Financed by the GEF and USAID and implemented by UNDP between 2018 and 2024 the “Reducing Maritime Trafficking of Wildlife between Africa and Asia” project under the GEF-financed, World Bank led Global Wildlife Program (GWP) aims to curb maritime wildlife trafficking, targeting key routes and transit points between Africa and Asia. The GEF launched the Global Wildlife Program (GWP) in June 2015, bringing together funding from the GEF and a wide range of partners, including the governments of the now 32 participating countries across Africa, Asia, and Latin America, GEF Agencies, bilateral and multilateral donors, foundations, the private sector and civil society. Work to strengthen anti-trafficking capacity through this UNDP-GEF Maritime Trafficking project preliminarily targets the East African ports of Mombasa (Kenya), Kampala (Uganda), Dar es Salaam and Zanzibar (Tanzania). Additionally, the project works at the global level to strengthen the performance of ports and the wider shipping industry in tackling wildlife trafficking in the long-term and supports knowledge exchange among GWP national projects and their stakeholders.

Project activities are aligned with three main components:

• Component 1. Increasing awareness, incentives, and capacity for port-based law enforcement staff, port operational staff and the shipping industry, to support the achievement of best practice in combating maritime wildlife trafficking at seaports.
• Component 2. Bringing together different ports, countries and players to work cooperatively on combating wildlife trafficking across key illicit trade chains.
• Component 3. Identify, document and disseminate best practices and lessons learned on combating wildlife trafficking and ensure effective monitoring and evaluation of project results, along with coordination of monitoring and evaluation across the GWP to support a consistent approach to measuring the effectiveness of counter-wildlife trafficking efforts.

Sharing experiences and insights is an extremely valuable tool for advancing conservation, regionally and range-wide yet, paradoxically, it is widely recognized that conservation practitioners generally do not share their experiences in published form (Sunderland et al., 2009). Therefore, a huge volume of collective conservation experience is lost for future projects. Moreover, unexpected outcomes and project failures regularly occur in conservation projects given the complex socio-economic and uncertainty issues associated with species and ecosystem conservation. Yet these are very rarely reported despite their high practical value for others working in similar situations (Sunderland et al., 2009). Similarly, many projects do not regularly document lessons learned (both success and failure) or record them very briefly without sufficient details and analysis that would allow applying the lessons in practice for other projects.  Properly documented lessons learned from conservation projects in different parts of the world can have tremendous value for the rapid improvement of overall effectiveness of the entire Global Wildlife Program.

Business projects have a well-developed system to systematically extract, analyze, store, and apply lessons learned to improve performance and products. The same kind of system can be applied to conservation projects. Project managers, team members and leadership can all participate in the lessons learned sessions, review the lessons learned reports and make decisions on how to use the knowledge gained. Sharing lessons learned among project team members prevents an organization from repeating the same mistakes and also allows them to take advantage of organizational best practices. Innovative approaches and good work practices can be shared with others. Lessons learned can be used to improve future projects and future stages of current projects (PMI 2004).

As part of Project Component 3, the UNDP-GEF-USAID Project “Reducing Maritime Trafficking of Wildlife between Africa and Asia” is seeking an International Consultant to assist GWP national projects supported by UNDP within the Sixth GEF Operational Phase (GEF6) to systematically extract and analyze project lessons related to interventions to prevent, detect and investigate/prosecute wildlife trafficking, and develop a publication with detailed descriptions of the lessons learned in a form that makes them easily understandable and applicable for other projects within the GWP framework and beyond.

