International Consultant: Climate Change Adaptation Project Formulation Expert

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: (1) Strengthening technical capacities to manage climate change-resilient health risks; (2) Climate change health risk mainstreamed into decision-making at local and national health policy levels, and (3) 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 focal point for the project in the Government and the other members of the project formulation team will work in collaboration to carry out the following activities:

PPG Activity 1
1. Analyze and identify gaps and barriers in existing health policies and measures

• Provide a clear description of development baseline activities and related sources of financing, in particular a summary of relevant development and health management projects investment programmes and capacity building activities that focus on health risk reduction in Ghana led by all relevant parties including government, WHO and others;
• Review and provide details of the existing policy and regulatory framework relevant for sub-national and sector-based health risk reduction, with particular emphasis on current climate-related impacts and threats, in the context of the scope of the approved concept;
• Review, analysis and summary of current and past project activities by government, donors, multilateral organizations, NGOs and private sector institutions that are related to increasing health resilience (including an updated report on co-operation and leveraging arrangements proposed for the envisaged UNDP project).

PPG Activity 2
2. Conduct other supporting studies to elaborate the detailed project design

• Review, collate and synthesize relevant supporting national and international reports on climate risk assessments, economic assessments of climate change impacts and cost/benefit studies of adaptation options for the health sector in Ghana in order to justify the proposed project interventions and leverage financing for the proposed activities (this may include a gap analysis, pre-feasibility assessment of demonstration measures, etc.)
• Specify of adaptation outputs and associated activtiesto be financed by the SCCF and their rationale (i.e. why and how are they supposed to  in the context of the Council approved project objective);Clear description of the geographic breakdown of project interventions in terms of provinces, districts and communities based on operational, technical and financial feasibility and appropriate stakeholder review and consensus.

PPG Activity 3
Set the monitoring and evaluation plan

• Define a Strategic Results Framework and a Monitoring and Evaluation (M&E) system with quantifiable and verifiable impact indicators that match the agreed outcomes and outputs defined during the preparatory phase. 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

• Develop a financial plan and co-funding scheme
• Negotiate with Government Counterparts
• Negotiate with the government to ensure full agreement with the Project Objective, Outcomes, Outputs including partnerships for support and co-funding.
• Explore Multilateral and Bilateral funding opportunities
• Develop partnerships and co-funding opportunities at various levels with bilateral and multi-lateral funding institutions (including WHO), as well as networking at the global level.
• Obtain official endorsement letters and guarantees
• Official endorsement letter from government as well as guarantees of co-financing will be collected from the Government and donors, and submitted to the UNDP-GEF.

• Serve as team leader for the group of consultants engaged for the project formulation phase and be primarily responsible for the timely drafting of documentation for submission to the GEF, strictly adhering to the deadlines and ensuring quality control in close consultation with the national consultant and UNDP country office
• More specifically, the consultant will produce, with support from the PPG team and within 3 months elapsed from his/her contracting, a UNDP Project Document with minimum requirements and an accompanying GEF CEO Endorsement Request (both using the appropriate templates) 
• Key project drafting tasks will be accomplished under the guidance of UNDP-GEF Regional Coordinating Centre and the UNDP Country Office, working in close collaboration with the national consultant, key government officials, donors (including WHO), NGOs, CBOs and the private sector.
• Submit an early draft of the Project Document to the UNDP Country Office and UNDP/ GEF office five weeks after contracting
• Play a pivotal role in determining the scope of PPG activities and work plan and coordinate the input and outputs of all consultants and sub-contractors 
• Lead the identification of climate change risks associated with the project's implementation areas
• Act as primary contact point for the Implementing Agency and the National Consultant for the definition of a UNDP-GEF compliant project document
• Guide and coordinate input by the National Consultant and others involved in the formulation phase
• Finalize formulation of a Results Framework and define indicative project activities
• Finalize project Outcomes, Outputs and their corresponding verifiable indicators of success
• Alongside UNDP, provide quality control for the FSP formulation process in line with UNDP/GEF and SCCF requirements
• Compile the additional cost matrix for the project and guide/facilitate the respective discussions
• Propose institutional and implementation arrangements for the project including formulating project management, reporting and evaluation arrangements and defining an organogram for the project
• Finalize co-funding and financing plans and facilitate the finalization of a financing and co-financing package for this project as well as ensure that co-financing letters are obtained in time for submission
• Facilitate stakeholder consultations throughout the project preparation phase
• Facilitate consultations with regards to the FSP proposal, including detailed budget, detailed TOR for all inputs, and detailed activity and workplan, in line with GEF eligibility principles.
• Compile project Annexes and CEO endorsement template
• Ensure that the UNDP-GEF compliant, full-sized Project Document is submitted on time for GEF CEO Endorsement

• Extensive knowledge of climate change issues with focus on adaptation
• Ability to communicate effectively orally and in writing in order to communicate complex, technical information to technical and general audiences.
• Skill in facilitating meetings effectively and efficiently
• Experience with GEF project development is a major plus

• Hold an advanced degree in medicine, public health, health systems management, health promotion, environmental science/management or a relevant field which will help in scoping the project and defining key elements in it. (e.g. international development, economics, climate change and human health, among others),
• Essentially must have professional specialization in climate change adaptation issues from a developmental point of view