The United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) is the United Nations systems designated entity for addressing environmental issues at the global and regional level. Its mandate is to coordinate the development of environmental policy consensus by keeping the global environment under review and bringing emerging issues to the attention of governments and the international community for action.
The low-carbon transition and social transformation required to solve the climate crisis pose significant opportunities to redress gender inequalities and promote human rights. By placing women and other marginalized groups at the centre, this transition can advance gender justice and occur more quickly with empowered women and marginalized groups acting as change agents.
The EmPower: Women for Climate-Resilient Societies Programme background: From 2018 to 2022, UN Women Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) and the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) worked together through the first phase of the EmPower: Women for Climate-Resilient Societies project to accelerate gender-responsive and human rights-based climate action across Asia and the Pacific with a focus on Bangladesh, Cambodia and Viet Nam.
Building on the first phase of the project, UNEP and UN Women are scaling up the work in its second phase starting 2023. EmPower Phase II leverages a variety of tools, methodologies, and empirical data to implement existing plans and policies for gender-responsive, human rights-based climate action. The project expands the scope for women and other marginalized and gender-diverse groups to shape decisions and build resilience, including through new access to finance, technology and renewable energy as a driver of better livelihoods. In EmPower Phase II, UNEP takes a lead
(i) to develop financial schemes to give female entrepreneurs/women-led enterprises access to finance for clean energy technologies contributing to the reduction of GHG in Cambodia, Viet Nam, Bangladesh, Indonesia and Philippines
(ii) on technical skill development for exploring job opportunities in the context of clean energy transition for women, youth and other marginalized communities.
In order to achieve this, UNEP creates partnerships with various stakeholders at the national and regional levels. Moreover, given the number of stakeholders involved in the implementation of EmPower-II, the various capacity building activities implemented, the potential synergies to establish with other UNEP led initiatives and the reporting and monitoring requirements, UNEP is looking for a consultant, based in Bangkok, to perform tasks of a technical, organizational and analytical nature, as part of the Finance Unit of the Mitigation Branch, Climate Change Division, United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). Specifically, the consultant will support the programme with the mapping, coordination, monitoring and reporting of capacity building activities, specifically with regard to the renewable energy and low carbon technologies. There is a need for extending the scope along with the timeline based on the demand coming from all the EmPower countries and region for providing technical skill training specifically on clean energy technologies for policy makers, for financing institutions and for entrepreneurs. In this regard, this consultancy assignment is to be extended further.
Duties and responsibilities: The purpose of the consultancy is to work with the regional team members of UNEP and UN Women under the “EmPower: Women for Climate Resilient Societies” programme to formalise and execute the capacity building strategy of the programme. The consultant will identify the different types of capacity building activities undertaken under EmPower as well as other existing initiatives and programmes related to renewable energy (RE) technologies, RE and women enterprise development, RE for climate resilience building etc., and relevant institutions implementing such programmes. Through coordination with the programme team in UNEP and UN Women, the consultant will finalize the capacity building strategy of the EmPower programme and develop an action plan to execute it and oversee its execution, including monitoring and reporting. The work also involves feeding into resource mobilization efforts by providing relevant inputs on the capacity building activities implemented under the EmPower programme and propose capacity building interventions complementing other proposed ideas / projects.
Therefore, the purpose of this consultancy role consists of 4 aspects:
1. Finalization and execution of EmPower’s capacity building approach.
2. Coordination with UNEP and UN Women regional teams.
3. Coordination with EmPower partners responsible for technical skill development and create a network of institutions for skill development on clean energy technology
4. Contribution to resource mobilization.