Programme Management Specialist, P3

Background

UNDP/UNCDF is committed to achieving workforce diversity in terms of gender, nationality and culture. Individuals from minority groups, indigenous groups and persons with disabilities are equally encouraged to apply. All applications will be treated with the strictest confidence.

UNDP/UNCDF does not tolerate sexual exploitation and abuse, any kind of harassment, including sexual harassment, and discrimination. All selected candidates will, therefore, undergo rigorous reference and background checks.

The United Nations Capital Development Fund (UNCDF) makes public and private finance work for the poor in the world’s 46 least developed countries. With its capital mandate and instruments, UNCDF offers “last mile” finance models that unlock public and private resources, especially at the domestic level, to reduce poverty and support local economic development.

UNCDF’s financing models work through three channels: inclusive digital economies, connecting individuals, households, and small businesses with financial eco-systems that catalyze participation in the local economy, and provide tools to climb out of poverty and manage financial lives; local development finance, that capacitates localities through fiscal decentralization, innovative municipal finance, and structured project finance to drive local economic expansion and sustainable development; and investment finance, that provides catalytic financial structuring, de-risking, and capital deployment to drive SDG impact and domestic resource mobilization. By strengthening how finance works for poor people at the household, small enterprise, and local infrastructure levels, UNCDF contributes to Sustainable Development Goal-SDG 1 on eradicating poverty and SDG 17 on the means of implementation. By identifying those market segments where innovative financing models can have transformational impacts in helping to reach the last mile and address exclusion and inequalities of access, UNCDF contributes to a broad diversity of SDGs.

The Local Climate Adaptive Living Facility (LoCAL) is a mechanism to integrate climate change into local authorities’ planning and budgeting through the regular intergovernmental fiscal transfer system using performance-based grants in a participatory and gender-sensitive manner, increasing awareness and capacities to respond to climate change at the local level including through ecosystem-based solutions, and increase the quality and number of local investments that address climate change. LoCAL combines performance-based climate resilience grants (PBCRGs), which ensure programming and verification of change expenditures at the local level, with technical and capacity-building support. It uses the grants and demonstration effect to trigger further flows for local climate action including global climate finance and national fiscal transfers. LoCAL also aims to support private finance for small and medium businesses and municipal finance and public-private partnerships. LoCAL is currently active in 17 countries in Africa, Asia and the Pacific, with another 13 countries preparing to join (at the design stage).

LoCAL combines performance-based climate resilience grants (PBCRGs) with technical and capacity-building support. PBCRGs ensure programming and verification of climate change expenditures at the local level and offer strong incentives for general performance improvements targeting areas of importance for enhanced resilience. The PBCRG can be seen as an earmarked cross-sectoral grant with conditions attached to the use of its funding for climate change adaptation beyond business as usual. Combined with regular grant allocations, PBCRGs enable 100 per-cent of the investments in climate-sensitive sectors to become climate resilient over time. They include a set of minimum conditions, performance measures and a menu of eligible investments. LoCAL focuses on the delivery of four outputs that will directly contribute to increasing local governments’ access to climate finance and building resilience to climate change:

• Output 1 – Awareness and capacities to respond to climate change adaptation at the local level are increased;
• Output 2 – CCA is mainstreamed into government’s planning and budgeting systems and investments are implemented in line with the PBCRG mechanism;
• Output 3 – The PBCRG system is effectively and sustainably established in participating countries and leads to an increased amount of CCA finance available to local government and local economy;
• Output 4 – The role of local authorities and of the PBCRGS in addressing climate change are increasingly recognized at international level, through outreach, learning and quality assurance.

The initiative operates in three distinct phases:

• Phase I: Piloting, consists extended to all local governments, with of an initial scoping analysis, followed by testing in two to four local governments. As of 2022, Burkina Faso, Lesotho, Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda and Tuvalu are in Phase I; Lao PDR, Mali, and Nepal are preparing to enter Phase II.
• Phase II: Consolidating, takes place in 5–10 local governments in a country. It involves collecting lessons and demonstrating the mechanism’s effectiveness at a larger scale. As of 2022, Bangladesh, Benin, Ghana, The Gambia, Mozambique and Niger are in Phase II.
• Phase III: Scaling-up, is full national roll-out of LoCAL based on the results of the previous phases and lessons learned. LoCAL is gradually domestic or international climate finance, and becomes the national system for channeling adaptation finance to the local level. Bhutan is in Phase III, with budget support from the European Union; Cambodia has also entered Phase III.

Since its global scale-up in 2014, LoCAL has engaged with 30 countries . Between 2014 and 2021, it has mobilized more than USD 125 million, including grants and technical assistance to countries. During the same period, 1,600 climate change adaptation interventions were finalized across 12 countries using grants across 304 local governments in 12 countries representing over 11.5 million people, or being planned in the next phase of LoCAL.

