International Consultant for The Design of a - México - WUSC / EUMC

Descripción

Project:
Nature-based solutions in the Guinean Forests of West Africa

• WORK PACKAGE
• Consultancy
• LOCATION
• Home based (with the possibility of travel to West Africa)
• DURATION
• 25 working days
• APPLICATION DEADLINE
• Applications will be accepted on a rolling basis until the
  28th of March, 2024
• ASSIGNMENT START DATE
• 8th of April 2024

BACKGROUND

The World University Service of Canada (WUSC) is one of Canada's leading non-profit international development organizations, committed to building a more equitable and sustainable world.

Our vision is a more inclusive, equitable, and sustainable world for youth.

It is a world in which all young people, especially women and refugees, are empowered to secure a good quality of life for themselves, their families, and their communities.

We work with a diverse network of students, volunteers, institutions, governments, and businesses to improve education, economic, and empowerment opportunities for youth, and to improve the lives of millions of disadvantaged people around the world.

_ Centre d'Etude de Coopération International (CECI)_

The Centre d'Etude de Coopération International (CECI) is a leading Canadian organisation dedicated to fighting poverty and exclusion by building the developmental capacities of disadvantaged communities.

The mission of CECI is to combat poverty, exclusion and inequality. To this end, CECI builds the development capacities of disadvantaged communities. We support gender equality, violence reduction, food security, resilience and adaptation to climate change. We mobilize resources and promote knowledge sharing.


The NbS Guinean Forest Project

The NbS Guinean Forests Project funded by Global Affairs Canada (GAC) is being implemented in Guinea, Côte d'Ivoire and Ghana by a consortium made up of the World University Service of Canada (EUMC) and the Centre d'Etude de Coopération International (CECI).

To ensure the delivery of the project's implementation strategy, the Consortium is working closely with the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), the Center for International Forestry Research and the International Center for Research in Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), ABANTU for Development in Ghana and the University of Guelph (through the International BarCode of Life Association).

The project aims to strengthen the uptake of gender-responsive and inclusive climate change adaptation (CCA) solutions among communities residing in the Guinean forest region of Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana and Guinea.

This will be accomplished by improving women's leadership in CCA planning processes, increasing the restoration of degraded forests and key habitats with biodiversity benefits, and increasing gender-sensitive investments that have a strong earning potential for women.

The project will engage with a wide range of stakeholders including women's organizations and local and national organizations to prioritize locally relevant solutions.

Six landscapes are targeted by the project with two in each country respectively;

• Ghana: Lake Bosumtwi and the Wassa Amenfi Landscapes
• Guinea: Kounoukan and Madina Oula Forest Reserves
• Côte D'Ivoire: Loh Djiboua and the Nawa

Nature and Scope of the assignment

Among other activities, under its 1st pillar - 1100, the project aims to improve women's leadership and gender transformative evidence-based and nature-based climate change adaptation planning processes in the Guinean forests of the target zone.

One of the ways it is doing so is by conducting a biodiversity assessment on some of the forest landscapes targeted for implementation to gather evidence on the state of biodiversity, with a focus on the habitats of selected species within the target landscapes.

While the Guinean forests support massive biodiversity, little is known about their component species aside from key birds and mammals.

The project is capitalising on a novel approach to biodiversity assessment - one employing the sequence analysis of targeted gene regions (DNA barcodes) to enable rapid, large-scale surveys of species diversity and distribution.

Biodiversity management and climate change adaptation requires detailed information on the diversity and distribution of species, which the project will address through this assessment in both protected and heavily impacted habitats in each of the three countries.

Over time, the assessment could also contribute to improved monitoring of biodiversity for forests within the selected landscapes.

For the private sector in particular, these assessments could potentially serve as an important source of information or create investment opportunities that can improve their compliance with European Union due diligence requirements in relation to deforestation.

For instance, while the EU Deforestation Regulation provides a key incentive for actions and investments in agroforestry and forest restoration, companies lack an evidence base to rep