GEF SCCF Council has approved a concept for a project titled “Integrating climate change into the management of priority health risks in Ghana”
Brief description of the project components Ghana’s physical location renders the country especially vulnerable to climate change impacts on the human population. Historically, Ghana has experienced a rising temperature of approximately 1oC over the previous 30 year period and a resultant 20% reduction in rainfall. These long-term changes to climatic variables impact human health by mostly acting as a “stress-multiplier” to existing climate-sensitive burdens of disease. This will affect already vulnerable vector-borne disease habitats, food-crop production, and quantities of safe water for drinking and washing. An initial vulnerability assessment done in Ghana has shown that climate variability and change is directly affecting the incidence of climate sensitive diseases like meningitis, guinea-worm, measles, malaria and diarrhoeal diseases. Current interventions to support the health sector do not take the risks of climate change into account. To date, Ghana’s approach to climate change in relation with human health vulnerability has been reactive, and is characterised by an absence of a well-defined strategic and policy intervention plan for both the medium and long-term. Besides financing shortages, the absence of a policy framework for addressing climate change related health risks, absence of technical and institutional capacities at local and national levels makes the need for corrective interventions even more urgent. Current control programs for malaria, diarrhoeal diseases, and meningococcal meningitis are also of limited value, as evident by the high disease burdens despite the efforts to manage such health risks. While the Roll Back Malaria programme, Integrated Management of Childhood Illness (IMCI), and other programs have recently commenced implementation to help reduce morbidity and mortality, these programs do not integrate the implications of climate change, including variability, on disease control activities. The country seeks to lift these barriers to counter the increased probability of health risks from climate change. This will entail institutional strengthening, capacity building, and awareness rising under a programmatic approach to climate change sensitive health risk management. Three critical components underpin this initiative:
- Strengthening technical capacities to manage climate change-resilient health risks;
- Climate change health risk mainstreamed into decision-making at local and national health policy levels, and
- Information management and effective dissemination of climate change health risk knowledge. Demonstration activities will also be implemented in selected pilot areas identified to be at particularly high health related risks due to climate change.
This Terms of Reference is for the preparatory phase for the GEF Council approved concept for a SCCF financed project in Ghana. The purpose of the preparatory phase is to define and develop a detailed project document for the SCCF Project, Integrating climate change into the management of priority health risks in Ghana, based on theapprovedconcept. The final product of this preparatory phase will be a UNDP-GEF compliant, operationally viable and technical sound Project Document for submission for GEF CEO Endorsement and thereafter implementation in Ghana. The preparatory phase has a maximum period of 12 months but project formulation is expected to be completed within a shorter period based on an agreed work plan at the inception meeting for the preparatory phase. a Brief Description of the project’s financial information. This is a GEF sponsored project under the Special Climate Change Funds (SCCF) program, co-sponsored by the Government of Ghana. The consultant, with the support of the International Consultant assigned to lead the project formulation phase and the other members of the project formulation team will undertake the following activities:
PPG Activity 1 1. Analyze and identify gaps and barriers in existing health policies and measures - Provide guidance on relevant baseline issues pertaining to health and non-sectors that are likely to have bearing on the investment programmes and capacity building activities that focus on health risk reduction in Ghana;
- Guide the project formulation team on relevant policy and regulatory frameworks at the sub-national and sector-based levels that have a bearing on managing climate change induced health risks, in the context of the scope of the approved concept;
- Review and provide quality assurance on linking the SCCF Ghana project with other current and past project activities by government, donors, multilateral organizations, NGOs and private sector institutions that are related to increasing health resilience as identified by the project formulation team
PPG Activity 2
2. Conduct other supporting studies to elaborate the detailed project design
- Advice the International Consultant and the other project formulation team members of relevant climate risk assessments, economic assessments of climate change impacts and cost/benefit studies of adaptation options for the health sector that can help inform the details of the Ghana project
- Assist the International Consultant to determine the appropriateness as well as articulate justification for the project interventions as they emerge based on work undertaken by the project formulation team
- Review and provide technical validation of adaptation outputs and associated activities that emerge during the formulation phase to be financed by the SCCF and their rationale (i.e. why and how are they supposed to reduce vulnerability and/or increase adaptive capacity beyond what is already being done in the context of the Council approved project objective);Guide the formulation team in determining a geographic breakdown for project interventions in terms of provinces, districts and communities based on operational and technical feasibility. in the context of the Council approved project objective);Guide the formulation team in determining a geographic breakdown for project interventions in terms of provinces, districts and communities based on operational and technical feasibility.
PPG Activity 3 Set the monitoring and evaluation plan - Guide and review the development of Strategic Results Framework and a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system including quantifiable and verifiable impact indicators defined by the project formulation team for technical viability in the context of a climate change health project. These indicators, which will specifically address adaptation impacts, will be based on guidance by UNDP’s M&E framework for adaptation projects, and complemented by other relevant frameworks (including those used by WHO). The indicators will be connected to a monitoring and evaluation plan, which will set out how and by whom these indicators will be measured and which way verification data will be collected by the project.
PPG Activity 4 4.Develop a financial plan and co-funding scheme - Explore Multilateral and Bilateral funding opportunities: Support the project formulation team to develop relevant partnerships and explore co-funding opportunities with bilateral and multi-lateral funding institutions (including WHO), as well as others at the global level.
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