The Facility is overseen by the LoCAL Board, which comprises of representatives from participating governments, and is co-chaired by the Chairs of the Least Developed Countries (LDC) Group to the United Nations and to the UNFCCC. Through its decisions, the LoCAL Board reaffirmed its commitment to a strong and continued LoCAL engagement with UNFCCC, COPs and with the LDC group in the UNFCCC processes to consolidate and deepen the progress towards LoCAL’s objectives, and to explore options to institutionalize LoCAL as a global mechanism. In addition, the Board established a group of LoCAL Ambassadors, comprised of Ministers of Environment from LoCAL member countries (currently from Burkina Faso, Mali, Malawi, Mozambique, The Gambia, Niger, Benin and Cambodia), who commit to take a lead role in supporting the implementation of the Board Decision and advocating for the LoCAL mechanism, with support from the LoCAL Facility Secretariat. As of today, the 30 countries are represented at the LoCAL Board, of whom 25 are LDCs, 6 are SIDS and 20 from Africa.

High-Level representatives and ministers from countries deploying the LoCAL mechanism have recently launched, in the margins of the 76th Session of the UN General Assembly (UNGA 76), as part of the New York Climate Week, a Ministerial Declaration aimed to provide political guidance and high-level leadership for the efforts on locally-led adaptation action in vulnerable countries particularly, Least Developed Countries, Small Island Developing States and African countries, which resulted in a strong political engagement at COP26, held in Glasgow in 2021, for increased climate finance for NDC and NAP-aligned locally-led action.

Position Purpose

UNCDF has supported the Government of the Solomon Islands (GoSI) to design the LoCAL Mechanism with the aims of increasing the resilience of communities and local economies across the country, through regular, predictable, systemic and verifiable climate finance in support of local climate responses, through increased provincial government access to climate finance to implement climate change adaptation investments in Solomon Islands (Outcome 1) and institutionalising a standard and internationally recognized country-based mechanism of performance-based climate resilience grants in the country, further attracting climate finance, domestic and international (Outcome 2).

To this end, LoCAL-Solomon Islands will raise awareness and strengthen capacities for subnational climate change adaptation at both PG and central levels (Output1); support the integration of climate change into local planning and budgeting processes and finance local adaptation interventions and investments (Output 2) and establish and deploy across the whole country an effective performance-based climate resilience grant system (financing mechanism) that can attract various sources of climate finance (Output 3).

LoCAL will be embedded in the Provincial Capital Development Fund (PCDF) and empower the PGs to develop and fund adaptation and climate-related disaster risk reduction strategies and plans, including climate induced displacement, and CCA infrastructure and services. With improved capacity, PGs will be well placed to access additional national and international CCA funds through central government and act as coordinating agencies for integrated local climate response while providing the continuity and maintenance capacity that is often lacking from time-bound projects.  Beyond supporting PGs to increase access to climate financing, LoCAL will also support PGs access to technical expertise on climate change adaptation and disaster risk reduction, in particular climate-induced displacement, to support the implementation of CCA projects funded through the PBCRG and to strengthen the entire project cycle from planning, execution to actual monitoring.

Within this programme context, UNCDF is seeking a Programme Management Specialist, P-3 to lead on the effective delivery of the Programme’s activities in the Solomon Islands, reporting to the LoCAL Global Manager, P-5, in close collaboration with the LoCAL global Facility team and LTFPA colleagues across the region.

The incumbent will contribute to strengthening programme management, monitoring and evaluation, as well as technical service delivery and systems with a view of promoting climate-resilient communities and local economies in the Solomon Islands. 

Key results include:

• Programme Management: The LoCAL Facility consistently delivers high quality, high impact development results.
• Partnership/Network Building and Resource Mobilization: New strategic opportunities and partnerships for LoCAL are realized, and resources are mobilized in support of consolidation and expansion in the country and the region.
• Knowledge Management and Communication: LoCAL is increasingly understood and recognized as nationally-owned mechanism to support climate change finance and activities at the local level, including in references to official documents such as the NDCs and/or NAP.

In addition, the position will also support UNCDF strengthen its capacity for partnership building with countries in the South as a source of good solutions for development and good practices in South-South cooperation in the area of Climate Change finance activities. The position will also support resource mobilization as well as programme coordination to support and promote South-South cooperation through LoCAL Facility.

This position (rotational) will be based in Honiara, Solomon Islands, with the possibility to relocate to another duty station based on programmatic developments.

Duties and Responsibilities

The Programme Management Specialist, P3 is responsible for overall management, coordination, execution and monitoring as well as for providing technical and policy support for the effective deployment of activities and is expected to contribute actively to LoCAL’s resource mobilization efforts and outreach activities on an ongoing basis.

