Livelihoods, Gender and Stakeholder Engagement Specialist for the preparation of the UNDP supported GEF funded Medium Sized Project (MSP) titled ‘Mainstreaming Sustainable Land Management and Biodiversity Conservation in the Republic of Mauritius’ projec (примерный перевод: Специалист по обеспечению средств к существованию, гендерным вопросам и заинтересованным сторонам для подготовки поддерживаемого ПРООН проекта среднего размера (MSP) под названием "M Устойчивое управление земельными ресурсами и сохранение биоразнообразия в проекте Республики Маврикий) (Маврикий - Тендер #4078546)

IC - International Consultant - Livelihoods, Gender and Stakeholder Engagement Specialist for the preparation of the UNDP supported GEF funded Medium Sized Project (MSP) titled ‘Mainstreaming Sustainable Land Management and Biodiversity Conservation in the Republic of Mauritius’ project

Project Description

Context and Objectives of Project

The objective of the GEF PPG is to develop the project concept into a full project: Mainstreaming Sustainable Land Management and Biodiversity Conservation in the Republic of Mauritius. This project aims to scale up the adoption of sustainable land management (SLM) in production landscapes across Mauritius and Rodrigues.

The project will tackle the main drivers of Mauritius’s land degradation and ecosystems services deterioration and loss, including: deforestation and conversion of land for pasture, agriculture and settlement; intensification and adoption of unsustainable agricultural practices; overgrazing of livestock; recurrent wildfires; habitat fragmentation; and climate change. These are being exacerbated by urban expansion and sprawl into rural areas, often accompanied by pollution (affecting soils, vegetation and groundwater). In Rodrigues, where population and development pressure is much lower, the project will seek to reverse, halt and prevent further land degradation, which is caused primarily by poorly regulated pastureland management and the use of unsustainable agricultural practices. Through the adoption of a comprehensive, inter-sector approach to scale-up SLM technologies across all the islands, the project will catalyze improved management and conservation of production landscapes—while providing downstream benefits in riverine, coastal and marine habitats. This will require that SLM considerations be mainstreamed into sector priorities and site level actions, which will generate local and global environmental benefits and increase resilience to the deleterious impacts of climate change. Through this action, Mauritius will aim to achieve land degradation neutrality in productive lands within a wider approach to sustainable landscape management and rehabilitation.

The project will be designed to remove the barriers and catalyze the mainstreaming of SLM technologies to reduce, halt or reverse LD and catalyze the adoption of the landscape approach to support effective planning and management of production landscapes in Mauritius and Rodrigues. The aim is to work towards land degradation neutrality – restoring degraded land and preventing new degradation. This will be achieved through three interdependent components, using Land Degradation Neutrality as a lens to foster coherence of national policies, actions and commitments.

• Component 1 will strengthen the national policy and legislative framework to enable land use planning and management across production landscapes for the promotion of SLM;
• Component 2 will seek to improve management and conservation of forest, agricultural and pastoral ecosystems through the application of SLM technologies over 2,100 ha, with capacity to implement;
• Component 3 will ensure that the project’s gender strategy is implemented, monitored and reported, that the environmental benefits (local, national and global) are monitored and assessed using appropriate tools and systems, also that the project records and disseminated lessons learned for scaling-up local and more widely to other development projects.

The Project Identification Form (PIF) for the project was approved under the Biodiversity GEF Trust Fund allocation on 26 June 2018 (see annex). In order to reach the stage of UNDP Project Document completion and CEO endorsement, project development includes a preparatory phase, which foresees the collection of information and gathering of useful data for project design, the validation of the indicative outcomes and outputs contained in the PIF, the development of a full M&E plan including appropriate indicators and baseline, a participatory plan to involve communities as well as the identification of implementing partners and negotiation pertaining to implementation arrangements and co-financing.

The Project Preparation Grant (PPG) was approved by the GEF Secretariat to prepare a Medium-Size Project Document (MSP) for submission under the GEF-6 In this context an International Consultant Team Leader is required to prepare the MSP, focusing on all components proposed in the PIF, and expected outcomes to be achieved, as outlined in the approved Project Identification Form (PIF). The Request for GEF CEO Endorsement and the UNDP Project Document plus ancillary documentation must therefore be nationally validated and finalized for internal UNDP clearance no later than 25 April 2019. It is very important to respect the deadline, because the period for UNDP internal review and clearances may take up to 4 weeks.

Scope of Work

The consultants’ team is expected to produce, in a timely manner and in full compliance with the set deadlines, all relevant documents and forms completed to a high quality level for submission to the Project Quality Assurance team of the UNDP as well as the normal UNDP-GEF channels. The documentation to be submitted for technical and financial clearance will include:

• GEF CEO Endorsement;
• UNDP project document;
• Set of co-financing letters;
• UNDP’s Social and Environmental Screening;
• BD focal area Tracking Tools;
• Budget sheet in Excel;
• Mandatory annexes to the ProDoc, including gender analysis and action plan, and stakeholder engagement plan, among others, and project specific annexes (e.g. landscape profile, institutional and legal analysis, feasibility studies, etc.); and
• Validation workshop report.

