Background

The High Mountain catchments of Nepal are particularly prone to drought, landslides and floods, due to coincidence of seasonal snow melt with the summer monsoon season. In these highly vulnerable mountain regions warming trends are increasing and the impacts are magnified by the extreme changes in altitude. Around 85% of rainfall occurs during the four monsoon months of June to September and results in extensive flooding annually. Climate change is intensifying the monsoon rainfall and increasing snow and glacial melt rates, which is contributing to increased frequency and severity of flood and landslide disasters which result in extensive economic, life and livelihood losses annually. At the other extreme, water scarcity and droughts also pose a threat to the agriculture-reliant livelihoods of these regions.  Climate change is increasing the temporal and spatial variability of rainfall and runoff, thus intensifying the problem of excess water during the monsoon and water scarcity during the dry season, increasing economic damages to agriculture, property, and the environment, disrupting lives and livelihoods and threatening food security.

A long-term solution to this climate change problem is to rehabilitate and maintain functional integrity of watersheds that have critical functions of water storage and release, infiltration, drainage control, and soil moisture retention. Using watersheds as organizing units for planning and implementation of natural resource management and resilient livelihood development is an approach to effectively tackle an immediate and long-term climate risk reduction issues, in relation to floods and droughts. Taking watershed management concerns into consideration the proposed LDCF project on “Developing climate resilient livelihoods in the vulnerable watershed in Nepal” will embed Integrated Watershed Management approaches in Nepal through policy and practice at the national and sub-national levels.  It will do so through establishing the legislative and institutional framework for integrated watershed management to address climate change induced hazards and introducing and scaling up integrated adaptive watershed management practices covering 844km2 of watershed areas and benefiting 121,606 vulnerable people. While the project interventions in the legislative and institutional frameworks will be at national and sub-national level, project investment in adaptive management practices will be done within sub-watersheds of the Dudh Koshi river basin which is the most vulnerable to floods and droughts.

The National Project Manager (NPM), will be responsible for the overall management of the Project, including the mobilisation of all project inputs, supervision over project staff, consultants and sub-contractors. The PM will report to the National Project Director and work in close guidance with the Portfolio Manager of Resilience and Envirionment Portfolio. The Project Manager will perform a liaison role with the government (Federal and Local Level), UNDP and other UN agencies, CSOs and project partners, and maintain close collaboration with other donor agencies providing co-financing. The Project Manager is responsible for day to day management of the Project Management Unit along with Project Implementation Unit (Field).

Duties and Responsibilities

Under the overall supervision of the National Project Director, the National Project Manager will be responsible for overall project implementation, technical oversight, coordination with government counterparts and quality assurance of project activities of Developing Climate Resilient Livelihoods in Vulnerable Watershed in Nepal.

Overall Roles and responsibilities:

1. Overall management in project implementation:

• Facilitate the day-to-day management of the project; responsible for the timely delivery of all project outputs;
• Provide technical support to the Field Offices, partner agencies and technical officers of selected municipalities in implementation of the different programme activities in coherence with the project outcomes;
• Support for selection of service providers following UNDP’s partnership tools;
• Organize and coordinate programme activities (such as workshops, studies and publications and other activities and outputs), equipment and administrative support;
• Supervise and facilitate coordination with consultants and contractors engaged in delivering of the programme’s work plans for the achievement of results; 
• Prepare annual work plans with indicative scheduling of identified main outputs and activities as guidance documents for the formulation and review of annual work plans;
• Ensure that the outcomes specified in Project Document are delivered at the required quality standards and within the specified cost and time limits; 
• Timely preparation and submission of required reports, including technical and financial reports to relevant parties;
• Monitor and assist with logistical arrangements for field trips for consultants in accordance with UNDP procedures; 
• Prepare specifications, terms of references, evaluate proposals and ensure implementation managed through procurement of goods and services required for the project;
• Follow-up for financial requests, disbursement of funds, purchasing actions;  
• Liaise with the various UNDP units, including General Services, Accounting, Travel on project activities for good project execution.  

2. Providing technical oversight, quality assurance and support to implement all project outcomes:

• Provide necessary technical oversight and quality assurance of various activities under project outcomes and logical framework;
• Provide technical inputs to the implementation of the different Programme activities and outputs – including by organizing and participating in meetings, trainings, workshops and other events and by providing analysis of results of the workshop/trainings/meetings/events, by providing technical inputs to workshop presentations, to studies, to advisory services and to other activities and outputs of the national Programme;
• Prepare, in consultation with the UNDP, TORs for consultants and comment on their reports; 
• Facilitate the building of capacity and awareness of key stakeholders regarding climate finance readiness, including among the private sector and civil society;
• Develop relevant policy briefs, lessons learned documents, communication materials, website updates, and other relevant publications.

