Stakeholder Engagement Specialist

About Asian Disaster Preparedness Center

ADPC is an autonomous international organization with a vision to reduce disaster and climate risk impacts on communities and countries in Asia and the Pacific by working with governments, development partners, international organizations, NGOs, civil society, private sector, media, and other key stakeholders. Established in 1986 as a technical capacity building center, ADPC has grown and diversified its expertise across social and physical sciences to support sustainable solutions for risk reduction across a broad range of specialist areas. With over 100 staff from 19 different nationalities and a wide range of professional expertise from atmospheric scientists to social scientists with experiences from all levels of engagement typically required for Disaster Risk Reduction (DRR) and Climate Resilience (CR) in an effective manner. ADPC is a competent regional resource center and has seven thematic departments: ADPC Academy, Risk Governance, Climate Resilience, Urban Resilience, Health Risk Management, Preparedness for Response and Recovery, Geospatial Information. These are supported by Finance, Human Resources and Administration, and Strategic Planning departments. In addition to the departments, ADPC works on three cross-cutting themes: Gender and Diversity, Poverty and Livelihoods, and Regional and Transboundary Cooperation through permanent working committees. ADPC Strategy 2020 guides the organization in providing comprehensive risk reduction support to countries and communities in Asia and the Pacific. ADPC recognizes the importance of examining the linkages between disaster risk management, poverty reduction, gender equality, sustainability, rights-based approaches, climate change and regional cooperation. For details please refer to ADPC website at http://www.adpc.net/

Background

Disasters take a huge toll on the development agenda of SAR countries. Between 2000 and 2017, disasters in South Asia incurred estimated damages of US$ 149.27 billion. Public expenditure is under stress by the repeated need to reallocate capital budgets away from long term development planning and towards reconstruction activities in post-disaster environments. For example, since 2005, Pakistan has suffered losses on the order of US$ 16 billion due to natural disasters. In Bangladesh, 2007 Cyclone Sidr resulted in damages and losses of US$1.7 billion, or 2.6 per cent of GDP. To increase resilience and achieve climate commitments, there is a need for a transformational shift towards policies and institutions that enable climate-resilient investments. Investing in more resilient infrastructure is both profitable and urgent as disruptions are extremely costly for governments, households and private sector and large ongoing investments in infrastructure assets will have long-lasting repercussions as poor maintenance and natural disasters result in a vulnerable stock.

With the financial support from the World Bank Group, ADPC will be implementing a five years’ project, titled “Climate Adaptation and Resilience Project for South Asia” (CARE). The project aims to create an enabling environment for climate resilience policies and investments across South Asia. This objective will be achieved through enhanced regional cooperation and knowledge exchange for climate resilience and adaptation and mainstreaming of resilience and adaptation in national policies, plans and investments. Stakeholder engagement plays a vital role in order to satisfactorily implement all the required components of the project. It would involve ensuring project design, approaches and activities ensure participation of stakeholders in a participatory and inclusive manner, guided by the Stakeholder Engagement Plan and in compliance with World Bank regulations, for Bank funded projects. Accordingly, a highly qualified and experienced Stakeholder Engagement Specialist will be required to ensure civil society organizations and community-level engagement through national coordination mechanisms as well as regional learning and knowledge sharing. S/he will be selected on a competitive basis following World Bank Procurement Regulations.

The objectives of this consultancy service are to:

• Support in developing and building the capacity of governments and various stakeholders in accessing climate data and implementing climate resilience financing;
• Support in formulating knowledge sharing initiatives and developing content on climate resilience financing at the regional level.

Statement of Intent

The Stakeholder Engagement Specialist will work in collaboration with the CARE team of specialists by providing technical support across project activities in the focus countries to engage non-governmental stakeholders. The specialist would focus on a cross-cutting contribution by providing a strategy and plan to enhance stakeholder engagement throughout the relevant project activities across the focus countries. The Stakeholder Engagement Specialist will be based in Bangkok, Thailand. 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 Stakeholder Engagement Specialist will be responsible for:

Technical Support:

• Providing inputs to conducting background research to identify, review and assess the current status of guidelines on local and disaster resilience across the project countries;
• Support in organizing meetings and workshops on climate change in the project countries based on World Bank’s Environmental and Social Standards (ESS), and the principles of Environmental and Social Management, including conducting a session on World Bank’s Environment and Social Framework (ESF);
• Support the CARE project Environment and Social Development Specialist in the implementation of the Stakeholder Engagement Plan (SEP), including monitoring the grievance mechanism;
• Provide inputs to select a pilot province for LAPA in Nepal;
• Development of provincial vulnerability and capacity assessment report through conducting vulnerability and adaptation assessment and a local level forum with relevant stakeholders.

Capacity Building

• Providing technical support identify, review and assess current status of existing country guidelines on local climate and disaster resilience developed for Nepal complementing the federalization process through a series of provincial capacity building workshops Performing other relevant tasks as assigned by the Project Director (PD).

Qualifications

The candidate should at least have:

• A master’s degree (or higher) in Social Sciences, International Development, Public Administration, Project Management, or another related field;
• A minimum of 7 years of relevant experience working with multiple sector projects and at least 5 years of experience on community development, enhancing community engagement, project/program management, the experience of working with climate resilience financing projects;
• Experience in capacity building and training in the areas of planning, preparation and implementation of climate data and financing;
• Cross-cultural awareness and ability to work amongst a diverse group of staff, and partners;
• Full professional proficiency in spoken and written English and some understanding of South Asian languages is preferred;
• Excellent communication and report writing skills;
• Required computer proficiencies: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, Internet;
• Ability to travel especially within South Asian countries.

Reporting Relationships

The Stakeholder Engagement Specialist will report to the Project Director and work in close coordination with Director, Preparedness for Response and Recovery Department, ADPC. The specialist will also coordinate with the other CARE project specialists at the regional and national level to carry out different activities under the project.