Technical guidance and support pertaining to the GEF modality (project scoping and budgeting, best practices, knowledge management, partnerships etc.) will be provided by the UNDP-GEF Regional Technical Advisor overseeing the project, by the UNDP-GEF Environment Programme Manager, and by the UNDP Office in Mauritius, which will in addition provide operational support for a fast and effective PPG implementation.

The Gender Specialist will provide technical expertise and guidance and lead the assessment/analysis of gender dimensions and stakeholder participation in sustainable land and water management and the differentiated impacts of land and ecosystem degradation on men, women and youth and the implications for the environment and livelihoods of the local groups and communities in the project area, using a Gender Analysis Template and Guide to Conducting a Participatory Gender Analysis for projects supported by UNDP with GEF financing. The assessment will guide the project team to mainstream gender equality and women’s and youth empowerment into project design and implementation—taking into account the differences, needs, roles and responsibilities of men, women and youth.

The gender assessment will at a minimum utilise the UNDP GEF Guide to Gender Mainstreaming in UNDP Supported GEF Financed Projects for conducting gender analysis and will seek to provide guidance for the project to be gender responsive or gender transformative using the following gender results effectiveness scale as outlined in the UNDP evaluation of gender mainstreaming in UNDP:

• Gender negative: result has a negative outcome that aggravate or reinforce gender inequalities and norms;
• Gender blind: results pay no attention to gender and fail to acknowledge the different needs of men, women, girls and boys, or marginalized populations;
• Gender targeted: results focus on the number or equity (50/50) of women, men or marginalized populations that targeted;
• Gender responsive: results address differential needs of men or women and equitable distribution of benefits, resources, status and rights but did not address root causes of inequalities in their lives;
• Gender transformative: results contribute to changes in norms, cultural values, power structures and the roots of gender inequalities and discriminations. The aim is to redefine systems and institutions where inequalities are created and maintained.

Guidance should facilitate the mainstreaming of gender equality considerations into the Project Strategy and Result Framework through a process of assessing the implication for women and men of any planned action, in all areas and at all levels. The project strategy should ensure that women’s, men’s, youth and other marginalised groups’ concerns and experiences are an integral dimension of the design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of projects so that all stakeholders benefit equally from the project interventions.

To facilitate the development of an inclusive and gender-transformative project, the expert will at a minimum:

• Lead the stakeholder identification (including identification of indigenous groups) and profiling process, by conducting an analysis existing data demographic profiles of communities in the project sites and consultations and ensure that these are complete and comprehensive. This process should be informed by a review of the PIF pre-screening report, and the existing UNDP guidance on Social and Environmental Standards and other best practice approaches to stakeholder engagement and gender mainstreaming;
• Lead and advise on the stakeholder analysis and consultations and ensure that they are complete and comprehensive;
• Prepare a stakeholder engagement plan;
• Determine the number of men and women, disaggregated by age, in the project site and their roles, responsibilities and priorities in their access, use and utilisation of natural resources, including forests, and other non-timber forest products;
• Conduct a participatory analysis of the differentiated impacts of land, forest, water and ecosystem degradation on women and men, disaggregated by age;
• Assess gender dynamics shaping adoption (or lack thereof) of SFM, SLM and biodiversity-friendly agro-forestry practices, identifying enabling conditions that have been found to work;
• Participate in field visits, as needed;
• Participate in one workshop for the inception of the project;
• Based on the findings, prepare a gender action plan for incorporation into the Project Document (PRODOC) to ensure that the project strategy and its implementation are monitored as appropriate in terms of gender-responsiveness;
• Using the findings of the gender analysis exercise, propose gender-disaggregated indicators and targets for integration into the Project Results Framework;
• Support action points, including risk assessments, from the UNDP Social and Environmental Screening Procedure (SESP) at the PIF stage (“pre-screening”) to ensure these are fully implemented during the PPG, and update that screening in an iterative fashion throughout the PPG, as appropriate;
• Provide responses to the UNDP SESP on sections related to gender and women’s empowerment and make recommendations for the Gender Marker Rating for the overall project strategy.

Expected Outputs and Deliverables

The consultant shall be responsible for the following, in so far as applicable to this TOR, under the guidance of the Team leader, and in collaboration with the consultants’ team and stakeholders:

• A profile of the stakeholders and right-holders in the proposed project areas, the community institutions (norms, rules and procedures) governing access to, control over and use of natural resources, and the mechanisms for sharing the benefits therefrom;
• A gender analysis report outlining the key findings for use in formulating the gender strategy for the project;
• A gender responsive project results framework, including sex-disaggregated indicators (also indicating the share of men and women direct beneficiaries);
• Gender Action plan (outlining the process to be followed) for incorporation of gender aspects in the project;
• A stakeholder engagement plan.

Refer to Detailed TOR

Deadline for Submission: 6 November 2018 on the UNDP jobs on https://jobs.undp.org/cj_view_jobs.cfm