Climate Vulnerability & Adaptation (Cva) Specialist

PROJECT: USAID Climate Resilient Agriculture in the Mekong Delta (CRM)
DEADLINE FOR CV SUBMISION: 23 February 2024
WORKING LOCATION: The CVA Specialist is expected to be based in Can Tho city, with frequent travel to the project's target provinces and other places as required for the project implementation activities.
1. INTRODUCTION
The United States Agency for International Development Climate Resilient Agriculture in the Mekong Delta Project (CRM) works with the Government of Vietnam (GVN) to enhance the resilience of the Mekong Delta's communities, ecosystems, and livelihoods. The overall goal of CRM is to advance low-emissions, climate-resilient, agricultural livelihoods combined with biodiversity conservation to support carbon sequestration, healthy ecosystems, and resilience of vulnerable communities in the Mekong Delta. CRM works across five provinces of Dong Thap, Kien Giang, Ca Mau, Soc Trang, and Tra Vinh and focus on three inter-connected objectives and one cross-cutting theme:
• Objective 1: Strengthen climate change resilience of the most vulnerable
populations. CRM will engage stakeholders to assess and address vulnerability
through enhanced climate information services, resilient livelihood, and safety net models, improved provincial plans, and increased access to finance.
• Objective 2: Strengthen management and restoration of natural ecosystems to
provide ecosystem goods and services. CRM will take an inclusive participatory
approach to identify entry points to support evidence-based transformation of legal and governance frameworks, improve management capacity, and incentivize natural resource conservation.
• Objective 3: Reduce methane emissions through low-emission and sustainable
agriculture practices. CRM will work with GVN and stakeholders across value chains to assess gaps and opportunities and harness payment for environmental services schemes and other results-based finance mechanisms to reduce intensive rice farming and GHG emissions and drive transformation through a market systems approach.
• Cross-cutting focus: Develop and implement policies to advance climate actions
and biodiversity conservation. CRM will also work with GVN and stakeholders to
enhance development, harmonization, and implementation of policies, as well as
to strengthen national and sub-national coordination. CRM will engage key
stakeholders to influence and incentivize policy, practice, and behavior in favor of
transformation.
CRM will be implemented during the period of 2023 to 2028 by Winrock International with a consortium of Vietnamese and international partners. GVN counterparts are the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development (MARD) and the Management Board of Forest Projects (MBFP).
2. POSITION DESCRIPTION
The Climate Vulnerability and Adaptation (CVA) Specialist will be responsible for the project's field implementation on the activities related to reducing the climatic vulnerabilities and building adaptive modalities for the most vulnerable communities. The post holder is also expected to engage in monitoring the related activities and facilitating learning good practices on the climatic vulnerability reduction across project objectives in the CRM. As an active member of the Objective-1 team, s/he will play a role of contributing to the planning process of the project Objective-1: "Resilience to climate change
strengthened for the most vulnerable communities." The CVA Specialist will report directly to the Team Leader of Objective 1- Climate Change Resilience. S/he will be working closely with other members in the provincial teams, monitoring on-the-ground performance, coordinating with the local government and partner organizations that ultimately contribute to delivering the results under Objective 1. The CVA Specialist is encouraged to actively participate in external events related to climatic vulnerability reduction and climate change adaptation, agriculture-based livelihoods and other related topics in five CRM provinces and the Mekong Delta region.
Together with CRM team and the local partners, the CVA Specialist is also expected to contribute to the achievement of key results of Objective 1, including: (i) # vulnerable
communities in the Mekong Delta supported to adapt to climate change impacts; (ii) #
people using climate information or implementing risk-reducing actions; (iii) # institutions with improved capacity to assess or address climate change risks; (iv) # million USD of public/private funds mobilized for climate change adaptation and/or sustainable landscape management; and (v) # people participating in climate resilient livelihood practices.
The CVA Specialist is expected to be based in Can Tho city, with frequent travel to the project's target provinces and other places as required for the project implementation activities.
3. RESPONSIBILITIES
• Work with the Team Leader and other technical staff under Objective 1 to design appropriate interventions, prepare workplans and accelerate approved workplans/implement activities related to climatic vulnerability reduction and climatic adaptation in the project sites.
• Conduct field visits to monitor CRM Objective-1 performance and collect
information related to climatic vulnerability reduction and local adaptabilities to
climate change; contribute to conducting technical reviews regularly.
• Facilitate the implementation of CRM's climatic vulnerability reduction and
adaptive activities under Objective 1 to strengthen the local climatic resilience
capacity for the most vulnerable communities through supporting them to assess
and address the climatic vulnerabilities, and expose to resilient livelihood
opportunities.
• Coordinate inclusive vulnerability reduction and disaster risk reduction (DRR)
preparation; focus on building local climate change adaptive capacity in
agriculture/aquaculture production and other low-climatic-risk livelihood
modalities.
• Ensure the synergies of outcomes produced under the implementation of Objective
1, on the aspects of climatic vulnerability reduction and climate change adaptive
modalities with other CRM Objectives by working closely with the provincial
technical teams, other thematic specialists, local government and other relevant
stakeholders. Work as a proactive team member to ensure collaboration and
management for cross-sectoral/Objective approaches.
• Promote local initiatives on climatic vulnerability reduction and innovative
modalities of climate change adaptation that are in line with purpose of the CRM
implementation to empower the most vulnerable communities to take action on
climate change.
• Assist Team Leader of Objective 1 to provide appropriate guidance, coaching and advice on the implementation of activities to address climate change issues related to climatic vulnerability reduction, climatic-risk management and adaptation portfolio.
• Contribute to the field monitoring, evaluation and learning (MEL) over the climatic vulnerability, risk management and adaptative activities in agriculture/aquaculturebased livelihoods and mobilize local engagement in the learning process along with CRM implementation. Ensure climate-related vulnerability reduction and adaptation progress is adequately reflected in the work plan, indicators and targets and well-coordinated during the CRM implementation in the target provinces.
• Provide technical inputs to co-develop key technical documents and reports,
sharing best practices, lessons learned, and knowledge and or information
exchange within the CRM team and provincial partners.
• Be responsible for implementation of some core CRM activities, e.g., GESI crosscutting themes and perform additional duties as required by the supervisor.