Consultancy services for a MARXAN Expert to Support the JMA Demonstration Project Marine Spatial Planning (MSP) phase II process,

Background

The JMA demonstration project is assisting Seychelles and Mauritius in the development and demonstration of new management approaches for such ECS areas, which can provide lessons and management techniques that could be replicated both within the western Indian Ocean and other similar maritime zones globally.

Component 3 of the JMA demonstration project aims to develop a marine spatial planning (MSP) process that can form the basis for an agreed management strategy, with adopted decision-making and adaptive management mechanisms. This will be supported by efforts to: (a) build technical and management capacity that can undertake and maintain a marine spatial planning process; and (b) provide support and assistance in developing an appropriate and effective data storage and management system to support MSP activities.

 Objective of the Assignment

To support the spatial definition of the different zones in the zoning framework, MARXAN conservation planning software has been widely deployed as a decision support tool to help planners to solve complex conservation planning problems. ‘Marxan With Zones’ has been used extensively during the preparation of the Seychelles MSP project and will likely be used to support MSP in Mauritius. However, its application depends on certain data being available to support its use. At this stage, it is unclear whether the existing data is sufficient for the application of Marxan With Zones to support the JMA demonstration project.

As such, one of the recommendations stemming from the Phase 1 analysis was that the project undertake an initial feasibility study to assess the extent to which Marxan With Zones can be deployed for the project and what, if any, additional data is required to support such an analysis for the JMA.

In this regard, the purpose of this consulting assignment is to undertake such a feasibility study and to provide to both the UNDP Project Coordination Unit and members of the Project Steering Committee a robust analysis of the feasibility of deploying Marxan with Zones to inform the development of the final Zoning Framework for the JMA. In addition, it is expected that the Expert will collaborate with local experts, with Marxan experience, to undertake a preliminary zoning analysis using the available data.

Duration

This assignment is for duration of 30 person-days, to be spread over four months..

Submission of Application

Applications should be sent through  email : procurement.mu@undp.org on or before Tuesday 20 September 2022 - 16:00 hours Mauritius time (GMT+4)

 Annexes
Annex A - Letter of confirmation of interest and availability and Submission of financial proposal
Annex B - Model Contact IC
Annex C - UNDP GCC IC
Annex D - P11
Terms of Reference