The Programme Management Specialist’s key focus areas will be:

1. Programme management 
2. Team management 
3. Policy, regulatory and technical advice to government counterparts and key stakeholders 
4. Knowledge management and communication
5. Networking and partnership building 

1.)  Programme Management

• Provide effective programme supervision, implementation, monitoring and evaluation, reporting and completion activities, in close collaboration with the LoCAL Global Manager and the LoCAL Facility (global) and the UN Country Team in the Solomon Islands;
• Build effective and efficient partnerships at the programmatic and operational levels with national counterparts and development partners to coordinate and ensure successful implementation of in-country activities;
• Manage and monitor the implementation of the programme, including through the effective use of ATLAS/ERP, and manage the risk log of the project;
• Lead the preparation and timely submission of comprehensive technical and financial reports in line with contractual agreements and provide inputs for semi-annual reporting;
• Coordinate the implementation of audits, mid-term and final evaluations of the programme.

2.)  Team Management 

• Coordinate and plan HR needs to ensure highest technical advice and programme delivery to Programme’s stakeholders in all relevant components;
• Provide effective strategic and technical direction to and empowerment of supervisees, including through coaching and mentoring;
• Role-modelling of UN values and encouraging supervisees to act ethically both in their relationships with each other and in the business decisions and actions they take;
• Ensure effective performance management of supervisees (incl. annual individual performance plans of supervisees completed on time; regular meetings with supervisees organized during the year to monitor progress towards agreed goals, provide feedback and support; annual reviews (mid-term and annual) held on time; facilitating learning and development);
• Support to supervisees in implementing various arrangements in place to ensure their safety and security and in maintaining their health and well-being.

3.)   Policy, regulatory and technical advice to government counterparts and key stakeholders

• Provide policy, regulatory and technical advice to government counterparts at central and local levels (e.g. Related to NDC, NAP, PCDF and linkages to LoCAL, etc);
• Lead the technical dialogue and provision of policy and technical advisory services to national and local government counterparts in relation to decentralization and climate change, climate finance and (direct) access to international climate finance and (e.g. through accreditation to the Green Climate Fund and Adaptation Fund and subsequent direct access);

4.)   Knowledge management and communication 

• Identify key knowledge constraints and organize learning, knowledge exchange, training, workshops, etc. to build the awareness and capacities in relevant themes (i.e. climate finance, climate change, decentralization, etc.);
• Support the preparation of various written outputs and knowledge products, e.g. draft background papers, analyses, sections of reports and studies, inputs to publications, etc;
• Oversee the implementation of the Communication and Visibility Plan of the programme, in collaboration with project team, partners and technical consultants;
• Identify, collect, and disseminate best practices and lesson learned from the programme;
• Manage the process of convening national and regional stakeholders to share lessons learned;

5.)  Networking and partnership building 

• Serve as the UNCDF focal point (co-chair) in working groups and steering committees on the issue of environment and climate change and provide inputs for conducive policy and regulatory environment (e.g. NDCs, NAP process, national climate change strategy);
• Contribute to UNCDF/LoCAL and government resource mobilization and articulate and enable pathways for mobilizing resources and fostering external partnerships supporting LoCAL and UNCDF more widely;
• Participate in UN country teams, senior management teams, and coordinate the participation of UNCDF in UN and development partners’ coordination groups;
• Support partnership building efforts for effective UNCDF/LoCAL positioning in the UN System and with development partners networks;
• Ensure close collaboration with UN system, as well as to identify opportunities for collaboration and joint programming with other UN agencies and partners to maintain and/or strengthen UNCDF/LoCAL strategic positioning and presence in the country.

Supervisory / Managerial Responsibilities:

• Management of Solomon portfolio and ensures timely delivery of LoCAL portfolio in Solomon. S/he will be responsible for ensuring compliance with LoCAL Framework and UNCDF’s operation’s policies and procedures. S/he will also make a crucial contribution to the efficient and effective management of LoCAL Portfolio as well as provide strategic and technical contributions to LoCAL Global portfolio.
• Play a strategic role in programme delivery and overseeing the success of the team including ensuring the Programmatic and operational tasks are done properly and on time
• Manage the LoCAL country team in Solomon, including managing tasks and responsibilities of the team members ensuring effective programme delivery, providing guidance to the team members, reporting programme progress and any programmatic and operational issues to LoCAL Global Programme Manager P5, evaluating performance and providing feedback of the country team members in Asia and Pacific.

Competencies

Core

Achieve Results:

            LEVEL 3: Set and align challenging, achievable objectives for multiple projects, have lasting impact.

Think Innovatively:

             LEVEL 3: Proactively mitigate potential risks, develop new ideas to solve complex problems.

