on Climate change adaptation and Mitigation in order to build national capacities for management of climate change adaptation,  particularly including documentation of lessons learned from the NAPA pilots.

Duties and Responsibilities

This consultancy is designed to generate information that shall be used to inform the NAPs process.

Scope of work and deliverables:

The overall objective of the project is to “integrate climate change concerns as they affect agricultural sector-based livelihoods into associated national and sectoral planning and budgeting processes.” It is hoped that this will be achieved through strengthening Technical capacity and institutions on NAPs, developing integrated roadmaps for NAPs, improving evidence-based results for NAPs and promoting advocacy and knowledge-sharing on NAPs.

UNDP Uganda is therefore seeking for services of a National consultant to carry out the following assignments:

• Document lessons learned from 4 NAPA pilots carried out in Bundibugyo, Pallisa, Nakasongola and Apac districts;
• Document prominent adaptation initiatives done by different actors in the country;
• Identify replicable/ scalable adaptation practices for the lowland, mountainous and semi-arid /cattle corridor ecosystems of Uganda. In this case the geographical scope shall be the 4 districts mentioned above;
• Disseminate the findings to inform national and sub-national decisions.

Tasks of the Assignment:

• Prepare an inception report detailing the methodology to be used and activity plan;
• Review relevant NAPA documents and studies undertaken by different agencies including; Oxfam, Emli-Bwaise facility, USAID to inform the relevance of the coping strategies and vulnerabilities;
• Review literature on the relevant sector documentation, to identify linkages between the existing frameworks (ASSP, NDPII, Vision 2040, NAP, NAEP) and the proposed NAP-Ag;
• Take stock, classify/categorize the different initiatives and analyze their suitability basing on agro-ecological zones, enterprises, farmer category, and geographical location/terrain and other related issues generated in the consultations;
• Update the existing information to include the existing adaptation initiatives that were captured during the regional consultations with the key actors in the development of the draft agricultural sector mainstreaming guidelines and the Agricultural sector National Adaptation Plan;
• Carry out cost-benefit analysis of the interventions that were implemented in NAPA Pilots, identify gaps (including equity and gender issues), attitudes of the beneficiaries and make recommendations for scaling up;
• Clearly identify and document indigenous knowledge practices in the Pilots stating the opportunities, gaps and limitations in their use;
• Analyse coping strategies employed by the beneficiaries of the pilots and their impacts on the Vulnerabilities identified.
• Produce a documentary on successful Climate Adaptation practices adopted following the NAPA pilots;
• Undertake stakeholder analysis to inform the dissemination strategy;
• Propose appropriate methodologies and institutional arrangements to effectively scale up lessons from the NAPA pilots;
• Prepare and package the analysed information into policy briefs, technical briefs, posters, booklets and brochure for the identified stakeholder groups;
• Organize and facilitate four dissemination and sensitization workshops on regional basis;
• Prepare a final report to include any feedback from the workshop.

Deliverables:

An inception report explaining the approaches, schedules of the detailed activities and expected time of delivery of the assignment.

Stakeholder validated analytical reports including ;

• Database for major actors, roles in the different climate change initiatives at national and selected districts;
• Report detailing the different climate change initiatives for each region for the different subsectors (crop, fisheries, livestock, natural resources) and classified into farmer categories, enterprises, agro-ecological zones etc;
• Cost Benefit analysis of the NAPA pilot interventions;
• Coping strategies, their effectiveness and the impacts of the pilots;
• Equality and gender considerations in the pilots.

Stakeholder validated Lessons learnt report including;

• Indigenous knowledge;
• Attitudes towards adaptation options;
•  Proposed methods and institutional arrangements to effectively scale up lessons from the NAPA pilots;
• Comprehensive Report of the Capacity building workshops done by MAAIF at regional levels on adaptation.

IEC Materials to disseminate lessons learnt from the NAPA and Non-NAPA pilots:

• Documentary on selected successful Climate Adaptation practices;
• Policy briefs , technical briefs, posters, booklets and brochures.

Competencies

• Ability to deliver high quality results on time;
• 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 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.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s Degree in Agriculture, Environment studies, Natural Resource Management or related field with a focus in community development, and from a recognized and reputable institution.

 Experience:

• Demonstrated record of rural appraisals and documentation,
• At least five (5) years of experience in relevant fields, especially climate change;
• Familiar with socio-economic set up of crop and livestock producing communities in Uganda’s farming systems;
• Demonstrated experience of working with government agencies and communities will be an added advantage; particularly Uganda agriculture sector systems including extension and Climate Change Policy of Uganda;
• Demonstrated experience in journalism will be an added advantage;
• Demonstrated analytical, communication and report writing skills.

Language:

• Proficient in both written and spoken English.

Working Arrangements:

The consultant shall work closely with and under the supervision of the Team Leader Environment, Climate and Disaster Resilience Unit at UNDP and technical validation of deliverables shall be done by Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries (MAAIF) through the Climate Change Task force. S(he) will consult with relevant stakeholders and will report to the UNDP Country Director on all contractual obligations.

The consultant should accomplish the task preferably by closely linking up with the relevant local government teams and CSOs to generate data and draw inferences from the up-scaling initiatives.

Duration of the Work:

The assignment is to be accomplished within 50 man days spread over a period of 4 months, effective March 2017.

Evaluation Criteria:

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on the following methodology: Individual consultants will be evaluated based on a cumulative analysis taking into consideration the combination of the applicants’ qualifications, technical and financial proposal.

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. 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 70 points:

• 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- 25 points;
• Experience in writing/publication- 15 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 of 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.       
• Documents to be included when submitting the proposals:

The candidate is required to submit an electronic application directly uploaded on the UNDP jobs website with all the requirements as listed here below. Annexes and further information may be downloaded on http://procurement-notices.undp.org/. (Reference #.36011).

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications in one single PDF document to this website - http://jobs.undp.org (Ref no.70942).

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

Technical proposal:

• Brief description of why the individual considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment;
• A methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment;
• Financial proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided (Annex II);
• Annexes 1 and II - may be downloaded from the UNDP Procurement Notices Website -http://procurement-notices.undp.org/ - under reference #36011. For further clarifications, please contact; janet.anyango@undp.org; moses.lutwama@undp.org;

Interested applicants should submit applications through uploading of all their required documentation in one single pdf document on this website only.