INTERNATIONAL CONSULTANT ON DEVELOPMENT IMPACT AND SDGS ALIGNMENT ASSESSMENT

Background

Please provide Offeror’s Letter and proposal together with your CV in one single file while submitting application. And please note that the system will not accept the uploading of more than one document so please merge or scan all your documents into one prior to uploading., below is the download link of Offeror's Letter. Applications submitted without Offeror's Letter will be considered fail in evaluation.

Detialed TOR and Offeror's letter download link:

https://drive.google.com/open?id=1CsQ578UEkQMqVm3pyZm9WkXzqdoUdnLx

As an implementing agency of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), UNDP oversees a portfolio of GEF projects in the Chemicals and Waste Focal Area, which are implemented through UNDP’s network of Country Offices located in developing countries, as well as numerous UN and other agency partners. In China, the ongoing projects in Chemicals and Waste portfolio mainly consists of projects related to Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) for implementing Stockholm Convention on POPs. To respect national ownership, those POPs projects are jointly designed and implemented by UNDP and International Environmental Cooperation Center of Ministry of Ecology and Environment (FECO-MEE).

There are three POPs projects currently under implementation, where the Reduction of POPs and PTS release by environmentally sound management throughout the life cycle of electrical and electronic equipment and associated wastes in China (e-waste project) will be operationally completed in the end of 2019. This USD 11.6 million project was officially launched in 2014 with the partnership modality that UNDP is international implementation agency and IECO-MEE as national implementation partner.  The objective of the E-waste project is to help China to fulfill the requirement of the Stockholm Convention. Consistent with this objective, the project addresses the POPs/PTS release sensitive e-waste stream in the recycling, dismantling, treatment and final disposal processes of Waste Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE). The project as outlined is structured with five components: Component 1 covers national WEEE management system development and implementation in terms of scope, administration, business arrangements and promotion with the UNDP-GEF support being focused on introduction of international experience and lessons learned; Component 2 covers the development of the required infrastructure and the demonstration of BAT/BEP technologies with the UNDP-GEF support focused on introduction of international technology and capability; Component 3 addresses the integration of the informal sector into the formal EPR system with UNDP-GEF support focused on demonstration of collection systems and information exchange, training and international cooperation related to illegal imports; Component 4 supports the monitoring and evaluation of the project and dissemination of experience, something that is seen as useful for other developing countries dealing with the issue globally; and Component 5 strengthens project management capacity to achieve implementation effectiveness and efficiency. The project has three demonstration provinces and municipality, including Jiangsu Province, Hubei Province and Tianjin, to pilot the designed project activities. Aside from them, the project also have contracted or partnered with many other factories or institutes to demonstrate on specific technologies such as CRT treatment and development of policy, technical guidance and etc. The detailed information can be found in the attached project document. In addition to e-waste projects, UNDP China and IECO-MEE are also implementing two other GEF projects related to secondary copper and endosulfan to implement Stockholm Convention.

Despite of being a convention implementation technical project, the e-waste project is in nature also a development project that is designed and implemented in line with UNDP’s principles and practices on rights-based development for promoting sustainable development.  In principle, the project will encompass the economic, environmental and social dimensions of the development process. As the e-waste project and other related POPs projects are technically heavy and convention implementation oriented, therefore in practice the development dimensions tend to be under-addressed or disconnected from its development project nature during designing and implementation stages. Meanwhile, UNDP is a leading UN agency in localizing and promoting Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) at local levels.  It is pioneering and demonstrative to examine how the e-waste project aligned with UNDP’s effort of mainstreaming SDGs at project level. With the project entering its stage of summarizing achievements and lesson learnt, UNDP China is seeking one international consultant to help review, summarize and assess development related components, with focuses on social-economic impact assessment and SDGs promotion, of the design, management, and implementation of the project, which will be also a complement to terminal evaluation and other evaluations required by Ministry of Finance of China. For the perspective expert, (s)he will also work with or collaborate with other types of contracted evaluation experts or entities for idea exchange, documents sharing, joint mission or teamwork (if necessary).

Duties and Responsibilities

Assessment Objectives

Positioned as a pioneering and innovative management tool, below objectives are expected for this development impact assessment assignment.

