The healthcare sector is one of the world's most important and fastest-growing industries.  As it grows in size and complexity, the healthcare sector is increasingly dependent on single-use disposable products, including many containing or generating chemicals of concern. POPs and mercury are present throughout the healthcare value chain, including buildings, processes and products procured. Many products designed as single-use can be reprocessed for reuse and/or can be substituted for products and materials designed for reuse. Meanwhile, capacity for safe and sustainable waste management, including recycling and disposal of legacy chemicals, remains well below basic standards as defined by WHO and UNICEF in most countries for which data are available.  

Approximately 80% of the waste generated in a Health Care Facilities (HCF) is general waste while the remaining 20% is hazardous or infectious waste that contains harmful microorganisms which can infect hospital patients, HCFs staff and the general public, as well as sharp objects and hazardous substances that can result in injuries, poisoning and pollution.1 Health care waste management in Eswatini has improved due to interventions from previous projects such as the health care waste management plan for Eswatini developed for the Health, HIV/AIDS and TB Project. Improvements include the formulation of the National Health Care Waste Policy, introduction of the Health Care Waste Management Guidelines and improvements in the institutional and budgetary arrangements to better manage health care waste in the country. Health care waste management in Eswatini falls under the auspices of the Ministry of Health (MoH), Environmental Health Department (EHD) and the Eswatini Environment Authority. Through the assistance of the MoH (EHD and Infection Prevention and Control (IPC)/ Quality Management Programme, HCFs in Eswatini introduced Infection Prevention and Control (IPC) Committees who are trained and supported to manage health care waste from generation to treatment.  

However, challenges in HCWM in Eswatini remain. The overarching challenge being the low prioritization of HCWM at the national and HCF level. HCWM has not been afforded the deserving attention in Eswatini. From this challenge emanates a number of sub-challenges including ill-discipline in the application and management of waste minimization, containment, labelling, storage, collection and disposal or treatment initiatives.  Initiatives to minimize waste from source have been applied disproportionately and the quality and content of products procured and their impacts during their lifecycle have been overlooked and cost has been the priority measure of evaluation. While HCFs have been trained on waste segregation, there are still incidences of mixing leading to downstream challenges in management.  Temporary storage is still a challenge in some HCFs especially in Clinics.

Collection and disposal or treatment in the urban areas is much more efficient than in rural areas due to available systems and resources within local authorities. Eswatini has two acceptable Landfills equipped to treat non-infectious or non-hazardous health care waste. The rest of the facilities are controlled or uncontrolled dumpsites that pose all kinds of environmental and health threat to the environment. Infectious waste is incinerated either in Health Centres or Hospitals. Infectious waste from Clinics is temporarily stored and transferred to either health centres or hospitals for disposal. Efforts towards circular economy in the health care sector in Eswatini have been minimal and limited to waste reduction during procurement. The efforts have been disproportionate and only applied during the procurement of supplies, but the initiatives lack uniformity, commitment and support at political and management level. These challenges have been exacerbated by the prolonged COVID-19 Pandemic. Due to the sharp increase in the demand of HCWM services and health care waste volumes, the health care waste management system has been strained. Waste reduction practices, containment, temporary storage, collection and treatment has been overwhelmed.  

To address this challenge, Eswatini developed a child project to promote a circular economy approach to the healthcare sector in Eswatini which focused on harnessing green procurement principles,  empowering healthcare facilities (HCFs) to identify and substitute products which contribute to the continued creation and use of POPs and mercury, identifying inactive equipment, determine the reasons for underutilization and build capacity for repair and develop the necessary support systems to ensure that it can be sustained over the longer term.  The Eswatini project was designed as a child project to the regional TRACE programme which aimed to promote environmentally sound management of persistent organic pollutants and mercury in Africa, including reduced emissions, safe disposal, and strengthened compliance with convention obligations, through strengthened enabling frameworks, circular economy (CE) approaches, integrated financial instruments, and enhancing good governance. The project is also aligned to other programmes such as the OECD Programme on the Circular Economy in Cities and Regions which aims to assist cities and regions transition to a circular economy and recognizes that a circular economy can provide a policy response to cope with the global waste challenges, as a driver for economic growth, jobs and environmental quality.  

Purpose of the Assignment:

The purpose of the assignment is to review the Transitioning to a Circular Economy in Africa (TRACE): Eliminating POPs and Mercury from Healthcare Value Chains in Eswatini child project and develop a PIF for a standalone project for Eswatini to be submitted to the GEF Council in December 2022. 

