Local and Community Development Specialist - Climate Change

Details

Mission and objectives

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development. UNCDF’s financing models work through three channels: inclusive digital economies, connecting individuals, households, and small businesses with financial eco-systems that catalyze participation in the local economy, and provide tools to climb out of poverty and manage financial lives; local development finance, that capacitates localities through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance to drive local economic expansion and sustainable development; and investment finance, that provides catalytic financial structuring, de-risking, and capital deployment to drive SDG impact and domestic resource mobilization. By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to Sustainable Development Goal-SDG 1 on eradicating poverty and SDG 17 on the means of implementation. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impact in helping to reach the last mile and address exclusion and inequalities of access, UNCDF contributes to a broad diversity of SDGs.

Context

The Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) is a mechanism to integrate climate change into local authorities’ planning and budgeting through the regular intergovernmental fiscal transfer system using performance-based grants in a participatory and gender sensitive manner, increase awareness and capacities to respond to climate change at the local level including through ecosystem-based solutions, and increase the quality and number of local investments that address climate change. LoCAL combines performance-based climate resilience grants (PBCRGs), which ensure programming and verification of change expenditures at the local level, with technical and capacity-building support. It uses the grants and demonstration effect to trigger further flows for local climate action including global climate finance and national fiscal transfers. LoCAL also aims to support private finance for small and medium businesses and municipal finance and public-private partnerships. LoCAL is currently active in 17 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, with another 13 countries preparing to join (at the design stage). LoCAL combines performance-based climate resilience grants (PBCRGs) with technical and capacity-building support. PBCRGs ensure programming and verification of climate change expenditures at the local level and offer strong incentives for general performance improvements targeting areas of importance for enhanced resilience. The PBCRG can be seen as an earmarked cross-sectoral grant with conditions attached to the use of its funding for climate change adaptation beyond business as usual. Combined with regular grant allocations, PBCRGs enable 100% of the investments in climate-sensitive sectors to become climate resilient over time. They include a set of minimum conditions, performance measures and a menu of eligible investments. LoCAL focuses on the delivery of four outputs that will directly contribute to increasing local governments’ access to climate finance and building resilience to climate change: • Output 1 – Awareness and capacities to respond to climate change adaptation at the local level are increased; • Output 2 – CCA is mainstreamed into government’s planning and budgeting systems and investments are implemented in line with the PBCRG mechanism; • Output 3 – The PBCRG system is effectively and sustainably established in participating countries and leads to an increased amount of CCA finance available to local government and local economy; • Output 4 – The role of local authorities and of the PBCRGS in addressing climate change are increasingly recognized at international level, through outreach, learning and quality assurance. The initiative operates in three distinct phases: • Phase I: Piloting, consists of an initial scoping analysis, followed by testing in two to four local governments. • Phase II: Consolidating, takes place in 5–10 local governments in a country. It involves collecting lessons and demonstrating the mechanism’s effectiveness at a larger scale. • Phase III: Scaling-up, is full national roll-out of LoCAL based on the results of the previous phases and lessons learned. LoCAL is gradually extended to all local governments, with domestic or international climate finance, and becomes the national system for channeling adaptation finance to the local level. Bhutan is in Phase III, with budget support from the European Union; Cambodia has also entered Phase III.