• To ensure lessons are learned from existing project management, including designing, implementation and management
• To improve development impacts of the project
• To summarize and vitalize the social-economic components and benefits of the technical project
• To summarize key development impacts, good practice, innovations of the project
• To examine the effectiveness of some of the innovative approaches of the project
• To analyze the adaptation of GEF project management in the context of SDGs localization and implementation
• To complement and synergize with other types of evaluation conducted under the project

Assessment scope

This is a creative and pioneering assessment for Chemicals portfolio of UNDP China, and thus there is limited established framework or guidelines that could be used directly. The future assessment consultant will take the initiatives to design an assessment framework consisting of methodologies, indicators and plans that are contributive to the objectives of this assessment.

The below scopes of assessment and summary are used as general guidance that will be further tailor-made and elaborated by the consultant.  

Project Strategy:

• Review how the project strategy is adjusted and launched to pay attention to socio-economic benefits, gender mainstreaming related components.
• Review how the project’s strategy of reducing POPs and PTS are implemented and adjusted to go beyond the technical scope to be aligned with SDGs promotion and localization.
• If there are major areas of concern, recommend areas for improvement.

Stakeholder Engagement:

• Examine how project has been guided by human rights principles, such as participation, accountability, empowerment and etc, in the process of reaching results.
• Whether the identified disadvantaged groups, such as informal sector players or other groups are targeted and empowered through the project’s interventions.
• Project management: Has the project developed and leveraged the necessary and appropriate partnerships with direct and tangential stakeholders?
• Participation and country-driven processes: Do local and national government stakeholders are actively engaged, involved and consulted?  Do they continue to have an active role in project decision-making?
• Participation and public awareness: To what extent has stakeholder involvement and public awareness contributed to the achievement of the development impacts and SDGs localization?

Public Communications:

• Summarize and analyse what types of creative public communication efforts the project has taken to convert technical contents into knowledge/communication products that are easily accepted by the general public and maximize the coverage of knowledge sharing.
• Assess the effectiveness and influence of the creative communication efforts of the project and its management team.
• Analyse and review the communication partnership established by the project
• Analyze and assess the contribution of the project’s communication efforts to SDGs promotion

Innovation

• To review, assess and summarize the innovation of the project from different aspects such as management innovation, partnership innovation, communication innovation and etc.
• Propose good and referable innovation cases for the project if concludes that the project has room of improvement for innovation

Linkages of the project with SDGs promotion

• Select SDGs goals and indicators that are relevant with e-waste project’s interventions and could be reviewed (https://unstats.un.org/sdgs/indicators/indicators-list/)
• Review, compare and analyze the project’s contribution to SDGs and selected SDGs indicators
• Provided recommendation to strengthen the linkage between GEF projects and SDGs used the example of e-waste project

Cross-cutting

• Review, analyse and assess whether the project has addressed other relevant cross-cutting issues that are inter-disciplinary and inter-agency and needed to be highlighted and summarized.

Implementation arrangements

The principal responsibility for managing these evaluations resides with the UNDP China and also FECO-MEE. The UNDP China office, together with FECO-MEE, will contract the consultants, and ensure the timely provision of per diems and travel arrangements within the country, provision of documentation and support of logistics for on-site meetings, interviews (in person or remote), access to Government and private stakeholders, and field visits for the evaluation team. The Project Teams will be responsible for liaising with the consultant to set up stakeholder interviews, arrange field visits, coordinate with the Government etc. 

Competencies

• Familiarity with the development projects operated by international agencies preferably UNDP
• Above 10 years’ work experience in development fields on topics of environmental protection and sustainable development
• At least 7 years’ experience working on convention implementation projects such as GEF-financed projects
• Recent experience with result-based management evaluation methodologies, and experience working with GEF evaluations  
• Experience applying SMART indicators
• Experience conducting social and environmental screening and assessments for environmental projects
• Competence in adaptive management
• Demonstrated understanding of gender, empowerment, livelihood and public engagement issues related to environmental projects or chemicals management   
• Excellent communication skills
• Demonstrable analytical skills
• A Master’s degree in project management, international development, environmental science or other closely related field

Required Skills and Experience

Evaluation:

The award of the contract will be made to the Individual Consultant who has obtained the highest Combined Score and has accepted UNDP’s General Terms and Conditions.  Only those applications which are responsive and compliant will be evaluated. The offers will be evaluated using the “Combined Scoring method” where:

• Technical evaluation - 70%; (includes 20% of Job Related Technical Expertise; 25% of Relevant working experience; 25% of Methodology & Approach to Assignment)
• Financial Evaluation - 30%.

UNDP applies a fair and transparent selection process that will take into account the competencies/skills of the applicants as well as their financial proposals. Qualified women and members of social minorities are encouraged to apply.