Duty Station: Multiple
Successful applicants should:
- Have a Master's degree with a minimum of five years' experience in the respective field relevant to the ToR or possess seven years' experience with a Bachelor's degree or equivalent.
- Be prepared for potential deployment to crisis settings with short notice.
Additionally, specific preferences include:
- Proficiency in Arabic, French, or Spanish, with Russian and/or Portuguese considered advantageous.
- Encouragement is particularly extended to female applicants. In addition to candidates from the Global South.
Qualification:
A Master's degree or higher in the field of Economics, Law, Political Economy, Taxation, Statistics, International Development, or related field is required.
WHAT IS SUSTAINABLE FINANCE?
The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is a global organization with 17,000 personnel working in approximately 170 offices globally towards supporting governments in developing strong policies, institutions, and partnerships to achieve the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and its 17 Sustainable Development Goals. UNDP's policy work carried out at HQ, Regional and Country Office levels, forms a contiguous spectrum of deep local knowledge to cutting-edge global perspectives and advocacy. UNDP's Sustainable Finance Hub (SFH) was established to aggregate UNDP's work and expertise on SDG (Sustainable Development Goals) financing and to offer a comprehensive package of tools and support that enables governments, the private sector, philanthropy, and international financial institutions to accelerate financing for the SDGs.
Public and private stakeholders around the world are collaborating with UNDP to help address the challenges of sustainable development financing, and develop robust, holistic approaches to financing in a complex world affected by recovery from the debt crisis, the cross-border instability, and a climate crisis. UNDPs Sustainable Finance Hub (SFH) expertise and offerings support the design and development of financial instruments, mobilize new resources and promote greater sustainable development impact from a range of public and private financing.
UNDP's Strategic Plan 2022-2025 identifies development financing as an enabler to scale up development impact and calls on partners to join UNDP in its $1 trillion 'Moonshot' target to help mobilize game-changing public and private sector resources towards the SDGs. In order to take sustainable finance to required scale and collectively achieve $1 trillion of public expenditure and private capital in the SDGs, UNDP is working across its Global Policy Network (GPN) and building its expertise and capacities of Country Offices and Regional Bureaus so that they can offer and tailor SFH products and services to clients supported by an internal community of practice and an external group of experts. The Hub is an integral part of both the Bureau for Policy and Programme Support (BPPS) and the Bureau of External Relations and Advocacy (BERA), as well as part of the GPN.
Further, as part of its role as SDG Integrator, UNDP is committed to promoting partnerships to develop SDG finance capacities of all stakeholders, including governments as UNDPs key client, and the private sector. UNDP recognizes the tremendous knowledge that partners, seek, and offer in a variety of areas ranging from governance, environment to health and financial inclusion and works with them to utilize their expertise to contribute to development outcomes and SDG financing. Offering capacity development on SDG finance to these other stakeholders, especially support on philanthropy.
SCOPE OF WORK, RESPONSIBILITIES AND DESCRIPTION OF THE PROPOSED WORK
UNDP's new Strategic Plan recognizes development financing as one of the three enablers to further accelerate and scale results and sets the target of promoting the investment of over $1 trillion of public expenditure and private capital in the SDGs by 2025. With partners, UNDP works to ensure the values and spirit of Agenda 2030, as well as SDG targets, to inform sustainable financial decision making.
UNDP's Sustainable Finance Hub (SFH) has established five Offers through which to scale up their engagements with public and private partners, and leverage and align sustainable finance towards the delivery of the SDGs. These offers will contribute to the systemic strengthening of the financial architecture globally and in all countries. These service Offers include (i) Public Finance for the SDGs; (ii) Unlocking Private capital and Aligning Business Operations with the SDGs; (iii) SDG Impact Management and Finance Tracking; (iv) Integrated National Financing Frameworks and Portfolios; and (v) the SDG Finance Academy, are all interlinked.
To enable and ensure the success of these offers, it, it also maintains a roster of sustainable finance experts to provide support to Country Office's and partners. The established roster will differentiate the consultants/experts in Public Finance related topics.
