The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), as the development arm of the United Nations, works in some 170 countries and territories, helping to empower lives and build resilient nations.

In Sri Lanka, UNDP has been working as a key development partner of choice since 1967, to achieve sustainable human development in economic, social and environmental fronts. Working closely with the Government at national, regional and local levels, and civil society and the private sector, UNDP aims at eradicating extreme poverty, and reducing inequalities and exclusion to protect both people and the planet.

Climate change is the single greatest challenge humanity has ever faced, threatening water and food security, health, livelihoods, and the safety of billions of people. The global response to this challenge must be just, inclusive, and leave no one behind, while seeking the most efficient climate solutions that advance multiple Sustainable Development Goals at once.

UNDP, Sri Lanka is assisting the Government to work towards a sustainable Sri Lanka building up institutional, legal and individual capacities to respond to the effects of climate change and natural and man-made disasters, by exploring the potential of renewable energy and energy and resource efficiency in responsible consumption and production, while supporting reform and modernization of the environmental management systems, protection of our biodiversity. Climate change is one of the priority areas for UNDP Sri Lanka. Support with signature solutions is provided to the government in a mix of policy advice, technical assistance, finance, reporting and further extension of benefits to affected by implementing pilot projects and programmes. 

Sri Lanka was one of the first few countries to ratify the Paris Agreement in 2016 which is the most trailed climate initiative of the decade. Under the Paris Agreement, countries have committed to reducing Greenhouse Gas (GHG) emissions to limit the earth’s temperature rise and implement solutions to adapt to the effects of climate change impacts. These commitments are declared as Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs), and countries are required to revise their NDCs every five years to reduce GHG emissions. The updating of NDCs and their implementation presents countries with significant opportunities to align their climate and development agendas to promote sustainable growth, but also presents challenges in reinventing policies and operations and mobilizing enough investment. The ‘Climate Promise’ initiative of UNDP assists countries to undertake an inclusive and transparent process to revise and submit enhanced NDCs by the end of 2020.

Building on UNDP’s extensive climate and sustainable development portfolio and partnerships with other UN and development agencies, public and private sector entities, academia and civil society groups, UNDP Sri Lanka is to assist the Government of Sri Lanka (GoSL) to revise country’s NDC targets. Partnered with the Climate Change Secretariat (CCS) under the purview of the Ministry of Environment (MoE) in this important country’s first NDC revision, will strengthen the readiness of GoSL and its people for climate change ownership. This important NDC revision will be led by working groups relevant to the sectorial and/or respective ministries under the guidance of CCS. The revision will be carried out for climate change mitigation, adaptation including loss and damage.

The costing of NDSs has now become increasingly important for a few main purposes.  Mainly the government and key policy makers wish to understand the costs of proposed climate actions and this is needed to compare with the local investment capacities to assess what the country can achieve in the given local context.  This analysis can then be improved as an investment and financing strategy for bridging the gaps to achieve NDDs and for the purpose of communicating for external support requirements. This will also facilitate strategic rearrangement of available resources for climate actions which often have multiple co-benefits and interlinkages for sustainable development aspects.

Given its importance, UNDP Sri Lanka in collaboration with the CCS seeks to recruit a cost & investment analyst/expert with a climate change background to support the GoSL to technically guide and lead the costing and analysing investment requirements to achieve its climate ambitions.

SCOPE AND OBJECTIVES    

Although the climate actions have direct and indirect cost-benefits and co-benefits, identification of the exact investment required to achieve committed actions and the investment gaps is crucial for the GoSL to communicate for various opportunities including donor support, climate finance and other market mechanisms. Under the Climate Promise Workplan for Sri Lanka, UNDP-Sri Lanka is planning to hire an NDC costing expert (home-based/Colombo) to help the Government of Sri Lanka to assess the costing and investment needs to achieve NDC mitigation, adaptation and L&D actions identified under the NDC revision process. This will help Sri Lanka strengthen political buy-in and societal ownership over the current NDC enhancement process. The NDC costing expert (The Consultant) will work remotely (and physically wherever possible)  and conduct consultations with relevant agencies including Ministry of Environment, Ministry of Finance, the Department of National Planning, External Resource Department various sub-working groups and committees appointed for revising NDCs &all other-line ministries and agencies responsible for the implementation of the identified NDC actions, and.