1. Develop a standard project survey that allows the project teams to be better prepared to respond during the lessons learned session and also gives them the opportunity to provide input if they are unable to attend the sessions. The project survey should be organized by category. The use of categories will ensure key information is not missed and will later help to focus the discussion. Standard categories for all projects should be defined and additional categories specific to a project can be added. Suggested categories include project management, project planning, implementation of project activities, project M&E, project communications, stakeholder involvement, collaboration with other projects, project reporting, gender mainstreaming, and lessons learning and sharing. The project survey should also include specific questions for each category.
2. Analyse survey results of six GWP national projects with a focus on combating the illegal wildlife trade. Responses shall be used by the International Consultant (lessons learned facilitator) to guide the discussion during the lessons learning sessions. Key questions should be included as part of the survey: 1) what went right, 2) what went wrong, 3) key factors that contributed to the activity/practice success or failure, 3) what needs to be improved.
3. Conduct/facilitate one virtual training webinar for GWP national projects and partners on approaches and methodologies to collect and codify lessons learned from conservation projects.
4. Conduct/facilitate three lessons learning sessions with each of six GWP national projects with a focus on combating the illegal wildlife trade (one virtual session in Q2 2022, one in-person session during a study tour for respective project focal points in Q2 2022 (June (tbc); COVID permitting), and another virtual session during Q3 2022) with training on and support in identifying project successes and project failures, and recommendations to improve future performance of the projects. The facilitator should review key documents and project survey results, and then prepare a list of questions specific to each project. The facilitator should use the lessons learned categories to help focus the participants’ thinking and discussion during the session. Considerations related to gender dimensions need to be part of each session. A meta-modeling interviewing technique should be applied for the sessions to allow detailed description of each lesson as an applicable model and understanding the limits of its applicability for other projects.
5. Develop lessons learned reports after each of the two virtual one-on-one sessions and share the reports with the project teams for their review. Finalize each report based on their review and feedback.
6. Develop lessons learned summaries from the respective GWP projects to be used by UNDP and GWP leadership. The summaries (no more than 3 pages each) should present an overview of the lessons learned process and a summary of project strengths – what went well, project weaknesses – what went wrong, and recommendations – what needs to improve.
7. Develop a publication of the 10 most significant lessons learned by the projects related to combating the illegal wildlife trade (both best practices and failures) based on the lessons learned summary reports that will allow effective sharing of the lessons with the entire GWP community and other projects for application of the best practices and avoidance of failures.

Estimated time to complete activities under this assignment:

Travel Requirements:

Travel would be required to Mombasa, Kenya, or Dar es Salaam, Tanzania in Q2 2022, COVID permitting.

Payment Method:

• Demonstrates integrity and fairness, by modeling the UN/UNDP’s values and ethical standards;
• Promotes the vision, mission, and strategic goals of UNDP;
• Displays cultural, gender, religion, race, nationality and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Good interpersonal and networking skills;
• Ability to work well as part of a multi- cultural team and displays gender, religion, race, nationality, and age sensitivity and adaptability;
• Computer literacy (e.g., Microsoft Word) is a prerequisite;
• Demonstrates strong commitment and patience to deal with competing deadlines, demands, and interests.

• At least 2 years experience in organization and facilitation of lessons learning sessions and/or trainings with international and national conservation, environmental, social, or business projects;
• At least 3 years experience in professional interviewing of project teams and other stakeholders;
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience in documentation of lessons learned in the area of conservation, law enforcement, international development, business, or social sphere;
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience in development of documentaries/publications to present lessons learned by projects (please attach or provide links to at least 2 samples of previous work in your application);
• Regional experience in Sub-Sahara Africa and/or South-East Asia is an asset;
• Previous professional experience with UNDP, GEF, and other international projects and programs is an advantage.

Academic Qualifications/Education:

• Master’s or higher degree in project management, environmental or social science, business administration, international development or related field.

Language skills:

• Excellent writing, editing, and oral communication skills in English

5. Evaluation of Applicants

Individual consultants will be evaluated based on a cumulative analysis taking into consideration the combination of the applicants’ qualifications and financial proposal.

The award of the contract should be made to the individual consultant whose offer has been evaluated and determined as:

a) responsive/compliant/acceptable, and

b) Having received the highest score out of a pre-determined set of weighted technical and financial criteria specific to the solicitation. Only highest ranked candidates who would be found qualified for the job based on the P11 desk review will be invited for an interview.

The selection of the best offer will be based on a Combined Scoring method – where the technical evaluation (desk review) will be weighted a maximum of 70% and combined with the price offer which will be weighted a maximum of 30%. The 70% rating shall be based on how well the Offer or meets the minimum qualifications/competencies described above.

The technical evaluation will be based on the following criteria with the corresponding points (out of a total 70 points):

• Master’s or higher degree in project management, environmental or social science, business administration, international development or related field (5 points);
• At least 2 years experience in organization and facilitation of the lessons learning sessions and/or trainings with international and national conservation, environmental, social, or business projects (15 points);
• At least 3 years experience in professional interviewing of project teams and other stakeholders (15 points);
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience in documentation of lessons learned in the area of conservation, law enforcement, international development, business, or social sphere (15 points);
• At least 3 years of hands-on experience in development of documentaries/publications to present lessons learned by projects (10 points);
• Regional experience in Sub-Sahara Africa and/or South-East Asia (5 points);
• Previous professional experience with UNDP, GEF, and other international projects and programs is an advantage (5 points).

Only applicants with a minimum of 45 points on their technical proposal will be considered for financial evaluation. The following formula will be used to evaluate financial proposal:

p = 30 (µ/z),

Where,

p=points for the financial proposal being evaluated

µ=price of the lowest priced proposal

z = price of the proposal being evaluated

The contract will be awarded to the applicant who receives the highest combined score.