Consultant in Protected Areas

CONSULTANCY SUMMARY 

Rainforest Alliance  

The Rainforest Alliance (RA) is an international nonprofit organization working to build a future in which nature is protected and biodiversity flourishes, where farmers, workers, and communities prosper, and where sustainable land use and responsible business practices are the norm. We envision a world where people and nature thrive in harmony. In January 2018, the Rainforest Alliance merged with UTZ in response to the critical challenges facing humanity: deforestation, climate change, systemic poverty, and social inequity. 

Collaboration is at the heart of our new certification model. We work with local partners to design and implement creative strategies to protect vulnerable landscapes and restore degraded ones. These systems engage farmers themselves, farm groups and cooperatives, forest communities, and field experts from the region. They emphasize constructive monitoring through our new standard and assurance protocols. And they provide improved data analytics to assess the specific needs of farmers and make our interventions more effective over the long term. This performance-driven approach feeds back into our own journey of continuous improvement.  

Finally, we use two supporting interventions to fortify our reimagined certification model and our landscape initiatives.?Our advocacy team works to advance policy and implementation to advance our key sustainability priorities — as well as increased commitments and financial investment from both governments and companies. And we work with a very small number of company partners to develop tailored supply chain services that guide them on their own sustainability journeys.

BACKGROUND 

With the launch of the new RA 2020 sustainable agriculture standard, new risk-based evaluation requirements have been put in place to safeguard forest conversion from 2014 onwards and farm encroachment production into protected areas. 

Due to the new requirements of the RA's new standard, the risk assessment must be performed at farm scale in every country where RA has certification activities, making it challenging to find suitable datasets that cover a global scale and have the scientific support to perform the assessment. The World Database on Protected Areas (WDPA) is the most comprehensive global database on terrestrial and marine protected areas. It is a joint project between the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), managed by UNEP World Conservation Monitoring Center and shared via Protected Planet. This is the dataset that is being used to perform the risk of encroachment into protected areas in the so-called non-risky countries. 

Based on the IUCN classification available for each protected area on the WDPA, a No-go/Go classification has been created to evaluate whether the farms are encroaching into areas with specific management regulations or areas where the economic/agricultural activities are forbidden. This classification groups the protected areas into two types: 

• No-go (I, II, III): High conservation priority, with a strictly protected regulation. Agricultural production is not allowed under applicable law. 
• Go areas (IV, V, VI): Protected areas where certain regulated economic and agricultural activities are allowed under specific conditions (specified in applicable law). 

There are three other categories (not reported, not applicable, and not assigned), but due to the lack of information and ambiguousness it is not easy to assign a class, thus these areas are being classified as "No-go". This lack of information is related to the fact that the WDPA is updated on average every 5 years, bringing problems to the risk assessment due to the outdated version of some areas. 

PROJECT OBJECTIVES 

The main objective of this consultancy is to provide the Rainforest Alliance with an updated database on protected areas & agricultural land use right in the protected areas, therefore Rainforest Alliance requires a consultant with experience in protected areas to: 

• Review official governmental information such as: 
• Official geoportals, 
• Land law & its related documents, 
• Environmental legislation,  
• Protected area’s management plans and, 
• Other related documentation to create an inventory of protected areas and find evidence of restriction activities to create the No-go/Go classification. 

DELIVERABLES  

The Deliverables are: 

1. Inventory of protected areas, including GIS vector information (feature class, shapefile) for Vietnam. 

1.1. The vector information should contain an attribute table with the protected areas information and the uses as indicated in the national legislation. The minimum attributes that should be included are: 

2. A final report that explains the classification for each protected area quoting the different documents that were analyzed. The report should contain at least an explanation of the current situation on the land classifications, rules, and regulations for types of protected areas. Overview of land classifications and sub-classes. 

WORKING STRUCTURE  

The consultant aligns with Rainforest Alliance on the design of the methodology for the project. After the design is approved by RA and the consultant, the latter can start with the implementation. During the implementation, the consultant will be coordinating the work together with Rainforest Alliance. The agenda of the implementation of the project will be shared with Rainforest Alliance and approved. In case of changes and updates, these will be communicated by the consultant to Rainforest Alliance and discussed to make sure the objectives of the projects are still met. Changes in costs for the implementation of the project must be communicated and agreed upon by both parties: Rainforest Alliance and the consultant. Any additional change and update must be communicated and agreed upon between Rainforest Alliance and the consultant to make sure the objectives of the projects are still met. The consultant reports to Rainforest Alliance. 

FEE STRUCTURE AND BILLING 

The payment will be made by Rainforest Alliance. The consultant is requested to make a proposal of fee for the assignment. To be further discussed with the candidate consultant:   

• Fee/hour/day 
• Traveling costs 
• Billing 

GENERAL TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR REQUEST FOR PROPOSAL 

• Proposals and/or any additional information received after the submission time and date are subject to rejection by The Rainforest Alliance. Incomplete proposals may be rejected by RA at its discretion.
• The Rainforest Alliance reserves the right to request additional information at any time during the procurement process.
• RA is at liberty to make multiple or no selections as part of the proposal process. RA also reserves the right to cancel the procurement.
• All proposal costs shall be borne by the applicant and will not be reimbursed by RA.

QUALIFICATIONS 

The following qualification, demonstrated skills, and knowledge is required:

• University degree, or equivalent higher education qualification, in environmental science, forestry, biology, geography, or a relevant field. 
• Applicants must have proven experience in protected area management and natural resources management and Vietnam laws, especially land law.  
• Must be fluent in English and Vietnamese.

PROPOSAL PROCESS AND FORMAT

All expressions of interest should include:

Interested applicants with the required attributes are asked to send in English a detailed CV (2 pages maximum) and a proposed budget and work plan to complete the consultancy, by email to [email protected] with the subject: “Protected Areas Consultant Vietnam” by Friday 25th March 2022 at the latest. 

• Data collection design – methodology, logistics, and timeline 
• Budget 

RA will get decided on the assignment as soon as possible.