3. Monitoring, evaluation and reporting of the overall Programme deliverables:

• Act as a focal point for the UNDP Country Office to ensure that all financial and administrative matters related to the project are transparently, expediently, and effectively managed in line with UNDP rules and regulations;
• Coordinate and regularly monitor the project implementation activities in the field;  
• Ensure timely preparation and submission of required reports, including bi-annual progress and expenditure reports, and as per the requirements UNDP and GEF;
• Provide secretariat services to the Project Board Meetings with participation of program unit heads chaired by the National Project Director; this will include conveying/coordinating the PEB meetings; ensuring that all PEB representatives receive relevant information ahead of meetings; presenting the Programme’s progress to the PEB; taking notes during – and circulating notes after the PEB meetings; Implementation of the decision made;
• Provide secretariat services for the Project Advisory Committee chaired by the Secretary of Ministry of Forest and Environment and ensuring coordination with committee members and keeping record of meeting minutes;
• Documentation and dissemination of lessons learned, knowledge products;
• Coordinate and support all activities for spot checks, annual audit exercises and follow-up on audit recommendations.

4. Develop and maintain strong relationship with donor, implementing partners and other counterparts:

• Establish and maintain good working relationships with key stakeholders, government (provincial and local), non-government organizations, academia and private sectors;
• Facilitate strategic dialogue between project staff, the donor, implementing partners at federal, province and local levels, non-governmental organizations, cooperative, private sector and other counterparts.

5. Gender and Social Inclusion  (GESI) Sensitivity: 

• Ensure alignment of programmatic policy, processes and procedures as per the UNDP’s GESI strategy;
• Prioritize selection of consultant process with due consideration of Gender and Social Inclusion perspectives as per the UNDP GESI strategy; 
• Coordinate with GESI focal point within relevant local governments as required to deliver the results of the project.

Impact of Results:

Overall implementation of the project activities; effective delivery of project activities with required quality standards; technical oversight and quality assurance of project activities; effective coordination and maintaining good working relationship with governments counterparts and all relevant stakeholders; proper documentation and dissemination of success stories and lesson learned for replication of project activities.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the Government of Nepal and UN’s values and ethical standards; 
• Serves and promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Good inter-personal skills;
• Clear and upfront communication skills; 
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism;
• Organized and good with following-up on pending issues; meets deadlines;
• Promote learning and knowledge management/sharing;
• Focuses on delivering results by taking calculated-risks and problem-solving approach;
• Fair and transparent decision making; regularly shares information with team members; 
• Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development.

Functional Competencies :

• Technical knowledge and understanding of climate change, climate induced multi hazards (flood, landslide, drought) and their risk reduction, integrated watershed management as well as risk-informed planning;
• Demonstrate knowledge and experience in working on policy development and local governments including technical approaches on integrated watershed management;
• Advanced project management skills, with ability to keep track, deal effectively with problems and fulfil reporting requirement in timely manner;
• Strong inter-personal skills, communication, networking, and team building skills; competent in leading teams and creating team spirit, management of inter-group dynamics and conflicting interests of various actors, stimulating team members to produce quality outputs in a timely and transparent manner;
• Strong knowledge / experience in results­based management and results­oriented approach to project implementation;
• Demonstrates strong problem solving, numerical and analytical skills;
• Excellent oral communication skills and excellent written communication skills, with analytic capacity and ability to synthesize project outputs and relevant findings for the preparation of quality papers and reports;
• Maturity and confidence in dealing with senior and high ranking members of national and international institutions, government and non­government; ability to deal with politically sensitive issues;
• Results driven, ability to work under pressure and to meet strict deadlines; remains calm and in control under pressure;
• Shares knowledge and experience actively, mentors project staffs; 
• Focuses on result for the client and responds positively to feedback;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• PhD or Master's degree in watershed management, forestry, natural resource management or relevant subject

Experience:

• At least five years of experience for PhD and eight years for Master’s degree in project management preferably in government or international institutions;
• Work experience and expertise in integrated watershed management, forestry, forest restoration, climate change and cross-cutting issues such as GESI;
• Strong management skills including ability to provide strategic guidance, technical oversight, mentor staffs, develop work plans and manage budget and project expenditures;
• Proven ability to produce analytical reports with quantitative data analysis;
• Experience in programme design, monitoring and evaluation is an asset;
• Experience working for the government of Nepal and UN is an asset.

Language Requirements:

• Good knowledge of English, fluency in the language of the duty station.