Please note that applicants should have expertise and experience in at least one of these areas below. The consultants recruited to the GPN ExpRes roster will be recruited to provide services in the following service areas:
1. Public Finance for the SDGs
- Tax administration, and SDG tax policy and research
- SDG, sustainability, green and other thematic bonds
- Insurance and risk financing
- Budgeting and Public Expenditure Management for the SDGs
Upon request of a country or regional office, consultants will be expected to undertake tasks to support Public Finance efforts with the objective to contribute to increased capacity and providing advice on policy reforms to public finance for sound and effective public finance management with the SDGs. The tasks may include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Provide strategic and operational advice to government institutions and authorities on the formulation and execution of public finance policies and frameworks and sound public financial management practices.
- Contribute to partnership building and develop capacities of government and non-government stakeholders (NGOs, research institutes, universities, etc.) in public finance.
- Design country capacity development action plans to enhance public finance policies, strategies, and practices of effective public financial management and deliver associated learning activities.
- Advise on coherence of policies, diagnostics and tools aligning with partners such as IMF
Debt focused on thematic bonds:
- Assist countries in developing debt instruments to address environmental, economic, and social challenges
- Support countries to link debt restructuring to SDG specific indicators.
- Develop specific impact indicators for creditors who are considering debt swaps for enhancing social investments (and addressing the impact of COVID-19).
Tax, Tax administration, SDG tax policy and research:
- Develop and/or strengthen tax policy reform proposals, incl. formulation of strategies and targets, as well as legal tax policy drafting and improving drafting deficiencies.
- Support countries to strengthen national tax administration capacities and national tax policy capacities
- Support regional and global exchange and collaboration on taxation
- Tax and fiscal policy analysis, incl. revenue forecasting, tax expenditure and incidence analysis, distributional analysis, economic impact analysis, cost-benefit analysis, microsimulation modelling
- Undertake advocacy and communications functions, including engaging with legislators and parliamentarians, the private sector on tax debate guidance.
- Advise on establishing and strengthening interinstitutional relations for tax systems strengthening
Insurance and Risk Financing:
- Support implementation of insurance programmes (Including but not exclusive for: agriculture, health microinsurance, insurance for SMEs) in strategic management, market research, process optimization, digitalization and technology integration, product design, distribution, marketing, communications, etc.
- Support development of action plans, guidance to regulators for inclusive insurance regulations.
- Conduct trainings for country offices, government partners on understanding, articulating risk strengthening measuring and modelling to inform decision making and disaster finance planning
- Develop government capacity, systems, and processes for the management of resources generated by insurance and risk financing, including contingency planning and integration of risk financing into the INFF Development Financing programmes.
- Review legal, strategic frameworks governing public financial management of climate, disaster risk.
- Lead training initiatives in partnership with national insurance training organizations to strengthen the capacity of national insurance players around inclusive insurance.
Budgeting:
- Design and support implementation in country offices related to alignment of public budgets with the SDGs (including cross-sectoral themes such as gender, climate change, inclusiveness, etc.).
- Support integration with other workstreams (e.g., public finance offers - tax, debt, risk-finance and insurance, Integrated National Financing Frameworks, Impact Measurement and Management etc.) and reform initiatives to advance on the alignment of public budgets with the SDGs.
- Interact on budget for policy reform discussions with government public finance institutions (e.g., Ministries of Finance, Supreme Audit Institutions, Parliaments, Fiscal Councils etc.), development partners, and civil society organizations.
2. Unlocking Private Capital & Aligning Business Operations for the SDGs
- Financing project pipelines
- Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME'S)
- Accelerating Impact Ventures
- Innovative Financing instruments
- Digital financing
- Blended finance
- Engaging with Financial Centers for Sustainability
- Guarantees
- Support policy and regulatory reforms to enable private sector capital to flow to SDG related investments.
- Work with private sector to educate investors in sustainable development impacts and connect private sector investors with development actors.
