International Consultant – Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII) Specialist

Project Preparation Phase of UNDP/GEF-GOM project on Improving Connectivity in the Central Forest Spine (CFS) Landscape, in Peninsula Malaysia

The Forestry Department Peninsular Malaysia (FDPM), Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment, Malaysia, and United Nations Development Programme with funding from Global Environment Facility (GEF) will carry out a full-sized project for Improving Connectivity in the Central Forest Spine (CFS) Landscape, in Peninsula Malaysia. The project will contribute to the objective of Sustainable land and forest management in the Central Forest Spine (CFS) Landscape that will secure the critical wildlife habitats, conserves biodiversity and maintains continuous flow of multiple ecosystem services including water provisioning, carbon storage and sequestration through the removal of the aforementioned barriers. The outcomes of the project will greatly enhance the timely and cost-effective implementation of the CFS Master Plans, through capacity building and establishment of integrated landscape management system, and diversification of financing sources for conservation management. Covering an area of approximately 5,100,000 ha (>38% of the total terrestrial area and >85% of forest areas in Peninsular Malaysia), the project will enable the FDPM to do planning, compliance monitoring and enforcement framework for integrated forest landscape management, sustainable landscape management operationalised in three priority forest complexes within the CFS, and diversification of financing sources for conservation. The project will consolidate and strengthen the enabling legal, planning and financing, and institutional framework governing the management of CFS for FDPM which will be done by working together with federal line ministries and State level authorities.

FDPM and UNDP are preparing the Project Document for this project and are looking for consultants to support to design the full size project through appropriate situation analysis and extensive stakeholder consultations. A key objective of this preparation phase is to establish the baseline context, to clarify GEF increment and to plan activities to all stakeholders, and to develop a strategic results framework development that has optimal resource allocation from GEF and other stakeholders to meet the project objective. The key activities that will be conducted include policy framework and institutional capacity review; landscape profiling and GEF Tracking Tool baseline assessment; local stakeholder and gender assessment, Payment for Ecosystems Services pre-feasibility study; analysis of wildlife trade and law enforcement; development of the Biodiversity Intactness Index (BII); feasibility analysis and budget, and project institutional arrangements and M&E system development.

Proposal should be submitted to:

United Nations Development Programme,
Wisma UN, Kompleks Pejabat Damansara,
Jalan Dungun, Damansara Heights,
50490 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Any request for clarification must be send in writing to rfp@undp.my
Please write the Project Code in your e-mail heading.
The deadline for submitting requests for clarification/questions is 20 June 2012.

The specialist will support the government counterpart in developing Biodiversity Intactness Index and monitoring protocol.   The work involves facilitating the following process:

• Assess the current biodiversity monitoring system and capacity in Peninsular Malaysia;
• Determine the geographical scope and construct a GIS shape file to represent it;
• Decide upon the baseline period or land use to be used as a reference in the calculation of the BII;
• Determine ecosystems that are found in the area and describe and map them;
• Determine the land use activities that are impacting on the biodiversity of the CFS and describe these activities;
• Decide upon the taxa that are going to be included in the BII assessment and determine the species richness (i.e. number of species) per taxon across the region based on literature;
• Estimate the average population size of each species group under each land use activity in each ecosystem relative to the defined baseline populations in the same ecosystem, based on the field work or expert estimates;
• Use the information to calculate the BII for CFS using either the vector method or the raster method;
• Calculate the Biodiversity Intactness Variance;
• Assess knowledge gaps on the status of biodiversity within the landscape as well as the adequacy of data management system;
• Develop the BII database and monitoring protocol;
• Recommend activities to be carried out during the project;
• Recommend  how the integration of BII tool in the national and local biodiversity monitoring framework can be achieved;
• Provide initial training to the identified counterparts in the use of BII.

• Extensive knowledge in the developing BII;
• Fluency in written and spoken English;
• Excellent report writing skills.

Education:
The consultant shall have :

• An Advanced Degree in Forestry/Biodiversity or any other environment relevant.  Bachelor degree with extensive experience can be considered as well.

Experience:
The consultant requires knowledge and experience of:

• At least 10 years of working experience in developing BII or other indicators index related to biodiversity management;
• Have done some with biodiversity taxa in tropical forest, preferably in Malaysia.

DOCUMENTS TO BE INCLUDED WHEN SUBMITTING THE PROPOSALS.
Interested individual consultants must submit the following documents/information to demonstrate their qualifications:

1. Proposal – Provide a brief methodology on how they will approach and conduct the work. The methodology must address all aspects of the TOR, implementation schedule, and quality assurance measures if applicable.
2. Financial proposal – Based on the deliverable and terms of payment, please provide a financial proposal. 
3. Personal CV and UN P11 (https://sas.undp.org/Documents/P11_Personal_history_form.docx) including past experience in similar projects and at least 2 references.

Incomplete applications will NOT be considered. Please make sure you have provided all requested materials.