Regional Expert, Climate Change and Gender Mainstreaming At Asian Disaster Preparedness Center

Climate Adaptation and Resilience for South Asia Project

With the financial support from the World Bank Group, ADPC and the Regional Integrated Multi-Hazard Early Warning System (RIMES) are jointly implementing a five-year (2020-2025) project, titled “Climate Adaptation and Resilience (CARE) for South Asia”. The project aims to create an enabling environment for climate resilience policies and investments in Climate Resilient Agriculture, Integrated Water Resources Management, Resilient Transport Infrastructure, and Policy, Planning and Finance sectors. Gender mainstreaming is vital to achievement of the project objectives. Gender is a cross-cutting component in the project and involves planning, implementation and monitoring of gender and inclusion across the project activities. Through its regional portfolio, ADPC will also facilitate high-level dialogues for institutional cooperation and knowledge exchange, develop climate-resilient guidelines, and promote innovation and adoption of disruptive technology at national and regional levels. The national-level activities will initially be implemented in Bangladesh, Nepal and Pakistan.

In the above context, ADPC is aiming to establish positions for Regional Experts that provide an advisory and mentoring role to the sectoral teams and Project Implementation Unit (PIU) of ADPC based at the regional level in Bangkok, Thailand. Regional Experts will provide guidance and oversight for each of the project core sectors on a part time basis, in addition to participating in national, regional and global events to highlight best practices and learning of the CARE for South Asia project as part of wider knowledge-sharing.**

The Regional Expert’s primary role is twofold:

· Providing expert advice and consultative support to the members of project key sectors, especially to the Sector Leads, to maintain state-of-the-art technical standard of interventions and approaches in the project; and

· Supporting the capacity and relationship building to meet the wider needs of the stakeholders to be reached out and to benefit from the existing climate adaptation institutions and initiatives in the region.

Statement of Intent

The Regional Expert is expected to help with an improved output performance that will show emerging impact to the stakeholders and beneficiaries and increased quality of the technical products and outcomes based on standards set by the World Bank.

It is also expected that the Regional Expert will support the project’s sustainability by strengthening in-house technical capacities of ADPC teams in key sectors and facilitate wider dissemination of the project outputs and outcomes beyond the geographical confines of the project.

Note:

It is not the intent of this Terms of Reference to cover every aspect of the position requirements, rather to highlight the most important areas of personal and joint responsibilities.

Duties and Responsibilities

The detailed functions of the Regional Expert, Climate Change and Gender Mainstreaming, are expected to include (the scope of work will be finalized in consultation with the selected candidate before signing the contract):

1. Advisory and consultative support

⁃ Provide input and advice on the implementation of gender-related activities and achievements of the project’s goals and objectives.

⁃ Review and provide inputs to ensure that gender-related outputs and reports are delivered to the required quality standard, in line with agreed specifications of the Work Plan and other commitments.

⁃ Undertake periodic review of the sectoral implementation strategy, identifying potential gaps and solutions and ensuring incorporation of lessons learned into ongoing implementation.

⁃ Keep abreast of global best practices and suggest relevant technical updates in gender related activities that may be rolled out in the region.

2. Regional level capacity and relationship-building

⁃ Provide technical advice and support to the project team for conceptualizing, designing, and implementing institutional coordination and technical capacity development plans at the regional level.

⁃ Provide technical inputs to regional activities and initiatives such as regional policy dialogues, thematic fora, and other outreach events and missions related to gender.

⁃ Participate in relevant regional/global meetings, where required, and expand exposure, disseminate impact and lessons learned, and involve in the promotion or follow-up of gender-related activities of the project.

⁃ Establish effective communication channels and develop close ties with relevant regional and international partners and initiatives.

⁃ Provide technical support for the regional initiative of demand-driven scientific research and advisory services targeting subnational public institutions and agencies in collaboration with regional centers of excellence.

3. Regional Expert Meetings

a) Convening meetings

Regular Regional Expert meetings will be convened to undertake monitoring and review of the project implementation status and strategies. The PIU of the CARE for South Asia project will be the convener of the meetings and provide the Secretariat to the Regional Experts ensuring the preparation and storage of relevant documents/minutes. All Regional Expert meetings will be held virtually.

b) Frequency of the meetings

Two Regional Experts meetings per year are foreseen during the course of the project.

Qualifications

The candidate should have following professional experience and background preferably gained in international and multi-cultural environment:

· Advanced degree, preferably a Ph.D., in gender and development studies, social sciences, anthropology or a relevant field;

· A minimum of 15 years of professional experience of working in the area of Gender and at least 8 years of experience in gender and climate change and/or disaster risk reduction;

· Demonstrated experience of successfully carrying out similar assignments;

· Well-versed in analysis of gender-related policies, strategies, frameworks and reports;

· Excellent knowledge of mainstreaming gender equality in programs and projects;

· Excellent understanding of current discourse related to gender and inclusion in DRR and CR;

· Excellent English proficiency in oral and written communication, including a demonstrated track record in technical report writing and ability to communicate technical matters effectively to a variety of audience.;

· Excellent analytical skills and capacity to work under short deadlines;

· Familiarity with moderating technical discussions;

· Ability to work amongst a diverse group of staff and partners;

· Proficient on Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Microsoft Teams and skilled at organizing online meetings.

Reporting Relationships

The Regional Expert will report to the Project Director and work in close coordination with the Gender and Inclusion in Climate Change Specialist. The Expert will also coordinate with the other CARE for South Asia project specialists at regional and national levels as necessary to carry out different activities under the project.

The expert will submit a time-charging sheet every month explaining the type of inputs and a summary of deliverables every quarter to ascertain the level of efforts.**

Contract Duration

The contract duration will be a maximum of 100 days stretched over a period of 1 year. It will be a time-based contract.

Selection Method

The consultant will be selected in accordance with ADPC’s recruitment process and in compliance with the World Bank Procurement Regulations.