Consultancy for Conducting an Assessment on Sage (Site-Level Assessment of Givernance and Equity) for Maungu and Mbale Ranches in TaitaTaveta County at International Fund for Animal Welfare

Project Description

The SMAT project is implemented in the Tsavo Conservation Area and Greater Amboseli Ecosystem. The project aims to strengthen local institutions’ ability to develop a coordinated management approach with their members to enhance local stewardship, improve benefit sharing, and sustainable wildlife and biodiversity management within the Tsavo Conservation Area and Greater Amboseli Ecosystem. This will be achieved through the following result areas:

• Improved governance of Tsavo and Amboseli landscapes.
• Reduced threats and improved biodiversity conservation.
• Increased partnerships for landscape-level economic growth and sustainability.
• Increased community and ecosystem resilience.

Key Activities

• The project focuses on strengthening the capacity of local community-based organizations & conservancies through technical, organizational, governance, administrative & management support for enhanced biodiversity conservation. An understanding of the site level stakeholders and rightsholders assessment of the social impacts, governance and equity of their conservation efforts will form a strong basis of evaluating improvement of management capacity of the community.
• This will be achieved through conducting a Site-level Assessment of Governance and Equity. SAGE stands for Site-level Assessment of Governance and Equity and is designed to be used with protected areas and other sites where measures are being implemented to conserve biodiversity and the various benefits of nature to people.

The SAGE assessment will:

• Facilitate dialogue and co-learning, information sharing on site level strengths, and challenges related to governance and equity with actors at the site level.
• Enable and identify front line stakeholders and rights holders at site level to improve the governance and equity of their conservation efforts, to subsequently improve governance and equity and conservation outcomes.
• Generate information for actors at higher levels for management oversight, improving governance of a system of OEMS and developing and applying social safeguards and quality standards for PCA management and governance.

Objectives of the assignment

• The overall objective of the assessment is to inform stakeholders of the current status of the two conservancies from a social, governance and equity lens and provide recommendations on improving the governance and equity of Mbale and Maungu ranches; cognizant of the structural barriers to special interest groups involvement in natural resource management.

Specifically, the assessment will:

• Introduce the beneficiaries to SAGE
• Undertake a stakeholder analysis
• Develop a site profile
• Plan and execute the assessment
• Synthesize and report the findings

Scope of work

• Conduct an assessment in Maungu and Mbale Ranches.
• Training of conservancy members on governance of natural resources. That is present findings of SAGE to other conservancy managers in the landscape.)

Expected deliverables

The consultant(s) will be expected to submit the following deliverables for the assignment:

• An inception report with a clear assessment procedure
• Final assessment report

Qualifications/Experience

• Advanced degree in community development, social studies, project management, natural resources management or any other relevant field.
• Verifiable experience in organizational assessments.
• Proficiency in data analytics (Excel) and report writing.
• Experience in conducting participatory qualitative and quantitative studies.
• Evidence of theoretical knowledge and practical application of cross-cutting issues in development such as gender, and innovation.