- Identify innovative investment opportunities with sustainable development impacts and design projects and project pipelines to leverage private capital for sustainable development.
- Support in measuring and reporting of impacts of private equity, bonds and or enterprise impacts on sustainable development and the SDGs.
- Encourage growth of SDG relevant businesses and growing value chains through technical advice and catalytic funding.
- Work with Development Finance Institutions (DFIs) to align investment pipelines and build shared understanding of impact across investors and financial intermediaries.
Financing Project Pipelines
- Builds capacity and guides on key notions, concepts, methods on investment lifecycle, how lifecycle interventions are structured.
- Support the elaboration of project financing, project financial structure, including financial statements, financial analysis, debt flow, preparing projection models, and finalizing design to meet the clients' funding financial requirements or funding needs.
Micro, Small & Medium Enterprises (MSME'S):
- Builds understanding of how to use arguments and evidence around supporting policies to MSMEs within the broader objectives of poverty reduction, reducing inequalities, empowering youth, and women, and realizing the SDGs.
- Builds capacity around understanding challenges faced by MSMEs for growth and development such as access to finance, enabling environment, connection to value chains, skills, etc.
- Guides the development of MSMEs in fragile and conflict contexts
- Applies policies and approaches to different contexts to support MSMEs enhance competitiveness, resilience, access to finance, etc.
- Understands major aspects of entrepreneurship, and ability to guide on various stages of start-up enterprise development.
Accelerating Impact Ventures:
- Provides guidance on major aspects of entrepreneurship, and on various stages of start-up enterprise development
- Works to apply various venture inputs (TA, financial tools etc.) to scale up business, technology, and impact solutions
- Provides guidance on how to navigate the ecosystem, stakeholders, networks for scaling of impact ventures.
Innovative financing:
- Support for innovation in business practices, as well as for reform to government policy and regulation that enables business to have sustainable development impacts including in respect to human rights, gender equality and good governance.
Digital financing:
- Designs and builds capacity in innovative digital financing instruments/services to unlock and channel private finance towards specific SDGs.
- Provides guidance on emerging digital finance offerings, technology, and business models. This can include support in the marketplace for direct lending, alternative and crypto currencies, peer to peer insurance, sharing economy, on demand services, robo-advisers, crowd funding, equity raising and smart contracts.
- Supports development of digital finance platforms, policies, and regulation. Designs and supports ecosystems, with new legal or existing regulatory precedence.
Blended financing:
- Support country offices in the elaboration of blended financing frameworks
- Build capacity of country offices and key stakeholders on principles, approaches of blended financing and provide technical assistance in financial and non-financial de-risking, performance incentives and return enhancement mechanisms.
- Develop and apply methodologies related to project finance, financial modeling and structuring, policy environment and basic legal aspects of private - public partnership arrangements, leveraging of vertical funds, impact measurement approaches in the context of SDGs.
Engaging with Financial Centers for Sustainability:
- Supports the development of policy, frameworks, standards, and tools on sustainable finance basic market infrastructure.
- Works with key stakeholders on how to effectively use main market developments to mobilize green and sustainable finance across the banking, insurance, and asset management sectors, and how each sector integrates ESG factors into its strategies.
- Works and advocates with institutional investors and encourage investee companies to actively consider climate mitigation strategies.
- Develops and/or builds capacity in sustainable finance roadmaps with different actors involved in the transition to sustainable finance.
- Provides technical advice, develops, and implement guidance and recommendations on sustainable finance matters, including fostering partnerships and collaborations with key stakeholders such as financial institutions, governments, NGOs, and international organizations.
Guarantees:
- Builds capacity of key stakeholders in using and nationalizing guarantee frameworks of organizations, including underwriting procedures, financial rules, and regulations
- Design and capacity support in using various debt and guarantee instruments including technical assistance design.