Learn Continuously

             LEVEL 3: Create and act on opportunities to expand horizons, diversify experiences.

Adapt with Agility

             LEVEL 3: Proactively initiate and champion change, manage multiple competing demands

Act with Determination LEVEL 3: Think beyond immediate task/barriers and take action to achieve greater results.

Engage and Partner

             LEVEL 3: Political savvy, navigate complex landscape, champion inter-agency collaboration.

Enable Diversity and Inclusion

             LEVEL 3: Appreciate benefits of diverse workforce and champion inclusivity.

People Management (Insert below standard sentence if the position has direct reports.)

• Lead with Humility;
• Show Managerial Courage;
• Demonstrate Empathy and Emotional Intelligence;
• Motivate and Direct;
• Manage Performance and Ensure Accountability.

UNDP People Management Competencies can be found in the dedicated site.

 Cross-Functional & Technical competencies

Business Management

• Results Based Management: Ability to manage programmes and projects with a focus at improved performance and demonstrable results.
• Project Management: Ability to plan, organize, prioritize and control resources, procedures and protocols to achieve specific goals.
• Portfolio Management:  Ability to select, prioritize and control the organization’s programmes and projects, in line with its strategic objectives and capacity; ability to balance the implementation of change initiatives and the maintenance of business-as-usual, while optimizing return on investment.

External Relations & Advocacy

• Relationship management: Ability to engage with a wide range of public and private partners, build, sustain and/or strengthen working relations, trust and mutual understanding.

2030 Agenda

• Peace: Governance: Public Administration and Local Governance
• Planet - Nature, Climate and Energy: Climate Change Adaptation: Public and private finance for adaptation solutions.
• Planet   Nature, Climate and Energy: Climate Change Policies: Climate Finance

Keywords

• Public financial management
• Local government finance
• Climate finance

Required Skills and Experience

Education

• Advanced university degree (Master’s Degree or equivalent) in Climate Change, Environment, Business Administration, International Relations, Development or related field is required. Or
• A first-level university degree (bachelor’s degree) in the fields of study stated above, in combination with an additional two years of qualifying experience will be given due consideration in lieu of the advanced university degree.

 Experience, Knowledge, and Skills

• A minimum of five (5) years (with Master) or seven (7) years(with Bachelor) in progressively more responsible positions in project management in the environment/climate change area with result-oriented objectives; out of the five, a minimum of three (3) years’ experience must be on policy, regulatory and technical advisory services with national and local counterparts, preferably in the Pacific region.
• Work experience with environmental sustainability and climate change and with addressing gender equality as project objective and/or cross-cutting issue in developing countries;
• Proven experience in project management and supervision of country programmes and teams, with focus on managing for results;
• Relevant experience with international climate finance, UNFCCC and UNFCCC financial mechanisms in particular GCF and AF with a focus on direct access;
• Previous relevant work experience, working in the Pacific region and/or Least Developed Countries (LDCs) is highly preferable.
• Relevant technical experience with policy and regulatory bodies and central and local governments in developing countries;
• Understanding of key concepts related to decentralization and local economic development;
• Strong networking capabilities and ability to associate him/herself with a range of actors (inter alia central and local governments; policy makers; regulators, donors, local communities, women and youth) with a view to building relations and facilitating links;
• Proven cross-cultural communication, able to function effectively in an international, multicultural environment and manage a team consisting of multiple nationalities;
• Excellent speaking and proficient writing skills in English are necessary;
• Excellent analytical skills;
• Strong general IT skills, including ability to work regularly with MS Office Suite;
• Experience with a UN organization/agency is desirable;
• Experience with ATLAS and UNDP Procurement Processes is desired, but not a requirement.

Language

• Full fluency in written and spoken English is required.
• Full fluency knowledge of other UN languages is an asset.   

Please note that continuance of appointment beyond the initial 12 months is contingent upon the successful completion of a probationary period.

Equal opportunity

As an equal opportunity employer, UNDP values diversity as an expression of the multiplicity of nations and cultures where we operate and, as such, we encourage qualified applicants from all backgrounds to apply for roles in the organization. Our employment decisions are based on merit and suitability for the role, without discrimination. 

UNDP is also committed to creating an inclusive workplace where all personnel are empowered to contribute to our mission, are valued, can thrive, and benefit from career opportunities that are open to all.

Sexual harassment, exploitation, and abuse of authority

UNDP does not tolerate harassment, sexual harassment, exploitation, discrimination and abuse of authority. All selected candidates, therefore, undergo relevant checks and are expected to adhere to the respective standards and principles. 

Right to select multiple candidates

UNDP reserves the right to select one or more candidates from this vacancy announcement.  We may also retain applications and consider candidates applying to this post for other similar positions with UNDP at the same grade level and with similar job description, experience and educational requirements.

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