Consultant on TEEB National Implementation and Ecosystem Restoration at United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP)

Duties And Responsibilities

• Conduct a systematic review of previous and ongoing work in South Africa to prioritize geographic areas for ecosystem restoration and types of restoration interventions, specifically focusing on savannah, grassland and thicket biomes. The review should summarize relevant existing initiatives, provide an assessment of their links to government priorities, provide the results in maps where possible, and detail the availability of underlying data. To the extent that the exercises summarized include information on the type of restoration activities (complementary to location) this information should also be included.
• Develop a set of criteria against which a longlist of possible sites for restoration activities as part of the project can be assessed. The criteria should include environmental, economic and social dimensions. Where possible, the criteria should be assessable via the existing available data sources documented as part of the above systemic review. Where additional data are desirable but not available, this should be documented in the form of recommendations for future data generation that would improve the robustness and relevance of the criteria list.
• Provide a preliminary assessment of a longlist of possible intervention sites based on these criteria. The longlist will be provided by the project for the consultant to provide a preliminary assessment of the desirability and viability of sites based on the environmental, economic and social criteria identified.

Qualifications/special Skills

• An advanced university degree (Master’s degree or equivalent), preferably with a specialization in environmental geoinformatics, environmental management, law, social anthropology, environment and development, sustainable development, economics, applied economics, agriculture, or related fields is required.
• A first level degree in combination with two additional years of qualifying experience may be accepted in lieu of the advanced university degree.
• A minimum of five (5) years working with governments, non-governmental organizations, or research institutions with a focus on environment and development is required.
• Experience in working on strategic spatial planning of biodiversity conversation or restoration activities in South Africa is desirable.

Languages

• English and French are the working languages of the United Nations Secretariat. For this post, fluency in spoken and written English is required.