1. Background

UN-Habitat is the coordinating agency within the United Nations System for human settlement activities and in collaboration with governments is responsible for promoting and consolidating collaboration with all partners, including local authorities, private sector entities and non-governmental organizations in the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular, Goal 11 of “Making cities and human settlements inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable”, as well as the task manager of the human settlements chapter of Agenda 21 and focal point for the monitoring, evaluation and implementation of the New Urban Agenda adopted during the United Nations Conference on Housing and Sustainable Urban Development (Habitat III), in Quito, Ecuador 2016.

The UN-Habitat Regional Office for Asia and the Pacific (ROAP) was established in August 1997 in Fukuoka. The Office serves countries in the Asia and Pacific region to implement UN-Habitat’s mandate. Part of ROAP’s strategic role is to foster international understanding and cooperation and to foster regional, national, city, and local capacity and cooperation to enable sustainable local solutions and constructive partnerships within and between various stakeholder networks. Technical cooperation projects coordinated by the UN-Habitat ROAP are geographically spread in the Asia and Pacific region, and span the entire spectrum of urbanisation and shelter development issues. For most parts, UN-Habitat ROAP implements country projects through its country offices.

UN-Habitat has been actively supporting the Government of Lao PDR with technical assistance on issues related to urbanization, disaster mitigation, climate change, and WASH infrastructure. The International Consultant will directly engage in the highly relevant projects being implemented in Lao PDR, linked to enhancing climate change and hazard risk resilience.

2.         Project Description: “Advancing Lao PDR’s National Adaptation Plan (NAP) through Climate Change Vulnerability Assessments for Disaster Risk Management in human settlements” (hear-after “GCF-NAP”)

Lao PDR is one of the world’s most vulnerable countries to the effects of climate change. Besides, the country faces a very high lack of coping capacity, indicating significant challenges in reducing negative consequences in the aftermath of a hazard. Storms, floods, and droughts have increasingly affected Laos in recent years, causing, among other things, landslides, fires, disease outbreaks, loss of life, and damage to infrastructure and livelihoods. Population induced ecosystem alterations have exacerbated climate change-related droughts, floods and other related disaster risks, and unregulated development has damaged previously well-functioning ecosystems. In addition, since 1990, the population of Lao PDR has almost doubled, a trend that is expected to continue.

Adaptation planning is consequently a critical aspect to strengthen in Lao PDR to advance local resilience throughout the country. For the past decades, Lao PDR has made considerable progress in strengthening and reforming its policies and frameworks to advance resilience and enhance environmental sustainability. Still, several recent processes highlighted the difficulty of measuring the progress on the adaptation component due to the general lack of climate change adaptation integration at all levels of policy development, as well as the absence of multisectoral strategies, especially for human settlements development. To fill these gaps, the revised 2021 NDC sets targets to enhance mainstreaming of climate change adaptation into strategies with a results-based management framework. 

Understanding risk and vulnerability in an integrated way is critical for adaptation planning and resilience in human settlements. Exploring and analysing the socio-economic, physical, and ecological systems and how they are – or could be – affected by shocks is therefore a key resource to help local authorities and their partners to identify how vulnerability, exposure and risk interact and improve development outcomes through informed decision making and finance mobilisation. In this respect, capacity development on risk analysis in Lao settlements could have significant benefits on adaptation planning, especially for marginalised and vulnerable communities. 

The proposed intervention aims at bridging the gaps between knowledge and implementation through knowledge brokering and advancing measurement and learning to accelerate transformative adaptation and resilience.9 Overall, its goal is to improve disaster risk management and climate resilience through increased institutional and technical capacity to integrate climate change adaptation planning into policies, development plans and strategies; and to strengthen public and private adaptation finance opportunities. MONRE has therefore requested UN-Habitat to strengthen Vulnerability and Risk Assessment tools and methodologies within human settlements to increase climate change understanding, improve decision making, and lay the foundation for the National Adaptation Plan (NAP), in line with instructions from the National Assembly. Such approach will contribute to strengthening risk-informed development planning and investments to protect development gains in adaptation planning. 

Also, by focusing on vulnerability assessments, this proposed intervention will lay the foundations to: 

(1) prioritize locations where the greatest capacity gaps exist. This will result in the acceleration of the adoption of area-based approaches, while also allowing the inclusion of a spatial lens along with a sectoral vision to develop integrated approaches; 

(2) Enhance engagement of diverse stakeholders to strengthen human settlements governance; 

(3) Target the needs of marginalized communities for more equitable resilience in Lao human settlements; and, 

(4) Strengthen risk-informed development planning and investments over the medium and long term. 

