Background

The United Nations Environment Programme is the leading global environmental authority that sets the global environmental agenda, promotes the coherent implementation of the environmental dimension of sustainable development within the United Nations system and serves as an authoritative advocate for the global environment. Its mandate is to coordinate the development of environmental policy consensus by keeping the global environment under review and bringing emerging issues to the attention of governments and the international community for action. UNEP Ecosystems Division works with international and national partners, providing technical assistance and capacity development for the implementation of environmental policy, and strengthening the environmental management capacity of developing countries and countries with economies in transition. The consultant will work for the Economics of Nature (TEN) Unit in the Ecosystems Division to contribute to the Green Climate Fund (GCF) project Building Resilience of Urban Populations in Lao PDR. The project is being implemented by the Lao Ministry of Natural Resources and Environment (MONRE) and managed by a team of Ministry representatives, national consultants, and UNEP staff. UNEP-TEN has been contracted to make the economic case for EBA and guide decision making around implementation of EBA measures by valuing their associated ecosystem services. The consultant will report to the Head of the Economics of Nature Unit (TEN) in the Ecosystems Division.

With financing from GCF, Lao PDR is undertaking efforts build urban resilience to climate change in four cities: Kaysone, Paksan, Pakse, and Vientiane. Through capacity building, technical assistance, and multi-lateral planning and decision making, the five-year project aims to advise and encourage the adoption of plans and interventions to increase urban resilience to flooding. Under a cooperation agreement with the UNEP Climate Change Adaptation Unit, UNEP-TEN contributes to this project by guiding the application of ecosystem-service valuation to assess and compare EBA options. UNEP will produce an extended cost-benefit analysis (CBA) of potential EBA measures so that decision makers can recognize the societal value of natural ecosystems and adopt NBS and EBA measures to build urban resilience.

Ecosystem services valuation is a tool to ensure that the decision-making process accounts for the benefits natural systems provide to society. Economic valuation of ecosystem services incorporates considerations of equity and sustainability in decision making processes and helps to identify and resolve the trade-offs inherent to urban development and management of ecosystems. Ecosystem management plans often result in net gains for some sections of society and net losses for others. For example, forest conservation might increase carbon sequestration (a global benefit) but as a result, local populations might be deprived of access to the forest and be unable to access services, like timber and non-timber forest products, as a result. Similarly, for floodplain wetland ecosystems, their conversion might increase the availability of land for agriculture and industrial uses, but ecosystem services like bioremediation, water storage and biodiversity may be lost, impacting the residents who depend upon them.

Nature-based Solutions (NBS) are actions to protect, sustainably manage, and restore natural or modified ecosystems in ways that address societal challenges effectively and adaptively, to provide both human well-being and biodiversity benefits (IUCN 2016). Ecosystem-based Adaptation (EBA) is the use of biodiversity and ecosystem services as part of an overall adaptation strategy to help people to adapt to the adverse effects of climate change (CBD 2009). EBA and NBS both refer to actions, measures, or interventions that conserve or restore nature, with an aim to ensure or augment the provision of ecosystem services. Ecosystem-services valuation can be used to compare the full range of societal costs and benefits of NBS and EBA measures and compare development scenarios that include NBS to those that do not. For any ecosystem service, its societal value is the discounted net present value of the flow of future expected benefits, including future costs avoided. By estimating this net present value, decision-makers can see how the marginal benefit, for example of conservation of urban or coastal wetlands, equates with the marginal costs of conservation or restoration.

The objective of this consultancy is to establish the biophysical evidence base to enable the valuation of ecosystem services that will guide decision making around implementation of EBA. Economic valuation will enable a cost-benefit analysis of specific EBA scenarios and NBS measures for each of the four project cities, which will be co-developed with UNEP staff and Lao stakeholders. In order to estimate the economic value of ecosystem services, the biophysical impact of selected EBA measures must be predicted.

Duties and Responsibilities

Summary: For Vientiane, Paksan, Pakse and Kaysone cities in Lao PDR, model and quantify the biophysical impacts of selected NBS and EBA measures, including impacts of flooding, erosion, and sedimentation, to households, business, and public areas. Secondly, quanitification of potential co-benefit ecosystem services from NBS and EBA measures as relevant, such as recreation area, heat mitigation, air quality, waste management, crop or livestock production, wild food harvesting, or others.

Activities:

• Collaborate with UNEP and World Bank staff and consultants to scope EBA scenarios for four cities
• Collaborate with UNEP and World Bank staff and consultants to identify the most relevant provisioning, regulating and cultural services (co-benefits) potentially provided by the proposed EBA scenarios in the four cities and identify the biophysical relationship between the EBA and NBS measures and the ecosystem services.
• Identify the data required to conduct a spatially-explicit assessment of the impacts of the EBA scenarios, based on the extent and condition of proposed nature-positive interventions.
• Model the flood mitigation impacts of EBA scenarios relative to a do-nothing scenario with respect to indicators such as depth and duration of flooding, damage to assets, number of people affected, impacts to key sectors (e.g. agriculture, transport, commerce, supply chains, etc.), social disruption, and environmental and cultural damage.
• Model secondary and indirect impacts such as erosion, s

• Collaborate with UNEP and World Bank staff and consultants to scope EBA scenarios for four cities
• Collaborate with UNEP and World Bank staff and consultants to identify the most relevant provisioning, regulating and cultural services (co-benefits) potentially provided by the proposed EBA scenarios in the four cities and identify the biophysical relationship between the EBA and NBS measures and the ecosystem services.
• Identify the data required to conduct a spatially-explicit assessment of the impacts of the EBA scenarios, based on the extent and condition of proposed nature-positive interventions.
• Model the flood mitigation impacts of EBA scenarios relative to a do-nothing scenario with respect to indicators such as depth and duration of flooding, damage to assets, number of people affected, impacts to key sectors (e.g. agriculture, transport, commerce, supply chains, etc.), social disruption, and environmental and cultural damage.
• Model secondary and indirect impacts such as erosion, s