UNICEF International Consultancy to Provide Technical Assistance on Nutrition and Climate Change Jobs in Kenya

UNICEF International Consultancy to Provide Technical Assistance on Nutrition and Climate Change Jobs in Kenya

Background and Justification

Good nutrition is at the heart of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). By declaring 2016-2025 the UN Decade of Action on Nutrition, the UN General Assembly fully endorsed enhanced efforts to ensure that good nutrition is achieved by all.

Eastern and Southern African (ESA) region suffers from some serious environmental problems such as climate change, including deforestation, loss of biodiversity, land conversion, natural resource degradation that increasingly challenge food systems and nutrition.

The ESA region hosts several climate change hotspots where strong physical and ecological effects of climate change come together with large populations of poor and vulnerable communities. The nutrition impacts of climate change related disasters are already being felt in the region, with increase in severity and frequency of extreme events in recent years.

The Eastern and Southern African Region has been facing repeated climate related disasters that increase malnutrition including drought, floods, cyclone. In the Horn of Africa, particularly eastern Kenya, southern Somalia, and certain Belg-receiving areas of Ethiopia, have already experienced four consecutive poor rainy seasons, resulting in below-average crop production, poor rangeland conditions, and rising cereal prices across affected areas.

This is contributing to worsening food insecurity in a region already struggling with multiple other shocks (e.g., conflict/insecurity, macroeconomic challenges including the socio-economic impacts of COVID-19, and desert locusts).

In the three HOA countries alone (Ethiopia, Kenya and Somalia) an estimated 35.7 million people are faced high levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 3+), including 230,000 people in Somalia facing Catastrophic levels of food insecurity (IPC Phase 5).

Acute malnutrition is also alarmingly high with over 7.4 million children under five years of age estimated to be wasted in the HOA countries. Southern Africa has also been affected by droughts for most of 2021, and early 2022. OCHA’s report indicated that parts of southern Africa faced worst droughts in four decades, causing humanitarian needs to spike alarmingly.

In the Grand Sud of Madagascar in 2021, a devastating combination of drought, pest infestations and sandstorms caused up to 60 per cent of crops losses and left more than 1.14 million people severely food insecure (IPC 3 and above), including 14,000 people facing famine-like conditions (IPC 5).

In southern Angola, over 1.3 million people—nearly 50 per cent of the population analyzed in the 17 southmost municipalities—were in in Crisis (IPC 3) or Emergency (IPC 4) in August 2021, according to the Integrated Phase Classification (IPC) analysis. Admissions for severe acute malnutrition were higher than the previous four years.

Scope of Work

Goal and objective: Under the supervision of Regional Advisor Nutrition, the main purpose of this assignment is to coordinate a climate sensitive nutrition response to current nutrition emergencies in the region and provide support to current efforts to strengthen capacities of the UNICEF ESA Regional Office and country offices in climate sensitive nutrition programming, by providing support to various activities focusing on the nexus of nutrition and climate change, and enhance climate resilient and shock-responsive nutrition programming .

Specific objectives include:

Undertake evidence generation/analysis: on how climate change has been impacting on food security and malnutrition outcomes; livelihoods, choice of diets and feeding habits; assess climate risks to food security and maternal and child malnutrition services provided, access to healthcare services, and how this impact would evolve in near and long-term future in the ESA region; document the impact of climate change on women’s workload, and child-caring practices resulting in repeated humanitarian disasters.

In consultation with regional and country teams, develop a climate change – and nutrition program framework and strategy for ESAR, including development of conceptual linkage between the broader nutrition resilience and climate sensitive nutrition programming, and climate risk-informed nutrition indicators.

Frame nutrition as a core element to be included within the strategies, plans and proposals to be funded with climate financing

– e.g. Green Climate Fund, funding commitments arising from the COP-27 conference to support low income countries address the impacts of climate change, and identify opportunities for country offices to include nutrition

Responsibilities and Tasks

Under the direction of the Nutrition Advisor, and in close coordination with other members and technical specialists of the Nutrition Team and other sections as appropriate, responsible for / support the development, planning, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of climate change and nutrition programming, the expert will:

Support to country Office activities focused on resilience of nutrition services to children in the context of climate change, and environment and natural resource degradation. These might include technical assistance to field level staff for the implementation of specific activities.

Develop capacity within ESARO and country offices to analyse and interpret the relation between nutrition and climate change. This will include developing risk assessment methodology, and training materials and toolkits.

Provide technical nutrition input to documents focusing on resilience in the context of climate change

Support the development of innovative approaches to improve elasticity of health systems for surge response during climate induced nutrition emergency like drought, cyclones and floods.

Provide technical review for nutrition components to diverse documents on resilience and climate change mitigation and adaptation.

Produce a document framing nutrition as a core element to be included within the strategies, plans and proposals to be funded with climate financing – e.g. Green Climate Fund, funding commitments arising from the COP-27 conference to support low income countries address the impacts of climate change, and identify opportunities for country offices to include nutrition

Support the nutrition advisor and team members by providing data, information and knowledge and expertise on nutrition aspects of resilience building especially in the context of climate change, including risk assessment and mitigation against humanitarian disasters resulting from climate change.

Support UNICEF regional office in development of tools to identify entry points, policy recommendations and programmatic actions to address climate change as a driver of malnutrition.

Provide surge support to countries in nutrition emergencies as needed

Perform other duties as required.

Desired Competencies. technical background and experience

An advanced degree or higher qualification in Nutrition, Public Health, climate change adaptation, disaster risk reduction, earth and environmental sciences, geography, or a related field. Degree in human nutrition is an asset.

At least eight years of relevant experience in programme and/or policy support in the area of nutrition and climate change or natural resource management or humanitarian response.

A professional work experience in the UN or other international organizations, national governments or the private sector is an asset.

Knowledge and proven analytical skills and experience in experience in public health nutrition and/or emergency nutrition project development, drafting, implementation, monitoring, reporting and verification.

Knowledge and experience in climate change risk analysis, adaptation and mitigation, and climate financing.

Background/familiarity to approaches for development, implementation and management of nutrition program approaches to disaster risk management and reduction, resilience building, and linkage with health, WASH, social protection and food security programming.

Ability to design mapping, landscape analyses, programme reviews etc and apply knowledge from contemporary research in the field of nutrition/DRR/climate change, and translate this into programming strategies for different contexts (humanitarian, urban slum, etc.)

Fluency in English (verbal and written). knowledge of another UN language an asset.

How to Apply

For more information and job application details, see; UNICEF International Consultancy to Provide Technical Assistance on Nutrition and Climate Change Jobs in Kenya

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