As previous adaptation interventions to address climate change locally have been implemented through a project-based approach, UN-Habitat seeks to address the lack of institutional setup and cross-sectoral capacities to holistically advance the National Adaptation Plan process in Lao PDR. This National Adaptation Planning (NAP) process will therefore contribute to addressing the barriers in adaptation planning and achieving adaptation targets set by the Government of Lao PDR at the national and local level. It will aid in increasing the country’s resilience to the adverse effects of climate change in the medium to long term while supporting sustainable development. 

3.         Objective and Scope of Work

Under the direct supervision of the UN-Habitat Head of Office in Lao PDR, the Contractor will liaise with the Government, UN Agencies, other development partners and colleagues to support the implementation of ongoing projects and other relevant activities. The tasks to be developed by the Contractor entail research; preparation of technical documents; support to the organization of workshops and consultations; and monitoring and reporting, in addition to any other assignment(s) requested by the Head of Office.

Some of the key actions in line with the assigned projects mentioned above are :

• Project Management and Implementation
  • Support the implementation, regular monitoring, and reporting on all project activities (substantive and financial) with partners and stakeholders to ensure a high quality of outputs being delivered within the agreed upon time frame.
  • Coordinate with internal and external partners and stakeholders to identify a way forward including the potential opportunities of the project funded by the Green Climate Fund including coordinating technical meetings, reporting, and developing of bankable climate action proposal.
  • Liaise with partners and provide substantive inputs in relevant meetings with other development partners and government counterparts.
  • Coordinate and participate in project missions and meetings at regional, national and subnational levels as appropriate.
  • Provide the written and oral translation and interpretation support as appropriate.
• Knowledge Management and Communication
  • Communicate with other project teams and partners to ensure alignment of projects' activities with broader strategic initiatives for project knowledge management.
  • Organize, prepare, and review written outputs, e.g. draft background papers, analysis, sections of reports and studies, inputs to publications, etc.
  • Support the coordination of outreach activities by preparing and delivering presentations on assigned topics/activities, web articles, etc.
• Country Office Support
  • Undertake other assignments as required to support climate change objectives.

The following responsibilities are included as per the donor-approved project document but not limited to:

• Organizing and gathering provincial-level data in close cooperation with PoNRE and DoNRE (A3.2.1a);
• Coordinating enumerators, organizing and gathering data, and providing inputs for the completion of Activity 3.2.2b;
• Coordinating trainings on the guidelines (including paper-based and digital data collection, Kobo forms submission and database cleaning, among others) provincial officials under Activity 3.2.3b;
• Preparing background document on existing adaptation actions, and organizing consultations under A3.2.4a; and
• Coordinating the district-level Adaptation Action Plan pilot (A3.2.5c) in target provinces and providing inputs for D3.2.5c.

4.         Expected Outputs and Deliverables

The Contractor will provide the following outputs. All outputs are to be approved by the Head of Office. The submission due date may be changed according to the discussion with the donor and/or stakeholders.

5.         Qualifications of the Successful Individual Contractor

The Contractor should have:

This combined scoring method may be applied for the section of this position. It should indicate all the criteria which shall serve as basis for evaluating offers.

6.         Payment Schedule

The Contractor will be paid a professional consultation fee based on the level of expertise and experience. DSA will be paid only when travelling on a mission outside the duty station of the consultant. All travel costs will be covered by UN-Habitat.

[Home-based position only] For the home-based position, attendance on international and/or domestic missions may be required depending on project circumstances and the decision of the project donor, Head of Office, and/or relevant stakeholders. Cost of international travel to/from duty station will be self-funded.

The payments for undertaking the assignment shall be paid to the consultant as follows based on the above-mentioned deliverable(s):

• 1st instalment (20%): January 2026 based on the submission of Deliverable #1.
• 2nd instalment (35%): July 2026 based on the submission of Deliverables #2.
• 3rd instalment (35%): October 2026 based on the submission of Deliverables #2.
• 4^thand the last instalment (10%): January 2027 based on the submission of Deliverables #3.

1.  
2. Notice: The applicant’s Offeror’s Letter could be in USD, and the contract currency could be in USD. However, to be in line with the country policy, the actual payments to a local consultant shall be made in local currency LAK based on the UN monthly exchange rate on the paying date

7.         How to Apply

 Interested and qualified candidates, please submit your application to the following email address  lao.procurement@undp.org 

The supporting document required for application are as follows:

• UN Personal History Profile (P11 Form) https://docs.google.com/document/d/1usw_7oEDFXLYHrGZW45gkU77Cds8NArF/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114900387549861402042&rtpof=true&sd=true
• Recent Curriculum Vitae (CV)
• Offeror’s Letter https://docs.google.com/document/d/1xbaSe6tS2x821LMZG8ygZBNoGQ90FR0A/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=114900387549861402042&rtpof=true&sd=true

Any questions and clarification, please email to lao.pu@undp.org 

Your email subject should indicate: “RPS_244_2025 – UN-HABITAT National District Project Consultant”