Background

United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the State Government of Sarawak have initiated a partnership in Sarawak’s development planning under the current and new Country Programme between Government of Malaysia and UNDP. One of the projects is partnering with the Ministry of Natural Resources and Urban Development, Sarawak to formulate the Sarawak Biodiversity Master Plan. The project titled “Sarawak Biodiversity Master Plan – Support to Policy Formulation, Institutional Framework and Institutional Capacity Building” (SBMP) will contribute to mainstreaming biodiversity and ecosystem considerations into Sarawak’s development planning to advance effective conservation and safeguard natural resources. The formulation of Sarawak Biodiversity Master Plan and its implementation is aligned with Sarawak’s development objectives as well as the international call for stronger subnational commitment on addressing threats to biodiversity and ecosystems, and full integration of conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity into development planning to ensure sustainable economic growth and social wellbeing in Sarawak.

There are three outcomes to this project namely:

1. Development and sectoral policies are harmonized and strengthened through formulation of SARAWAK BIODIVERSITY MASTER PLAN to enable effective conservation, management &sustainable use of biodiversity 
2. INSTITUTIONAL MANDATES for biodiversity & ecosystems are clarified to strengthen intra-governmental coordination and multiple stakeholder participation in biodiversity planning & decision-making process
3. CAPACITY to implement the Sarawak Biodiversity Master Plan enhanced among the government ministries and agencies

Duties and Responsibilities

SCOPE OF WORK

Role

The Biodiversity Finance Expert will support the policy and technical expert team led by UNDP in the aspects of the financial planning, budgeting and costing of the Sarawak Biodiversity Master Plan.

Responsibilities

• Undertake stocktaking exercise on the budget planning cycle and mechanisms, finance landscape in Sarawak for biodiversity and ecosystems. This includes donors, financial institutions, private sector and CSO/NGO.
• Review of past expenditure and present financial needs (development and operating expenditures from Federal Government and Sarawak, and donor contributions) of key agencies with mandates related to conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity and ecosystems.
• Review and recommend suitable financial strategies for mainstreaming of biodiversity including but not limited to existing financial instruments such as Ecological Fiscal Transfer (EFT), National Conservation Trust Fund (NCTF), Payment for Ecosystem Services (PES) or potential future instruments.
• Conduct costing of the Sarawak Biodiversity Master Plan at the action level.
• Prepare and draft the financial sustainability/resource mobilization plan for the implementation of Sarawak Biodiversity Master Plan.

INSTITUTIONAL ARRANGEMENTS

The Specialist will report to the Project Manager, Sarawak Region and seek approval and/or acceptance of outputs/deliverables from the Head of Sustainable and Resilient Development of UNDP Country Office in Malaysia. The Specialist is also expected to liaise with the project team for project management and other relevant matters.

• Estimated level of effort: up to 60 days;
• The Specialist will be given access to relevant information necessary for execution of the tasks under this assignment;
• The Specialist will be responsible for providing her/his own working station (i.e., laptop, internet, phone, scanner/printer, photo camera, etc.) and must have access to a reliable internet connection;
• The Specialist is expected to be reasonably flexible with his/her availability during the assignment;
• Payments will be made upon submission of a Certification of Payment (COP) form, and acceptance and confirmation by the Supervisor on the outputs delivered.

DURATION OF THE WORK

The assignment will require up to 60 working days including 18 travel days starting from 15 June 2022 until 31 December 2022.

DUTY STATION

Home-based and travel to Sarawak.

DELIVERABLES & SCHEDULE OF PAYMENT

Competencies

Functional competencies:

• Proven ability to be flexible in a team-oriented approach with diverse groups of people;
• Capable of working in a high- pressure environment with sharp and frequent deadlines, managing many tasks simultaneously;
• Exercises the highest level of responsibility and be able to handle confidential and politically sensitive issues in a responsible and mature manner;
• Welcomes constructive feedback;
• Excellent communication and writing skills; and
• Excellent planning, organizational, multi-task and time management skills.

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
• Treats all people fairly without favouritism;
• Fulfils all obligations to gender sensitivity and zero tolerance for sexual harassment;
• Demonstrates integrity by modelling the UN’s values and ethical standards.

Required Skills and Experience

Education:

• Master’s degree or higher in accounting, conservation finance, environmental economics, public finance, etc. (10 points)

Experience:

• Minimum 10 years of demonstrable experience in biodiversity and conservation finance (20 points).
• Experience in preparation and review of public budget/finance policies and legal and regulatory frameworks for biodiversity, natural resource management (20 points).
• Experience in preparing and/or formulating financial needs assessment, costing of policies/plans/programmes, and financial sustainability/resource mobilization plan (20 points).
• Excellent command of English and fluency in Bahasa Malaysia.

DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS

Interested individual applicants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

1. Document 1: Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability 
2. Document 2: Technical Proposal on how your qualifications, experience and list of track records can lead to successful deliverables of this assignment within the required timeframe, and provide a methodology and approach on how you will approach and conduct the assignments;
3. Document 3: Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price, supported by a breakdown of costs, as per template provided.  If an applicant 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 applicant must indicate at this point and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.  
4. Document 4: Personal CV or P11 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  
5. Please submit this information in one file as Documents 1, 2, 3, and 4. The system will only accept ONE (1) attachment, please merge all documents and submit them as one file.
6. Applicants must reply to the mandatory questions asked by the system when submitting the application.
7. Candidates who fail to submit all the information requested above will be disqualified.

How to Apply:

• Kindly download the Letter of Confirmation of interest and availability, Financial Proposal Template, and General Terms & Conditions mentioned below;
• Read and agree to the General Terms & Conditions (refer to the below link);
• Click the ‘apply’ icon and complete what is required;
• Scan all documents into 1 (One) pdf folder and then upload;
• For clarification questions, please email procurement.my@undp.org. The clarification question deadline is three (3) days before the closing. When emailing for clarification questions, please put "MyIC/2022/016" as the subject matter.

General terms & conditions to be downloaded:

• The General Terms & Conditions for Individual contract 

Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA): A legal instrument between UNDP and a Company/institution, according to which, the latter makes available the services of an individual delivering time-bound and quantifiable outputs that are directly linked to payments

• The General Terms & Conditions for Reimbursement Loan Agreement  

Incomplete proposals may not be considered. Only short-listed candidates may be contacted, and successful candidates will be notified.

EVALUATION AND AWARD OF CONTRACT

• Only those applications which are responsive and compliant will be shortlisted for technical evaluation;
• Offers will be evaluated according to the Combined Scoring method – where the technical criteria will be weighted at 70% and the financial offer will be weighted at 30%;
• The technical criteria including education and experience will be based on a maximum 70 points and technical proposal review at 30 points maximum. Only the top 3 candidates scoring 50 points or higher from the technical evaluation will be considered for financial evaluation;
• Financial score (max 30 points) shall be computed as a ratio of the proposal being evaluated and the lowest priced proposal of those technically qualified;
• The financial proposal shall specify an all-inclusive fee and including breakdown per deliverable and all costs components required to perform the deliverables identified in the TOR, including professional fee, in-country travel costs, living allowance and any other applicable cost to be incurred by the Specialist in completing the assignment.  In order to assist the requesting unit in the comparison of financial proposals, the financial proposal must additionally include a breakdown of this daily fee (including number of anticipated working days and all foreseeable expenses to carry out the assignment);
• Applicant receiving the Highest Combined Score and has accepted UNDP’s General Terms and Conditions will be awarded the contract.