Task description

UNCDF has supported the Government of Uganda (GoU) to design the LoCAL-Uganda Mechanism with aims of increasing the resilience of communities and local economies across the country, through regular, predictable, systemic and verifiable climate finance in support of local climate responses, through increased District access to climate finance to implement climate change adaptation investments in Uganda (outcome 1) and institutionalising a standard and internationally recognized country-based mechanism of performance-based climate resilience grants in the country, further attracting climate finance, domestic and international (outcome 2). To this end, LoCAL-Uganda will raise awareness and strengthen capacities for subnational climate change adaptation at both District and central levels (output1); support the integration of climate change into local planning and budgeting processes and finance local adaptation interventions and investments (output 2) and establish and deploy across the whole country an effective performance-based climate resilience grant system (financing mechanism) that can attract various sources of climate finance (output 3). Based on a whole-of-society approach, LoCAL-Uganda will be fully aligned with the country’s climate change policy, the Nationally Determined Contribution, with the National Adaptation Plan process, financial systems for local governments, and related institutional and regulatory frameworks. Within this programme context, UNCDF is seeking to hire a UN Volunteer to contribute to the effective delivery of the Programme’s activities in Uganda. The UNV will work in close collaboration with the Ministry of Local Government, Ministry of Finance, Planning and Economic Development, Ministry of Water and Environment, the District teams and other LoCAL stakeholders. Within the delegated authority and under the supervision of the National Coordinator, the Local and Community Development Specialist (field officer) will: • Support Districts to collect and interpret climate-related data and information, as well as undertake local climate risk assessments, and to mainstream climate change into local public planning and budgeting systems; • Under the guidance of the Programme Management Specialist and MoLG, support capacity building (“learning by doing”) and preparation of local government development and investment plans and budgets that foster climate resilient local economies and communities; • Support Districts in the management, implementation and monitoring of performance-based climate resilience grants and activities/interventions/investments and propose improvements through reviewed work-plans; • Support the preparation and participate and contribute to the annual performance assessment of participating Districts; • Facilitate consultation and exchange of information, synergies, learning and know-how at the local level, in particular in relation with partners and stakeholders involved with LoCAL expected results; • Support the preparation of periodic technical and financial reports on the implementation of LoCAL activities and undertake regular monitoring of the activities, including through field visits; • Assist in providing inputs to the LoCAL roadmap development and support the identification of skills gaps and training needs in the area of climate change and PBCRG mechanism; support the mapping of training providers and skill areas in target Districts in line with LoCAL investment menu and climate resilience grant priorities; • Support the knowledge and communication efforts of LoCAL in Uganda (i.e. LoCAL stories, news articles, photos, videos, social media presence, country webpage and web presence, as appropriate) with support and guidance from Lead LoCAL communication expert; • Perform any other related duties as required by supervisor/ management or guided by the LoCAL Committee and other key stakeholders. Furthermore, UN Volunteers are encouraged to integrate the UN Volunteers programme mandate within their assignment and promote voluntary action through engagement with communities in the course of their work. As such, UN Volunteers should dedicate a part of their working time to some of the following suggested activities: • Strengthen their knowledge and understanding of the concept of volunteerism by reading relevant UNV and external publications and take active part in UNV activities (for instance in events that mark International Volunteer Day); • Be acquainted with and build on traditional and/or local forms of volunteerism in the host country; • Provide annual and end of assignment self-reports on UN Volunteer actions, results and opportunities. • Contribute articles/write-ups on field experiences and submit them for UNV publications/websites, newsletters, press releases, etc.; • Assist with the UNV Buddy Programme for newly-arrived UN Volunteers; • Promote or advise local groups in the use of online volunteering or encourage relevant local individuals and organizations to use the UNV Online Volunteering service whenever technically possible. Results/expected outputs: • As an active UNCDF team member, efficient, timely, responsive, client-friendly and high-quality support rendered to UNCDF and its beneficiaries in the accomplishment of her/his functions, including: o Awareness of LGAs and local stakeholders is increased on climate change and capacities to address those issues are built through “learning by doing”; o LGA development and investment plans and budgets that foster gender equality and climate resilient local economies and communities are developed; o Methods and procedures for mainstreaming into local public planning and budgeting, as well as into local resource allocation processes are identified and piloted; o The performance-based country mechanism (LoCAL) is effectively piloted and deployed in target LGAs; o Lessons learnt and good practices are documented, capitalized and shared (e.g. photos, videos, stories from the field, etc). • Age, Gender and Diversity (AGD) perspective is systematically applied, integrated and documented in all activities throughout the assignment • A final statement of achievements towards volunteerism for peace and development during the assignment, such as reporting on the number of volunteers mobilized, activities participated in and capacities developed