UNDP Jobs - 68668- Resilience Strategy and Action Plan Consultancy

Resilience Strategy and Action Plan Consultancy

Location :

Mbabane, SWAZILAND

Type of Contract :

Individual Contract

Starting Date :

17-Oct-2016

Application Deadline :

30-Sep-16 (Midnight New York, USA)

Post Level :

International Consultant

Duration of Initial Contract :

30 days spread out from October to 16 December 2016

Languages Required :

English

Expected Duration of Assignment :

30 days spread out from October to 16 December 2016

UNDP is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence. UNDP does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

Background

Swaziland is one of the countries in southern Africa experiencing the severe impacts of the most powerful El Niño in 35 years. The El Niño has been prolonged by the concurrent impacts of climate change resulting in austere drought, prolonged dry spells, poor rainfall and very high temperatures resulting in a poor agricultural harvest especially for the staple crop, maize. Key sectors namely agriculture and food security, WASH, education, health and protection and energy have adversely been affected, while coordination institutional capacity to enable efficiencies have also been impacted.

The newly restructured National Disaster Management Agency (NDMA) requires organisational support to strengthen its coordination mechanisms in particular to curb the escalating El Niño drought impacts through the implementation of the emergency and early recovery (ER) components of the recently approved National Emergency Response, Mitigation and Adaptation Plan (NERMAP)[1] 2016-2022. The NERMAP is a two-fold guiding road map with the first two years (2016-2017 designed for the emergency response to the impacts of the El Nino and the rest key to the support provided by UNDP in enabling early recovery plan and build resilience through mapping adaptation activities that are targeted at cementing sustainable development.

The UNDP is providing coordination and technical support services through the UNCT’s efforts towards strengthening NDMA’s humanitarian, resilience building and implementation of early recovering interventions as well as improving coordination in the management of the overall response.

The services of a Consultant are sought for the development of the Resilience Strategy and Action Plan to support the development of UNCT resilience programme in order to obviate the impacts of the El Nino-induced drought and other future shocks.

Duties and Responsibilities

Working under the leadership of the UN Technical Working Group and collaborating closely with NDMA, all Ministries, NGOs, and relevant organizations/stakeholders, the Resilience Consultant is expected to conduct research on best practice adopted internationally, regionally and in countries and:

Conduct an analysis on resilience related policies, programmes relevant to climate change adaptation and define the scope of resilience for the country;
Review the National Emergency Response, Mitigation and Adaptation Plan (NERMAP) 2016-2022 and other key national development documents, tracking the disaster occurrences and recovery trends and identification of the barriers to resilience in the country;
Identify ongoing projects and initiatives currently supporting resilience building of the vulnerable populations from a social, gender, technical and financial perspective;
Identify past present good practices in supporting resilience building that would need to be captured in the programme/framework;
Conduct consultation (data collection and validation) workshops on the disaster in the country and the socio-economic coping mechanisms employed at national, regional, and in particular community level for recovery;
Assess and analyse early recovery needs, local capacities and capacity-development priorities for recovery for medium term recovery and long term resilience building;
Identify areas of capacity building to improve the government’s institutional capacity to improve programmes addressed to DRR, CCA and Food Security;
Identify key priorities for the medium-term promotion of diversification of agricultural production and community assets; capacity building for government and partners working on DRR, CCA, mapping of hazards and risks, monitoring, preparedness and response and support to scaling up of the existing social protection mechanisms, including elderly grants; orphaned and vulnerable children (OVC) grants and farming input grants;
Identify areas for improved inter-sectoral coordination with relevant suggestions for the implementation of identified improvements that are necessary;
Propose institutional arrangements for effective DRR and resilience coordination of the response and define roles of the stakeholders including the UN Agencies;
Develop the National Resilience Strategy and Action Plan with an M&E Framework through inclusive consultation with development partners, donors and government authorities, in the process, to track the delivery and impact of early recovery interventions;
Develop a Monitoring and Evaluation Framework complementing the Resilience Building Programme identifying key indicators including gender indicators to assess progress in the implementation of the programme and the impact achieved by the interventions. Sources of secondary data used in some of the indicators needs to be indicated (i.e. nutrition, health, crop production, gender etc.).

Deliverables:

The consultant is expected to develop a robust Resilience Strategy and Action Plan aligned with UNDAF and the GoS Policies on DRR and climate change and coherent with the NERMAP 2016-2022 in order to facilitate UN`s support to addressing the root causes of vulnerability.

Inception Report with an indication on how the assignment tasks will be undertaken together with timelines for specific milestones, 20th October 2016.
Draft Resilience Strategy and Action Plan and M&E Framework, 11th November 2016.
Validation of Draft Resilience Strategy and Action Plan and M&E Framework, 9th December 2016.
Approved Resilience Strategy and Action Plan with an M&E Framework by 15th December 2016.

Competencies

Corporate Competencies:

Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards.
Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP.
Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability.

Functional Competencies:

Knowledge Management and Learning

Promotes knowledge management in UNDP and a learning environment in the office through leadership and personal example.
Actively works towards continuing personal learning and development in one or more Practice Areas, acts on learning plan and applies newly acquired skills.

Development and Operational Effectiveness

Ability to lead strategic planning, results-based management and reporting.
Ability to lead formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of development programmes and projects, mobilize resources.
Good knowledge of the Results-based Management Guide and Toolkit.
Ability to implement new systems and affect staff behavioural/ attitudinal change.

Management and Leadership

Builds strong relationships with clients, focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to feedback.
Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude.
Demonstrates good oral and written communication skills.
Demonstrates openness to change and ability to manage complexities

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

Master’s Degree or equivalent in Environmental Management, Environmental sciences, Social Sciences, Business Administration, Public Administration, Economics or related field.

Experience:

At least 10 years field experience in the field of DRR, Recovery, humanitarian assistance, emergency response with considerable experience in the field of early recovery and long term resilience building.
Profound knowledge of Recovery, Resilience conceptual frameworks and/or DRR interventions through international organisations and ideally have undertaken similar assignments.
Extensive experience at the national or international level in providing management advisory services, hands-on experience in design, gender programming, monitoring and evaluation of development, early recovery and strategies and resilience building strategies programmes and projects and establishing inter-relationships among international organizations and national governments.
Knowledge and experience from disaster response operations, including missions in support of recovery planning is desirable.
Experience working within the UN System, preferably in an operation UN Agency with humanitarian, DRR and recovery operations.
Knowledge of institutional and policy frameworks on Swaziland as related to the project, institutional and policy issues on Disaster Risk Management, Early Recovery would be an advantage.
Experience in the usage of computers and office software packages, experience in handling of web based management systems.

Language:

Fluency in English;
Knowledge of Siswati will be an asset.

Qualified female candidates are encouraged to apply.