UNOP SAP Ecosystems Expert Job Vacancy in Ghana

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Background Info – BU Kenya

Kenya
The UNOPS Kenya office manages more than 60 projects in around 10 countries of eastern and southern Africa. UNOPS in Kenya helps partners achieve their project goals in sectors including: governance, education, health, the environment, grant management and rural development.
Background Information – Job-specific

1-Introduction
The Addressing Transboundary Concerns in the Volta River Basin and its downstream coastal areas’ Project is a joint initiative of the Governments of Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Togo. The project is funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF), implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and executed by the United Nations Office for Project Support (UNOPS).

The project, which has been designed to facilitate the integrated management, sustainable development and protection of natural resources of the Volta River Basin, plans to achieve its objectives by addressing priority regional transboundary issues and problems as identified through a preliminary transboundary diagnostic analysis (TDA) for the basin conducted in 2002. The project is expected to promote a more sectorally-coordinated management approach, based on Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) principles, both at the national and the regional levels, with a strong emphasis on an expanded role for all stakeholders.

The long-term goal of the project is to enhance the ability of the countries to plan and manage the Volta basin within their territories and its aquatic resources and ecosystems on a sustainable basis.

The project has three main components with associated objectives identified by the root cause analysis carried out during the project preparation process and updated during the inception phase as follows:

• Specific Objective n° 1: Build capacity, improve knowledge, enhance stakeholders involvement to support the effective management of the VRB
• Specific Objective n° 2:Develop river basin legal, regulatory and institutional frameworks and management instruments for addressing transboundary concerns in the Volta River Basin and its downstream coastal area
• Specific Objective n° 3: Demonstrate national and regional measures to combat transboundary environmental degradation in the Volta Basin

A principle output of the project is a Strategic Action Programme (SAP): an implementable programme of joint management to address threats to the basin’s linked land and water systems. The SAP provides the vehicle in which to package the plan, overcome the barriers to regional co-operation and ensure that the sustainable development baseline can be met and global objectives achieved.

The SAP initiatives are integrated within the Action Plans for the National Part of the Volta River Basin (APNP-VRB). These are priority management initiatives at the country level designed to halt, reverse or preempt threats to the integrity of the basin while promoting sustainable economic and human development.

The APNP-VRB will be developed concurrently with the SAP so that national priorities complement basin-wide
objectives and SAP initiatives are reflected in national agendas. The SAP will contain costed regional priorities with timeframes and actions focused on concrete results, to be reflected in the APNP-VRB. The AP/APNP-VRB development will seek to coordinate projects and policies throughout the basin, based on sound scientific evidence and appropriate remedial actions. It is intended that these actions and interventions of the SAP/APNP-VRB will be implemented in the SAP implementation phase and funded through GEF, other donor, and national budgets, in a coordinated and collaborative fashion in order to maximise the efficient and effective use of funds to reverse environmental degradation in the Volta Basin, halt future degradation and enhance the livelihoods of riparian communities.

The Project Management Unit will facilitate this process by organizing regular fora for technical and management cooperation. Such fora include national and basin-wide level meetings on APNP-VRB and SAP development as per an agreed project plan to identify and prioritize SAP issues, donor meetings and other relevant meetings to discuss and approve the final SAP.

The consultants will collate the required data and assist with the consultations and analyses in the six basin states (Benin, Burkina Faso, Cote d’Ivoire, Ghana, Mali and Togo) required to develop the APNP-VRB in a fully participatory manner, containing sufficient details to form the basis for the completion of a basin-wide Strategic Action Programme.

Existing development plans, programmes and policies should be the departure point for this exercise. The work should compliment national and regional initiatives and attempt to estimate the cumulative interdependence of national and regional development initiatives on the integrity of the basin. The process of developing the programmes of action should highlight complementarities (or conflicts) inherent in the planned activities in the six basin countries. Therefore it is important to ensure that the APNP-VRB are in a format which enables trans-boundary comparisons.

The Strategic Action Programme should compliment and not substitute the work of ongoing initiatives
in the basin.

