UNDP’s Climate Promise

UNDP launched the Climate Promise at the UN Climate Action Summit in September 2019. The Climate Promise supports over 100 countries to enhance their Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) under the Paris Agreement. Delivered in collaboration with a wide variety of partners, it is the world’s largest offer of support for the enhancement of climate pledges.

While climate change poses a risk for everyone and threatens to roll back decades of sustainable development gains, the poorest, marginalized, and most vulnerable populations are disproportionately burdened. UNDP advocates for an inclusive approach that supports whole-of-society ownership, advances equality, and strengthens social and environmental sustainability. UNDP is leveraging its extensive climate change portfolio, its Country Office network and global policy services to provide thematic technical support to countries and ensure that NDCs are fully aligned with national sustainable development priorities.

UNDP offers its Climate Promise support under five service lines that respond to major areas of demand from developing countries and can be tailored and scaled up for maximum impact to fit specific country needs:

• Building political will & societal ownership at national and sub-national levels
• Review, align & update existing targets, policies & measures
• Incorporate new sectors and/or greenhouse gases
• Assess costs and investment opportunities
• Monitor progress & strengthen transparency

The UNDP is also focused on providing an array of services to the government and private sector for financing of the SDGs and particularly financing of climate change actions. These services are across a range of strategic interventions that include systemic integration of SDGs into public finance and creation of opportunities for innovative and private sector finance for SDGs including climate change. There is an increased realization of the importance of the NDCs being reflected in the government planning and budgeting systems for a cohesive approach.

In Asia and the Pacific, 27 countries are currently supported through the Climate Promise and one of key emerging thematic areas of interest to many countries in the region is climate change adaptation reflecting the high level of vulnerability of the region to a range of climate induced risks. 25 countries in the region have expressed interest in receiving support on improving their adaptation actions and much of the support is centered around strengthening the linkages with the ongoing national efforts on National Adaptation Plans (NAPs), Adaptation Communications (AC) and/or Long-Term Strategies.

Given the overwhelming number of countries that have included adaptation in their NDC enhancement efforts, this consultancy is geared towards supporting at identifying areas of joint collaboration at the country level with UNEP and FAO for the climate promise and NAPs and at regional level peer to peer exchange/sharing for building resilience at both national levels as well as local and community level in partnership with UN sister agencies such as UN Environment and FAO. It also brings in a strong emphasis on integrating climate change adaptation concerns into COVID-19 responses.

Objective

UNDP’s Climate Promise team in the Asia Pacific region is recruiting a climate change adaptation consultant to undertake the following two interlinked tasks: (1) map out opportunities for joint collaboration with UNEP and FAO on climate promise  and National Adaptation Plans in at least 5 countries and support and activate discussions between country teams

(2) support regional peer to peer lessons sharing on adaptation; make substantive contributions to the design of a virtual session (focusing on local and community resilience) in the upcoming Asia-Pacific Adaptation Network (APAN) Forum in March 2021; and take a lead in coordinating with other agencies in preparation for the forum.

Scope of work

Under the guidance and supervision of the Regional Focal Points of UNDP’s RBAP Climate Promise team, the consultant will contribute specific deliverables as the following: 

Main responsibilities

A. Climate Promise:

• Review Climate Promise workplans in Asia-Pacific as they relate to the adaptation elements of the NDCs and map out collaborative opportunities for UNDP and UNEP as well as FAO based on ongoing joint efforts in, inter alia, National Adaptation Plans; and prepare a collaborative workplan on joined up climate promise support through NDCs and NAPs in up to 5 countries in Asia and the Pacific. (Collaborative opportunities should be identified, and workplan developed accordingly, by assessing the possibilities of feeding lessons from UNDP’s assistance on CCA implementation into UNEP’s existing NAP support; and conversely, feeding UNEP’s portfolio results into UNDP’s going support on NAPs and Climate Promise);
• Facilitate in-country discussions on advancing collaboration in partnership with UNEP and FAO;
• Undertake preliminary research on best practices and lesson learned in integrating adaptation into NDCs especially within the Asia-Pacific region and presenting the results, for example, by sectors, financing modalities, etc.
• Facilitate regional peer to peer exchange among country offices and governments on climate change adaptation and NDCs in the Asia Pacific region in partnership with UNEP and FAO and with linkages to COVID 19 response;
• Develop a concept note on, design and deliver a series of 5 peer to peer exchange webinars, targeting country offices, governments, international organizations and CSOs, in consultation with UN Agencies in particular UNEP and FAO. One of the topics should be good practices in or opportunities for a green and resilient recovery process within the Asia-Pacific region.

