Background
Guinea-Bissau houses a wealth of natural resources that are of local, national, regional and global significance. However, despite its enormous potential, the country embodies some of the world’s toughest development challenges, combining acute and rising poverty with persistent fragility.
Being a coastal country, Guinea-Bissau’s challenges are magnified as a Least Developed Country and Small Island Developing State, due to its environmental and socio-economic vulnerabilities, geographical situation and climate conditions.
The Government of Guinea-Bissau has elaborated various plans and reports to safeguard the environment and promote sustainable development, including the National Adaptation Plan of Action (2006) and Second National Communication on Climate Change (2011). The Strengthening natural resource valuation capacities for improved planning and decision-making to conserve the global environment project, a Rio Convention capacity development project, proposes to address challenges identified in Guinea-Bissau’s 2011 National Capacity of Self-Valorization (NCSA) and is fully aligned with these plans. Thus, this project and its strategy are consistent with the findings of the NCSA, as well as with Guinea-Bissau’s national plans, priorities and policies. It also considers Guinea-Bissau’s PAN/LCD and National Strategy and Action Plan on Biological Diversity and the National Action strategies.
Indeed, the project will contribute to the establishment of reliable environmental accounting tools and a monitoring system which allows presentation of the state of the environment in understandable terms to policy decision-makers, both national and international, and regularly update the status of Guinea-Bissau capacity to plan its future for sustainable development.
So far, the country has not implemented specific activities regarding environmental accountability, except for the Guide for the economic evaluation of impact assessment, elaborated under the Environmental Assessment framework.
The UNDP Office intends to recruit an international Consultant to convene three (3) public dialogues about environmental accounting policy and will support the pursuit of some of the objectives of the project, namely, to integrate environmental accounting and natural resource valuation tools into key policies and regulations in the scope of:
Output 4.4: Public dialogues and awareness-raising workshops on global environmental values (journalists, private sector, civil society).
Duties and Responsibilities
Scope of work
The International consultant, under the supervision of the project coordinator, UNDP GEF and UNDP Country Office in Guinea Bissau, will work closely with the government specialists, and take into account the Project Document, the international best practices and standards for environmental accounting and valuation of ecosystem services, with specific references to the following sectors: Faculty of Law, General Directorate of Environment, General Directorate for Sustainable Development, Competent Environmental Assessment Authority, General Tax and Contributions Directorate, General Directorate of Budget and Tax Affairs, Agriculture, Energy, Fisheries, Land and Ecosystems, Biodiversity Institute and Protected Areas, and Water Resources, and all the needed references, on environmental accounting in Guinea-Bissau, including:
Public dialogues and awareness-raising workshops on global environmental values (journalists, private sector, civil society).
Key Responsibilities and Tasks:
Present a specific methodology;
Consult the relevant players in Bissau, attend meetings with the Ministries of Environment and Finance as needed, and discuss the main findings with the Project Management Unit (PMU) and UNDP;
Elaborate the final consultancy report;
4.4.1 Convene three (3) public policy dialogues. This activity will be structured slightly differently than the learning-by-doing workshops, in that they will serve as a public forum for intellectuals, leaders, and activists to present and exchange cutting-edge views on the national-global environment nexus, with particular attention to environmental accounting and natural resource valuation. These dialogues will be an extension of the panel discussions of the kick-off conference;
4.4.2 Convene workshops targeted to media professionals to improve environmental reporting. These workshops will enable journalists of television, radio and print to report on global environmental issues and their relevance, especially taking into account that, in general, journalists do not necessarily have a special training or understanding of global environmental issues. Media awareness workshops is also intended to increase reporting in the popular literature on social and economic values of conserving Guinea-Bissau's environment as well as the important losses associated with environmental degradation;
4.4.3 Convene private sector sensitization panel discussions on global environmental issues. These discussions with the private sector are critical to the long-term success of the project, given the role of the private sector to exploit Guinea-Bissau's natural resources for the generation of financial and economic wealth. However, these use models such as net present value that serve only undervalue Guinea-Bissau's environmental goods and services.
Duration of the Work and Duty Station
The consultancy is expected to start in 19/10/2020, and to be completed in 19/12/2020. It requires 30 working days to be carried out within a 30 days contract period. The duty station will be Bissau, workshops places and home-based.
Proposed period Location N° of working days
xxx 2020 Home/UNDP 5
xxx 2020 Workshops places 10
xxx 2020 Workshops places 7
Xxx 2020 Workshops places 8
xxx 2020 Final consultancy report 5
xxxx 2020 TOTAL 30
Competencies
Corporate Competencies
- Demonstrates integrity by modeling 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 favoritism.
Functional Competencies
- Knowledge Management and Learning
- Ability to provide top quality policy advice services on environmental issues;
- In-depth practical knowledge of interdisciplinary development issues.
Development and Operational Effectiveness
- Ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing in order to communicate complex, technical information to technical and general audiences;
- Good negotiation skills for difficult situations;
- Ability to achieve results by persuading, influencing and working with others;
- Meeting facilitation and conflict resolution skills.
Management and Leadership
- Focuses on impact and result for the client and responds positively to critical feedback;
- Encourages risk-taking in the pursuit of creativity and innovation;
- Consistently approaches work with energy and a positive, constructive attitude;
- Demonstrates strong oral and written communication skills.
Required Skills and Experience
Hold a Master’s degree, with expertise in the area of social communication, environmental accountability, management, agronomy, forestry, environmental economy, economy, management, natural sciences, environmental law or similar disciplines.
Language requirement: Portuguese and English or French
Experience:
At least 07 years of proven experience in natural resources values and associated economic environmental accounting indicators, natural resources and ecosystems management, protected areas, environmental law and biodiversity conservation in West Africa, Guinea Bissau in particular;
Perform exercises to test best practices and innovative economic tools;
Have a mastery of the methods and approaches to collecting/producing information and to their analysis;
Have a good knowledge of environmental issues in Guinea Bissau or west Afrique countries;
Have a professional experience in environmental accounting, ecosystem services accounting, natural capital accounting;
Knowledge of the context and previous working experience in natural resources management of Guinea-Bissau is an asset;
Have a good capacity for analysis, synthesis and writing.
Evaluation:
Applicants will be screened against qualifications and competencies specified below through a desk review or an interview process. Applicants will be evaluated based on: Cumulative analysis based on a combination of the Technical and Financial Scores.
Technical Evaluation Criteria: 70%
Financial Evaluation Criteria: 30%
Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:
1. Duly accomplished Letter of Confirmation of Interest and Availability using the template provided by the UNDP;
2. Personal CV and P11 form, duly signed and contact details (email and telephone number) of the candidate and at least three (3) professional references;
3. Brief description of why the candidate considers him/herself as the most suitable for the assignment;
4. Technical Proposal, proposing a methodology to carry out the assignment in accordance with this ToR;
5. Financial Proposal that indicates the all-inclusive fixed total contract price. The term “all-inclusive” means that it has to include international travels, fees, insurance, living allowance, in-town transportation, and other related costs. The Financial Proposal has to be supported by a breakdown of costs, as per the template provided. Preferred Currency of Offer: United States Dollars (US$). If an Offeror 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 the Reimbursable Loan Agreement (RLA), the Offeror must indicate such point, and ensure that all such costs are duly incorporated in the financial proposal submitted to UNDP.
Incomplete applications will be excluded from further consideration.