2- Duties and Responsibilities
The current ToR outlines the roles and responsibilities of an Ecosystems Expert to contribute to the preparation of the final SAP for the Volta River basin. For the preparation of the final SAP it is envisaged that a core team of regional or international experts takes responsibility on a basin-wide scale. National experts from the basin states, contributing data and performing studies on specific issues on a national basis, will complement this team. The core project team will comprise:
• SAP Coordinator (Team Leader)
• Water resources expert
• Ecosystems expert
• Economic development expert
• Legal and Governance expert

The Ecosystems Expert, will work in close association with the SAP Coordinator in developing an approach to the assignment, identification of further studies which need to be performed to address gaps in the final TDA as well as developing a structured approach to gaining the input of other stakeholders in the basin.

The principal activities to be performed by the Ecosystems Expert in collaboration with the other regional SAP experts) include:
• Contribute to the preparation of required background documentation for the national and regional stakeholder workshops, i.e. APNP-VRB and SAP methodology, work plan and outlines, APNP-VRB and SAP activity lists and milestones
• In collaboration with country teams or working groups, VBA and the SAP core team, contribute to the review of TDA priority problems causal chain analysis
• Assist with the facilitation of regional stakeholder workshops (including SAP planning, thematic and validation workshops and discussions) and solicit input to the SAP from stakeholders
• Contribute to the analysis of existing and future national and regional development objectives (from national and regional policies, legislation, development plans etc.) for integration with the APNP-VRB and SAP
• Review as Ecosystems Expert, APNP-VRB and other consultancy and/or working group outputs and provide guidance and feedback
• Contribute to the preparation of the first draft SAP document, taking responsibility for ecosystems aspects of the basin
• Integrate comments and inputs from external technical reviewers and relevant stakeholder, gathered at the respective national and regional workshops, into a final SAP.

3- Key Expected Outputs and level of effort

Major expected outputs are as follows:
• Guidelines for the preparation of SAP and APNP-VRB, including SAP/APNP-VRB outlines, work plan and milestones prepared and discussed with PMU, VBA and UNEP, ToRs for any working groups or major events in the process
• SAP workshops facilitated and documented
• Strategic actions identified and prioritized•
• Using the contributions of working groups and consultants, SAP document prepared, reviewed and finalised

Level of effort: 30 working days level of effort is anticipated to produce the required outputs

Education/Experience/Language requirements
The assignment shall be conducted by a regional or international expert with extensive experience in policy and strategy development in Integrated Transboundary Water Management. Equally, the consultant must have conducted activities of similar nature and complexity, especially in the framework of other GEF financed
projects.

The consultant should have the following qualifications and experiences:
• Sound understanding of and experience in designing GEF TDA/SAP processes, preferably in Africa
• A higher university degree in ecology, environmental management, geography, biology or other directly related physical science field,•
• Sound understanding of Integrated Ecosystem Management, International River Basin Management, Environmental Services , Protected Areas Management and Biodiversity ,
• Extensive, with at least 10 years of proven experience in working with and relating to governments and international agencies, •
• Demonstrated experience in working with participatory methodologies •
• Knowledge or experience in working on issues of governance, policy development , and strategy formulation, preferably in Africa
• Excellent and demonstrated (through academic journal articles or project reports) communication, consultation, editing and drafting skills, •
• Working experience and production of documents in English. French language skills are an asset.
• Knowledge of transboundary issues in the Volta Region is an asset.

Contract type, level and duration
Contract type: International ICA
Contract level:I-ICA 2
Contract duration: 30 days are foreseen to be provided

For more details about the ICA contractual modality, please follow this link:
http://www.unops.org/ENGLISH/WHOWENEED/CONTRACT-TYPES/Pages/Individual-Contractor-Agreements-ICAs.aspx

Additional Considerations
• Please note that the closing date is midnight Copenhagen time (UCT/GMT + 1 hour)
• Applications received after the closing date will not be considered.
• Only those candidates that are short-listed for interviews will be notified.
• Qualified female candidates are strongly encouraged to apply.
• UNOPS reserves the right to appoint a candidate at a level below the advertised level of the post

Closing Date: Tuesday, 03 April 2012