Grade: IS - 6

Deadline: 10 August 2020 (11:59 PM KST)

The mission of the Green Climate Fund (“GCF”, “Fund”) is to assist developing countries to respond to climate change while bringing prosperity to their peoples.

Established in 2010, the GCF invests in transformational climate projects in the developing world. The Fund makes an ambitious contribution to global climate action and channels significant financial resources into developing countries to help build low-emission and climate-resilient societies.  It is country-driven and undertakes actions that reflect the circumstances of each country concerned and its national aspirations. The GCF is a key enabler of the 2015 Paris Agreement on Climate Change.

The GCF’s diverse workforce is advancing its mission from its headquarters in South Korea. Our talented staff makes unique contributions to the Fund, enriching the institution through their combined expertise and professional commitment.

Position Objective

The Chief Evaluation Adviser – Policy and Impact Evaluations, will be responsible for participating in, leading and managing the ‘policy, thematic and impact evaluations’ work of the IEU while ensuring his/her participation in other work streams of the IEU. He/she will manage and participate in high-quality, credible, and useful thematic, portfolio, policy and project evaluations that contribute to the overall strategic evaluations of the GCF. She/he will also provide overall management tasks, including planning, initiating, managing, budgeting for, staffing, recruiting for, writing and delivering high quality, journal-worthy theory-based impact evaluation studies in a timely manner. The role requires an excellent grasp of theory-based impact evaluation techniques that use counterfactual methods (both experimental and quasi-experimental) combined with qualitative methods. The incumbent should be ready to advocate for, provide advice for, build capacity for and undertake high-quality, credible impact evaluations that can help the IEU answer questions about causal attribution, using theory-based impact evaluation methods and extend this both methodologically and in an applied manner to doing policy evaluations and cost-effectiveness studies that also examine trade-offs. She/he will be responsible for building the field within GCF while also participating in and leading impact evaluations of GCF operations and policy. The incumbent will also be responsible for suggesting innovative evaluation system and methods, and providing capacity building for GCF stakeholders  In doing this, she/he will also need to manage teams composed of both in-house staff as well as external experts., while keeping abreast of the state of the art developments in the field. S/he will also engage with a diversity of stakeholders including GCF secretariat staff as well as others at the region, country and local level in developing, planning, conceiving, implementing and delivering these evaluations. She/he will also lead and participate in assessments of GCF-wide performance and results, and in generating lessons and identifying areas of improvement. He/she will focus on measuring the overall impact within these evaluations, while using evaluation criteria that have been specified. He/she will also make recommendations, both internally within the IEU, and externally to the GCF secretariat and programme/project/activities staff that allows the improvement of designs, projects and portfolios. This position will require traveling as required in the position and also representing IEU at international events while keeping abreast of developments in the field.

Duties and Responsibilities

Purpose

• Lead and or participate in ‘Policy  Thematic and Impact Evaluations’ work stream of the IEU under the overall guidance of the Head of the Independent Evaluation Unit;
• Provide overall management tasks, including initiating, managing evaluations (including budgets) and evaluation teams, ensuring timely delivery and trouble-shooting to ensure that timeliness and quality are not discounted; 
• Prepare inception reports, terms of reference, evaluation reports and other related evaluation research related products;
• Undertake quantitative and qualitative assessment of the GCF portfolio and projects, including data quality and evaluability concerns; This also includes assessing the quality of IEU data systems, tools, and internal processes in order to undertake and strengthen policy, portfolio and theory-based impact evaluations that will in turn feed into an overall assessment of the GCF’s performance;
• Ensure credible, high quality, trusted evaluation that can also be a possible force of change;
• Inform IEU’s strategy, formulate guidelines and build procedures to help undertake corporate-level evaluations, thematic evaluations, portfolio and project evaluations that can help feed into overall strategic guidance to the GCF Board;
   

Engagement

• Facilitate interactions and cooperate with related divisions in assessing the need for, feasibility of and conditions required for evaluation guidelines and procedures for different types of evaluations while considering conditions for and processes for quality at entry of GCF supported programmes, entities and proposals;
• Build productive relationships with GCF’s stakeholders and leaders in the field of evaluation and climate change;
• Liaise effectively with GCF stakeholders and staff, members of the Board and other stakeholders to take on board their concerns and requirements of independent evaluations that require that quality is built at entry and data and that information systems are built in programmes and projects and policies of the GCF so that IEU evaluations are credible, high quality and usable;
   

Delivery

• Suggest and apply innovative evaluation methodologies for understanding and measuring policy, portfolio and project impact including theory-based impact evaluation techniques that use counterfactual methods (both experimental and quasi-experimental)) and processes to generate valuable evidence using theory-based impact evaluations that also include an assessment of cost-effectiveness and trade-offs; and
• Provide overall management tasks on impact evaluation, for writing and delivering high quality, journal-worthy theory-based impact evaluation studies in a timely manner.
   

Required Experience and Qualifications*

• Master's degree in applied economics, law, applied social sciences, climate change related subject, statistics or fields related to quantitative evaluation;
• A PhD is an added advantage;
• 13 years of relevant experience;
• Deep knowledge of key advances in the evaluation field including in data and big data, evaluation methodologies including impact evaluation methods, excellent discipline in quantitative thinking and policy assessments and qualitative research related to evaluation;
• Deep familiarity with participatory approaches and quantitative methods;
• Excellent knowledge of process tracing methods, theories of change and of mixed methods for evaluations;
• Long experience with large, high quality, credible evaluations that use mixed methods and preferably measure impacts and causal changes;
• At least one thematic area of expertise that is applicable to climate change evaluations and strong technical and analytical skills;
• Familiarity with climate change topics and international politics;
• Familiarity with processing information requests from a range stakeholders is an advantage;
• Excellent people management skills;
• Be able to manage multiple tasks with exacting deadlines and deliver on time;
• Be flexible, humble, with a good collegial attitude and an ability to work in multi-cultural environments that may have ambiguously defined structures and policies and have a keen ability to troubleshoot;
• Ideal candidates will require analytical and organizational skills, sound judgement, decision-making abilities, will be tactful and diplomatic while ensuring that things get done, and be capable of working with pressing timelines and competing demands and have a history of delivering quality work on time;
• Ability to deal with large volumes of work under time pressure with a high level of accuracy and attention to detail; be able to exercise tact and discretion in dealing with governing bodies and colleagues;
• Strong teamwork and interpersonal skills, and highly developed cultural sensitivity in communicating with all levels of staff and external clients, both orally and in writing;
• Ability to build training modules and train people in monitoring and evaluation is a big advantage; and
• Excellent written and oral communication skills in English are essential for this position; knowledge of another UN language an advantage.
   

*The person assessed by the Selection Panel as most suitable for the position will be proposed for appointment. Selection among short-listed candidates will also take into account performance at interview, appropriate testing, and references. Applications from women and nationals of developing countries are strongly encouraged.