The Consultant will play a key role by bringing in overall expertise and knowledge on climate finance and technical expertise to guide the working groups to adapt to a more rational, scientific and systematic approach to access and quantify the costs of proposed NDCs and NDC actions wherever possible. Further responsibilities under this consultancy assignment are detailed in ‘Section C. Responsibilities’

The Consultant will report to the Technical Coordinator of NDC Review-Climate Promise through the Director of Climate Change Secretariat and will work closely with the staff of CCS, UNDP project team and other experts recruited by UNDP. The Consultant will carry out the review and analysis of various mitigation, adaptation and loss & damage initiatives already identified by the various government and non-government partners mainly focusing on the high-level costing and/or investment gap analysis to achieve these commitments. The overall work will also be guided by the UNDP’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) financing/ SDG integrated national development team. This includes the following tasks:

Costing of NDCs

1. Propose a detailed methodology and work plan to estimate costs and overall investment requirement to implement identified (prioritised) NDC actions (mitigation, adaptation and loss and damage);
2. Propose tools and/or mechanisms for collecting and analyzing data/information relevant to the assessment;
3. Assess costing and investment needs to help Sri Lanka define financing needs to implement NDC actions. For this task, the consultant is expected to work collaboratively with the sector experts (mitigation, adaptation, loss & damage) and establish a working group for the purpose of assessing different costs of identified activities, programmes, policies and regulations. It is suggested to review financing flows from different sources; Public (government budgets) private investment and development financing for climate actions and initiating the analysis based on available secondary data. This is expected to be completed at high-level due to complexity of the given tasks with time limitation;
4. Develop an initial investment plan and financing strategy to help the Government of Sri Lanka scale up implementation of NDC actions.

The consultant is further expected to contribute to the following tasks ;

1. Participate in high-level discussions and dialogues with policymakers to promote NDC revision process and articulate benefits of more ambitious targets which are aligned with national policies, SDGs and adaptation goals of the Paris Agreement;
2. Engage with key stakeholders (the public and private sector, civil society, and academia) in regular policy dialogues. This includes consultations with senior government officials, ministry representatives and other stakeholders to agree on the scope of the NDC costing exercise;
3. Liaise with the team working on ‘SDG Aligned National Development Framework’ initiative supported by UNDP, Sri Lanka(UNDP, Sri Lanka is supporting the GoSL to develop a framework for accelerating Sustainable Development Goals achievement in which there are certain interlinkages  that could be utilized for NDCs as well);
4. Work closely with mitigation, adaptation and loss & damage sector experts to identify synergies among revised NDCs and existing financing flows;
5. Assist revised sectoral NDC validation process and discussion with the assistance of UNDP and CCS.

Development of NDC implementation and monitoring plan

1. Assist in preparation of NDC implementation & monitoring plans. This task will be led by mitigation, adaptation and L&D experts. The consultant hired is expected to identify financing needs and investment gaps. 

Communication and capacity building

1. Prepare progress reports and briefing notes for National Expert Committee on Climate Change Mitigation and Adaptation (NECCCM & NECCCA), ministries and other actors (international organizations, development and multilateral banks, private sector) summarizing costing and investment aspect of revised NDCs;
2. Contribute to any awareness creating or capacity building activities organized by the CCS on this subject as a key resource person.

Other activities

The Consultant will work with other experts of the project (mitigation, adaptation, loss and damage, and policy etc), UNDP and CCS team to complete the following task as well:

1. Assist to identify necessary changes and update requirements for national climate change policy of Sri Lanka, and initial requirements for the development of an integrated policy framework supporting NDC implementation;

Expected Output/Deliverables

The main deliverables of this assignment are the costed NDCs, investment and financing strategy; 

1. Inception report including finalized methodology of the assessment within two weeks from the start of the assignment – 30th December 2020.
2. Report and analysis with estimated costing and overall investment needs to implement NDC actions - 15th February 2021
3. Final report with investment and financing strategy - 15th March 2021

TIMEFRAME

The envisaged time frame of the consultancy is approximately 35 days from 15th Dec 2020 to 30th March 2021. Any additional human resource requirements shall be proposed and factorised into the financial proposal which should be clearly indicated.