3. SDG Impact Measurement and Management (IMM) & Finance Tracking for the SDGs
- SDG Impact Measurement and Management
- ESG criteria, factors, and ratings
- Impact Monitoring & Evaluation
- Sustainability & Impact Reporting, principles, and standards
- Impact Assessment and Assurance
- Policy frameworks and regulation on sustainability
- Sustainable finance taxonomies, disclosure, and reporting
- Support initial assessment/research and development of SDG impact measurement and management (taxonomies) policy frameworks and integration into internal UNDP M&E processes.
- Support UNDP to work with private and public sector partners to design and implement IMM frameworks, such as the SDG Impact Standards, as well as monitor and evaluate the results during a complete investment decision cycle.
- Build capacity of private sector (MSMEs, start-ups, corporates, investors, bond issuers, financial institutions, stock exchanges, central banks) and public sector actors with standard IMM tools, practices, standards of impact investment, and development finance.
- Support the elaboration of Impact Assurance, Assessments, Evaluation and Verification Services for Public and Private Actors (SDG Impact Seal and Gender Seal).
- Develop project post-implementation impact assessment research methodologies, collect research findings, analyze, and develop the final report and recommendations and present findings.
- Supports the development of Sustainable Finance taxonomies, their associated governance structures, including how to use descriptions and technical screening criteria in taxonomy development as well as integrating impact measurement.
- Provides guidance on use of budget classification, coding and tagging to maximize public sector contribution in managing its impact in the SDGs
- Support the elaboration of social and inequality-related financial disclosure and risk management frameworks.
4. Integrated National Financing Frameworks
- Designing integrated national financing frameworks
- Delivering risk-informed financing strategies
- Building Country Office SDG finance portfolios
- Governance and Coordination
- Research includes compiling and analyzing data, literature to build an understanding of financing trends and institutional landscape for financing the SDGs and national development priorities.
- Operationalize INFFs, including support for the development of national SDG financing strategies links to national development plans and strategies as well as preparation of action plans and monitoring frameworks to link financial flows and sustainable development outcomes
- Facilitate public and private dialogues across government and private sector stakeholders as well as IFIs and civil society organizations around public private financing
- Develop capacity of governments to strengthen their policy and institutional frameworks for financing national development priorities and the SDGs and support key stakeholders on governance and coordination reforms within the INFF approach.
- Put in place national institutional functions to design and implement inclusive policies and reforms.
- Support national institutions by making INFF innovative tools and knowledge accessible.
5. SDG Finance Academy
- Learning and Development
- Communities of practice, engagement of experts, knowledge management
- Support in the learning approach and design of in-person and online based learning interventions
- Ongoing development of e-modules on digital platforms
- Support the creation, promotion, and facilitation of sustainable finance communities of practice
- Document/draft/research case studies from country experiences and promote knowledge sharing
6. Partnerships for Sustainable Finance
o International Financial Institutions
- Design integrated offers to IFIs and DFIs on sustainable finance services.
- Support and guide country/regional offices on how to efficiently cooperate with IFS including regional and national development banks, ensuring SDG finance collaboration potential, and maintaining good practices.
o Philanthropy for the SDGs
- Promote policies that enable philanthropy to contribute to national development outcomes.
- Leverage a broad range of financial instruments with philanthropy.
7. Global Policy Processes
- Guide Country Offices on how IFI's and MBD's operate and build country office capacity to develop necessary instruments, policies, governance.
- Develop alignment approaches (including taxonomies) and reporting frameworks that reflect national priorities, interoperable across markets
- Engage with and advise key stakeholders on the delivery of impactful, feasible policies for the integration of SDG considerations within the financial industry.
Additional areas of thematic expertise applicable to different areas of finance to be highlighted may include:
a) Islamic Finance:
- Identify strategies to maximize development impact by tapping into the potential of Islamic finance, especially in the context of SDGs and impact investing.
- Undertake research and analysis of the role of private sector in Islamic finance, as well as the opportunity and demand for engagement, and support the development and roll-out of projects incorporating Islamic Finance elements.
- Support the development and implementation of Islamic finance activities, including capacity development and outreach activities.