B. Preparatory activities for the APAN Forum:

• Draft a concept note (3000-4000 words) that sets the stage for the local and community resilience session of the Forum
• Organize and facilitate discussions with partners and document these discussions to contribute to the design of the session
• Design virtual sessions (including the agendas, objectives and thematic outlines) for the session on local and community resilience by consulting closely with partners – UN Agencies, CSOs, Global Commission on Adaptation partners and others.
• Assist in conducting a four-day virtual dialogue.
• Prepare the work-stream leaders summary (up-to 10 pages) of the virtual discussions for submission to the APAN secretariat.

Institutional Arrangement

The consultant will be supervised by UNDP RBAP Climate Promise Regional Focal Points throughout the consultancy. He/she will work closely with the UNDP Bangkok Regional Hub’s (BRH) Planet Team, and UNDP Global Policy Network (GPN) Team, UNDP Country Offices and relevant counterparts as appropriate.

Duration of the Work

October 2020 – 30 April 2021 (Up to 90 working days.)

Duty Station

Home based with potential travel.

• Innovation: Ability to make new and useful ideas work.
• Leadership: Ability to persuade others to follow.
• People Management: Ability to improve performance and satisfaction.
• Communication: Ability to listen, adapt, persuade and transform.
• Delivery: Ability to get things done while exercising good judgement.
• Initiative: Displays initiative, sets challenging outputs for her/himself and willingly accepts new work assignments.

Educational Qualifications

• Master’s degree in Environmental Economics, Environmental Management, Environmental Science or Studies, International Development, Development Studies or other closely related field.

Experience:

• At least 2 years of professional experience in climate change adaptation;
• Excellent analytical, writing, presentation, and communications skills are required;
• Sound understanding of sustainable development, NDCs, National Adaptation Planning and sub-national adaptation planning issues;
• Experience working with national and international non-governmental organizations, development partners, and in the developing countries would be an advantage;
• Experience working with the UN system, especially with UNDP, and familiarity with international climate negotiations, is an asset.
• Professional level skill in Microsoft Office 2019 or 365.

Language:

• Excellent oral and written communication skills in English language.

Price Proposal and Schedule of Payments

The contract will be based on Daily

Consultant shall quote an all-inclusive Daily Fee for the contract period. The term “all-inclusive” implies that all costs (professional fees, communications, consumables, etc.) that could be incurred by the IC in completing the assignment are already factored into the daily fee submitted in the proposal. If applicable, travel or daily allowance cost (if any work is to be done outside the IC’s duty station) should be identified separately. Payments shall be done on a monthly basis based on actual days worked, upon verification of completion of deliverables and approval by the IC’s supervisor of a Time Sheet indicating the days worked in the period.

In general, UNDP shall not accept travel costs exceeding those of an economy class ticket. Should the IC wish to travel on a higher class he/she should do so using their own resources.

In the event of unforeseeable travel not anticipated in this TOR, payment of travel costs including tickets, lodging and terminal expenses should be agreed upon, between the respective business unit and the Individual Consultant, prior to travel and will be reimbursed.

Travel costs shall be reimbursed at actual but not exceeding the quotation from UNDP approved travel agent.   

Evaluation Method and 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 a) responsive/compliant/acceptable; and b) having received the highest score out of set of weighted combine technical evaluation  (70%), and financial criteria (30%). Financial score shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal received by UNDP for the assignment.

• Only those applications which are responsive, compliant and accept in general condition will be evaluated;
• The financial proposal shall specify a daily fee;

Technical Criteria for desk review evaluation (Maximum 100 points)

• Criteria 1: Relevance in education background - Max 10 points;
• Criteria 2: Experience working on climate change adaptation, Climate Finance, and relevant issues in the development sector- Max 30 points;
• Criteria 3: Demonstrable substantive experience in developing reports and written products on climate change and and policies - Max 30 points;
• Criteria 4: Experience in working with UNDP and familiarity with UNDP editorial guidelines and templates – Max 5 points;
• Criteria 5: Experience with preparing reports - Max 15 points;
• Criteria 6: Excellent English communications skills - Max 10 points;

Only candidates obtaining a minimum of 70 points (100% of technical evaluation) would be considered for Financial Evaluation.

Documentation required

Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications. Please group them into one (1) single PDF document as the application only allows to upload maximum one document:

• Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided in 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.
• Brief description of why the applicant considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment, and a methodology, on how they will approach and complete the assignment.
• Financial proposal, as per template provided in Annex II. Note: National consultant must quote price in U.S. Dollar that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided. If an Offeror is employed by an organization/company/institution, and he/she expects his/her employer to charge a management fee in the process of releasing him/her to UNDP under Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate at this point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.

Incomplete proposals may not be considered. The shortlisted candidates may be contacted and the successful candidate will be notified.

To download form and related documents, please follow the link below:

ttps://procurement-notices.undp.org/view_notice.cfm?notice_id=71237