Climate Change Programming Consultant– Asia

Background

Climate change continues to negatively impact Asia Region. This affects Asia regional growth trajectory, and the socio-economic opportunities people may otherwise enjoy. Building resilience to climate change has featured in national dialogue and political commitments for over a decade in almost all the countries in the region. Recognized as an acute challenge for Asia, Government and partners have committed to mainstream climate action in their planning and delivery. Despite all these efforts, Asia continues to account for large scale impact related to climate change. Just under half of all disasters globally between 2000-2017 occurred in the Asia-Pacific region, and this area also accounts for 85% of global disaster-affected people (Peters 2018 “Accelerating”). In 2016 alone, disasters in the Asia-Pacific region resulted in 5,000 fatalities, 35 million affected people, and $77 billion USD in damage (Peters 2018 “Accelerating”).

During the leadership meeting held in Dubai (May 22) IRC Asia leadership committed to prioritize climate change action. While we continue the various climate change work we carry out in the region, a decision was made to make the climate change work more systematic and research base. To achieve this, a decision was made the hire a Consultant for the IRC Asia Regional Office.   

Duration of the consultancy assignment and reporting line

This Consultant role will be hired by the Asian Regional team for a period of 6 months (December 22 – May 23). This role will report to Regional Emergency Director – Asia. Consultant will maintain a close coordination with Deputy Regional Director, Country Directors, ERD TA, and Climate change focal points of each country and Global Climate and Resilience Advisor. 

Deliverables:

1. Lead IRC Asia regional go green initiative

 Consultant will work closely with Regional Emergency Director and Country Climate change focal point to lead. Asia regional go green initiative. This will include

•  Doing a mapping of already existing go green initiatives from IRC country officers and share these good practices.
•  Conduct an assessment to map out the industrial good practices (by other NGO, government, private sector etc) and share the knowledge widely within the organization
•  Identify 2 -3 go green initiatives from each countries to be implemented in FY 23. For each initiative, prepare the baseline, target and target achievement plan. Agree with country programme about the type of data to be collected to assessment progress and lead in timely and accurate data collection.

2. Develop regional climate change framework and support climate change strategy development for each country –

A key deliverable for the consultant is to develop Asia regional climate change framework in consultation with Regional Emergency Director, Deputy Regional Director and relevant technical advice. This framework will enable countries to develop their own country specific climate change strategies. In consultation with the countries, consultant will map out the process to develop country specific climate change strategies, work with the core group in each country to develop the climate change strategy. Consultant will review existing climate change related literatures for each country and prepare synopsis to facilitate country specific climate change strategy development.

3. Regional monthly climate change discussion and training

 Consultant will bring together climate change focal points from each country, TA and regional team and conduct a monthly discussion and trainings / awareness raising.  Training/awareness-raising will include (but not limited to) various global and regional frameworks that government and other bodies commit to (e.g. Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction. A detail TOR for this meeting will be developed by the consultant explaining the objective and expectation of this meeting. Consultant will invite external speakers to bring the external perspective to the discussion. A quarterly summary report will be produced by the consultant and share it with the regional leadership team capturing the key discussion points, new proposed climate change initiatives and any innovation

4. Organize regional climate change conference

Consultant will take lead role in organizing a climate change conference in Asia in the second quarter of FY 23. This will be an internal IRC conference and that will bring together regional and country programme team to discuss opportunities, challenges, and way forward related to climate change. A detail TOR, expectation and workshop methodology will be developed by the consultant and share it with the wider regional and country programme leadership fore feedback.

5. Exploring partnership opportunities in close collaboration with regional partnership coordinator, Regional SPDA and country team.

A key deliverable of this consultancy is to identify potential partners. Consultant will undertake partner mapping and identify potential partners for IRC to collaborate for various aspect including programme design related to climate change, policy and influencing etc. He / she will work closely with Regional Partnership Advisor in this deliverable