- Undertake the preparation of high-quality policy and programme guidance materials for innovative Islamic financing mechanisms and the Islamic finance ecosystem.
b) Climate Change/Green Financing:
- Articulating financing strategy and frameworks for biodiversity and climate change plans including in support of Nationally Determined Contributions
- Designing financing instruments across public and private finance to deliver environmental and climate related outcomes
- Design of environmental and climate-related vertical fund programming to leverage other sources of public and private finance
- Articulating the Return on Investment (RoI) for climate and environmental public and private expenditures and finance, including inputs to National Investment (and recovery) Plans
- Developing bankable projects in areas including land restoration and reforestation
- Support for developing markets for Nature-Based Solutions including at global level
- Support financial analysis of and inputs to the viability and return on investment to Nature, Climate and Energy services.
c) Gender Equality and Financing Social Policy:
- Undertake gender analyses of macroeconomic policies, including taxation, public expenditure, investment, and finances, and translate them into planning.
- Develop and implement gender-responsive measures on national financing such as: 1) The women's economic empowerment index to measure the gender-responsiveness of investments; 2) Incorporate gender-responsive conditionalities or incentives, and 4) Implement measures to ensure gender-equitable governance structures in national planning and financing.
- Conduct gender-responsive budgeting (GRB) for national and local governments and conduct GRB as part of SDG budgeting when needed.
- Support governments in calculating the hidden costs of social reproduction and support budgeting to reduce unpaid care and its related time poverty
- Develop financial instruments to mobilize capital towards women's economic empowerment, such as gender equality bonds, crowdfunding initiatives, or gender-lens investing tools.
- Facilitate public private conversations and platforms on financing for gender equality.
- Develop and implement strategies for women's financial inclusion, especially for women-led MSMEs, as well as the development of gender-equitable value chains.
- Develop fintech initiatives to increase women's financial inclusion as well as women's access to social protection and public subsidies / incentives.
d) Pro Poor Inclusive Finance:
- Understanding/familiarity of Inclusive growth thematic areas and how to use such tracks/pathways to support country support to deliver on the poverty targets including: Social protection, Jobs, SMEs, Green transition, Local economic development, Development planning.
- Develop clear and practical pathways to help country offices achieve poverty targets leveraging cross-cutting and innovative solutions.
- Understanding how to use of narrative and evidence base information to communicate its value to partners and secure necessary funding for collaborative achievement of results.
- Use appropriate metrics, data, and platforms for tracking progress towards poverty targets and build capacity in key stakeholders on how to use such tools.
- Guiding country offices on use of inclusive blue economy priorities and their financing options, development of blue economy investment strategies.
e) Financing for clean energy:
- Support the development of integrated policy, technology and financial shifts that shape a country's sustainable economic development when it comes to financing clean energy.
f) Sustainable Finance for Crisis and Resilience:
- Conduct analysis of country financing landscapes, as well as mapping of ongoing support to country financing efforts in fragile and crisis contexts, including financing and partnerships across the HDP Nexus
- Support UNDP COs in fragile and crisis contexts in designing tailored sustainable financing offers that respond to the specific needs and challenges of these settings.
- Facilitate and/or participate in dialogue with relevant country-level stakeholders across the HDP Nexus, including government, donors, civil society and the private sector, to coordinate and strengthen support to sustainable financing solutions, as well as to build buy-in and trust for financing efforts.
- Lead collection of challenges, lessons and success stories to be documented and shared within UNDP to promote knowledge sharing and organizational learning related to financing in fragile and crisis contexts.
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION:
At UNDP, we are committed to creating a diverse and inclusive environment of mutual respect. UNDP recruits, employs, trains, compensates, and promotes regardless of race, religion, color, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation, age, ability, national origin, or any other basis covered by appropriate law. All employment is decided on the basis of qualifications, competence, integrity and organizational need.
UNDP has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and UNDP, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination. All selected candidates will be expected to adhere to UNDP's policies and procedures and the standards of conduct expected of UNDP personnel and will therefore undergo rigorous reference checks.
Requirements and skills
Global Call
-SDG Finance
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