Under the direct supervision of the Environment Analyst and the overall supervision of the Resident Representative, the consultant will be responsible to support the development of all requested documents, needed to submit a funding application to the Global Environment Facility (GEF) under the GEF 8 programming cycle.  The consultant will also follow the guidance of the UNDP Country Office and Regional Bureau in order to align all relevant project documents to UNDP and GEF requirements.

• GEF datasheet
• GEF PIF
• Concept note
• Project information Document (for disclosure)
• Environmental and Social Framework
• GEF Core indicators
• GEF Taxonomy

Specifically, the consultant will be responsible for the following duties:

• Review existing child projects and identify areas for improvement
• Engage key stakeholders to ensure alignment to ongoing healthcare waste management initiatives
• Develop the GEF8 PIF for a standalone project, including all relevant annexes, and further integrate comments from UNDP and the GEF Secretariat in order to deliver a final project document.
• Ensure the GEF8 project contributes to achieve the SDG 12, and fully integrates circular economy principles

The Deliverables:

The consultant will provide the following deliverables:

• Submit an inception report with detailed workplan / timelines
• Draft GEF8 related documents quoted above (GEF datasheet, GEF PIF, Concept note, Project information Document, Environmental and Social Framework, GEF Core indicators, GEF Taxonomy) by 10 September 2022,
• Final GEF8 related documents (GEF datasheet, GEF PIF, Concept note, Project information Document, Environmental and Social Framework, GEF Core indicators, GEF Taxonomy, integrating comments), by 30 September 2022.
• Integrating feedback and comments from GEF Sec before final submission in December 2022.

All documents have to be submitted to the Environment Analyst in Microsoft Word.

All documents have to be delivered in English.

Evaluation Management:

With overall reporting to the UNDP Resident Representative, the Consultant will work on day-to-day basis with the Ministry of Health and the Eswatini Environment Authority and shall be supervised by the Environment Analyst at UNDP. 

?Technical Competencies:

• Resource mobilization
• Report writing skills
• Demonstrated stakeholder consultation, data collection, management and analysis skills.
• Excellent communication skills.

Cross Functional Competencies

• Strategic Thinking:  Ability to develop effective strategies and prioritized plans in line with UNDP’s objectives, based on the systemic analysis of challenges, potential risks and opportunities; linking the vision to reality on the ground, and creating tangible solutions.  Ability to leverage learning from a variety of sources to anticipate and respond to future trends; to demonstrate foresight in order to model what future developments and possible ways forward look like for UNDP.

• Knowledge Generation:   Ability to research hand turn information into useful knowledge, relevant for context, or responsive to a stated need.  
• Collective Intelligence Design:  Ability to bringing together diverse groups of people, data, information or ideas, and technology to design services or solutions
• Human-centered Design:  Ability to develop solutions to problems by involving the human perspective in all steps of the problem-solving process.
• Partnerships Management:   Ability to build and maintain partnerships with wide networks of stakeholders, Governments, civil society and private sector partners, experts and others in line with UNDP strategy and policies
• Communication:  Ability to communicate in a clear, concise and unambiguous manner both through written and verbal communication; to tailor messages and choose communication methods depending on the audience
• Working with Evidence and Data:  Ability to inspect, cleanse, transform and model data with the goal of discovering useful information, informing conclusions and supporting decision-making.

Education:

• Advanced university degree in environmental/climate finance, environmental sciences, agriculture, forestry, climate change, soil sciences, environmental economics, business development and management or related fields;

Experience:

• A minimum of 10 years of progressively responsible experience in chemicals and waste management policy; project development, resource mobilization and innovative finance;
• Proven experience in drafting and preparing project idea notes/concept notes and full project documents,
• meeting criteria and requirements of UNDP and GEF;
• Proven work experience as a technical advisor on projects development and preparation in the chemical and waste sector.

Language Requirement:

• Fluency in written and spoken English.

How to Apply:

Interested and qualified candidates should submit;

1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by UNDP;Letter of Confirmation of Interest template
2. Personal CV or P11, (P11 form); 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.

3. 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);

Please note you can upload only one document to this application (scan all documents in one single PDF file to attach).

Incomplete applications will be excluded from further consideration.

Criteria for Selection of the Best Offer

• Combined Scoring method – where the qualifications and experiences will be weighted a max. of 70%, and combined with the price offer which will be weighted a max of 30%.