The prospective candidate should have the following competencies and qualifications:

a  Technical competencies

• Demonstrated experience as a key expert for climate change related policy/project/programme developments support;
• Prior engagement or experience in setting (I) NDC targets, National Communications and other UNFCCC related reporting will be an advantage;
• thorough understanding of global and national climate change, environmental issues, climate finance and other new climate/market development initiatives;
• Understanding about the government and private sector investments and dynamics towards the climate actions;
• Experience and engagements in related national policies, regulations and institutional backgrounds related to the project operational environment;
• Skills demonstrated in capacity building and mentoring project group;
• Candidate should have at least 10 years of professional and managerial experience in key thematic areas.

b.  Partnerships

• Maturity and confidence in dealing with senior members of national institutions;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Excellent coordination skills and result oriented collaboration with colleagues – especially in this case the national level consultants and officials.

c.  Results

• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Builds strong relationships with clients, focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to feedback;
• Good team player who has the ability to maintain good relationships.

Education

• Postgraduate level education (Master’s Degree) in Science or Engineering in climate change, energy, agriculture, natural resource management, climatology/meteorology, environment, agriculture or related fields. Preference will be given for candidates with the finance background.

Experience

• Minimum of 12 years of demonstrated experience and knowledge in the earlier mentioned fields of expertise, experience working on climate change mitigation, adaptation and financing of climate and environment actions;
• Demonstrated strategic technical and intellectual skills in the substantive areas;
• Demonstrated leadership, facilitation, coordination skills, ability to mentor technical teams;
• Working experience with international organizations or similar projects/programme design and implementations;
• Excellent communication (both oral and written), synthesis, analysis and troubleshooting skills;
• Computer proficiency, especially related to professional office software packages (Microsoft Office).

Languages/ Other

• Excellent English language skills, particularly in the compilation of reports;

HOW TO APPLY

To apply please access UNDP Jobs site http://jobs.undp.org

The application should contain:

• Cover letter (1 page) explaining why you are the most suitable candidate for this Terms of Reference.
• Proposed methodology (2 pages) of how to perform the given tasks and responsibilities.
• Updated CV to include qualifications/competencies and relevant experience in similar projects and contact details of 3 professional referees who can certify your competencies, professionalism, quality of writing, presentation and overall suitability to this TOR (max 3 pages).
• The candidate will be evaluated based on a combination of factors including cover letter, the credentials on offer and brief interview (optional) and the offer which gives the best value for money for the UNDP. Please submit your cover letter, methodology, Financial Proposal (Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability) and CV as a one pdf file.

Evaluation

Applications will be first screened and only candidates meeting the minimum criteria will progress to the pool for short listing. Shortlisted Candidates will be then assessed and scored against the following technical evaluation criteria. An optional interview will be conducted to the shortlisted candidates if required.

1. Technical Criteria weight: [70%]

                        Educational and professional qualification – 15%

                        Experience (work, projects and programmes, consultancies etc) – 25 %

                        Methodology – 20%

                        Other competencies (management, leadership etc) – 10%

2. Financial Criteria weight: [30%]

Only Individual Consultants obtaining a minimum of 49 points (70%) on the Technical Evaluation would be considered for the Financial Evaluation.

FINANCIAL PROPOSAL   

All-Inclusive Lump Sum Fee: LKR

Amount in words: LKR

Note: Payments will be based on the successful completion of agreed milestones i.e. upon delivery of the services specified in the TOR and certification of acceptance by the UNDP. The applicant must factor in all possible costs in his/her “All Inclusive Lump Sum Fee” including his/her consultancy and professional fee, travel, honorarium, board and lodging, and any other foreseeable costs in this exercise. No costs other than what has been indicated in the financial proposal will be paid or reimbursed to the consultant. UNDP will only pay for any unplanned travel outside of this TOR and Duty Station on actual basis and on submission of original bills/invoices and on prior agreement with UNDP officials. Daily premiums and costs for accommodation/meals/incidental expenses for such travel shall not exceed established local UNDP DSA rates.

For an Individual Contractor who is 65 years of age or older, and on an assignment requiring travel, be it for the purpose of arriving at the duty station or as an integral duty required travel under the TOR, a full medical examination and statement of fitness to work must be provided.  Such medical examination costs must be factored into the financial proposal above. Medical examination is not a requirement for individuals on RLA contracts. 

Note: Any additional human resource requirements shall be proposed and factorised into the financial proposal which is to be clearly indicated.

The Letter of Confirming Interest and Availability (Financial Proposal) is available in the following link:

Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability

Please note you can upload only one document in the online application, therefore combine the CV, other supporting documnets and the Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability (Financial Proposal) as one PDF FIle and upload it accordingly.