| Overview : A. Project Title: Reducing vulnerability from climate change in Foothills, Lowlands and Senqu River Basin B. Background and Project Description: The Lesotho UNDP Country Office and the Government of Lesotho will for the next five years (2015-2020) implement a GEF-financed project “Reducing vulnerability from climate change in Foothills, lower Lowlands and Senqu River”. The objective of the project is to mainstream climate risk considerations into the Land Rehabilitation Programme of Lesotho for improved ecosystem resilience and reduced vulnerability of livelihoods to climate shocks. The project will support the integration of climate change adaptation into national and sub-national land use planning and decision-making. Climate change – including rising temperatures, and a greater frequency of droughts and extreme rain events – is negatively affecting local communities living in rural parts of Lesotho. The fragile mountain ecosystems of Lesotho provide a range of benefits that increase the resilience of such communities to climate change. These include regulating services such as storing and retaining water as well as mitigating floods. However, these ecosystems are characterised by widespread degradation as a result of unsustainable land management and exploitation of natural resources. The effects of this ecosystem degradation in Lesotho include loss of vegetative cover and extreme soil erosion. Such effects reduce the capacity of these ecosystems to protect vulnerable communities from the increasingly negative impacts of climate change that are threatening their livelihoods. The preferred solution to the climate change problem facing Lesotho is to strengthen the resilience of climate-vulnerable communities by: i) enhancing the capacity of government institutions and local communities to mainstream climate change risks into policies, plans and programmes; ii) implementing climate-smart ecosystem rehabilitation and management measures using a community/household based approach; and iii) establishing a system for monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness of various approaches to climate change adaptation to inform a process of adaptive management. Project goal and objective The project objective is to mainstream climate risk considerations into the Land Rehabilitation Programme of Lesotho for improved ecosystem resilience and reduced vulnerability of livelihoods to climate shocks. Project Outcomes There are five project outcomes which are intended to achieve the project objective, as follows: - Increased technical capacity of the Ministry of Forestry, Range and Soil Conservation and relevant Departments to apply up-to-date climate science for the management of evolving risks and uncertainty linked to climate change.
- Communities empowered with skills, knowledge, partnerships and institutions for managing natural resources to reduce vulnerability to climate change and increase resilience of natural and social capital (over 7000 households with potential for upscaling to cover 20,000).
- Over 50,000 hectares of land across the Foothills, Lowlands and the Lower Senqu River Basin rehabilitated through operationalization of the climate-smart Land rehabilitation programme.
- National strategies for rangelands and wetlands management strengthened by the integration of climate change/variability and ecosystem management.
- NSDP mainstreamed into local development strategies to support the constituency-wide adoption of the climate smart land rehabilitation programme.
Context of the Required Service The outcomes 1, 2,3, 4 and 5 would be addressed by the proposed consultancy services. Increased technical capacity required by the Project Staff as well as the Staff of the Implementing Partner would be provided in addressing issues related to management of Natural Resources and at the same time application of best practices through operationalization of the climate smart land rehabilitation methods. The Consultant would need to review reports prepared by consultants engaged by the Project. | 
