| Overview : The project area, covering the Greater Kafue National Park ecosystem comprises Kafue National Park, West Lunga National Park, 13 Game Management Areas (GMAs and several open forest areas. The project which covers a total area of 78,185km² and supports over 225,000 people is threatened by wildlife poaching, deforestation and forest degradation, unsustainable land uses, extensive fire and loss of a large, intact ecosystem that provides multiple benefits including forest protection, water and HEP, and biodiversity. The underlying causes of these threats is weak management effectiveness, financial unsustainability, open access exploitation of land and resources, exacerbated by centralized and uncoordinated resource management policies, poverty, land degradation and climate change. The project was developed to address these threats through a number of interventions targeted at both the National Parks and the Game Mangement Areas, through a multi-focal approach addressing issues affecting biodiversity, land degaradation and climate change. Specifically the project interventions were targeted at increasing management effectiveness and financial sustainability of the Greater Kafue and West Lunga Protected Areas System, strengthening land use governance and planning and supporting communities to manage land and forest resources more sustainably. The local consultant is expected to follow a participatory and consultative approach ensuring close engagement with government counterparts, in particular the GEF operational focal point, UNDP Country Office, project team, and the UNDP GEF Technical Adviser based in the region. Depending on the COVID-19 situation, the consultant is expected to undertake a field visit to some identified project areas in order to verify and ground truth information and hold consultations with key stakeholders including community members, district and provincial based Implementing Partners and Implementing Agents. Additionally the consultant is expected to review all relvant documents such as the project document, project reports – including Annual APR/PIR, project budget revisions, mid-term review, , progress reports, GEF focal area tracking tools, project files, national strategic, National Development Plan and legal documents as well as any other documents deemed relevant. Note on Standard 6). For detailed information, please refer to Annex 1 Terms of Reference |
