INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL ADVISOR FOR POVERTY-ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVE (PEI)/PRO-POOR GROWTH PROGRAMME TANZANIA
Background | |
In 2012, the Tanzanian population was about 45 million. This number is steadily growing with an annual population growth rate of 2.9 percent, which is amongst the highest in the world. The majority of the population lives in rural areas and depends on agriculture as source of income and livelihood. Thus, about 75 percent of the labor forces are employed in agriculture, hunting and forestry. At the same time the average income of households engaged in agriculture is lower than in most other sectors.
Tanzania is endowed with a significant variety of natural resources including land, rivers, lakes, ocean, forests, woodlands, wild animals, and wetlands. Apart from these regenerative natural resources, Tanzania is rich in a variety of non-regenerative natural resources including such minerals as gold, diamond, iron, coal, nickel, Tanzanite, uranium and the recently discovered offshore and on-shore deposits of natural gas. The 2012 national account shows that Tanzania’s mining have contributed 3.2 to 3.5 percent to the country’s GDP since 2006. However, this contribution is expected to increase: according to the Development Vision 2025, the sector is expected to provide 10 percent of the GDP in the near future. The mineral exports constitute over 52 percent of Tanzania’s total exports.
Thus, Tanzania’s rich natural resources constitute a major asset and opportunity, which is fundamental for growth and economic development, including poverty reduction. The failure to realize the full potential value of natural resources and environment to the economy of the country and the livelihoods of population contributes to Tanzania standing as one of the world’s poorest countries. It currently ranks 151 of 185 countries in terms of human development.
The performance of the Tanzanian economy has remained strong, recording a growth of 7 percent a year since 2000. However, this growth is not sufficiently broad based, and poverty levels still remain high. At the same time environmental degradation has not been reversed and abated. According to the 2007 Household Budget Survey (HBS), the incidence of poverty has declined only marginally from 35.7 percent in 2001 to 33.6 percent in 2007. Likewise, the Multi-dimensional Poverty Index (MPI) calculated from the Demographic and Health Study (DHS) 2010 shows that the percent of poor people (as per Head Count Ratio) was 65.6, while the percentage of people living in severe poverty was 33.4 percent. The percentage of the population vulnerable to poverty was 21 percent. Among the regions with the highest levels of poverty are: Dodoma, Lindi, Tabora, Shinyanga, Kigoma, Mara, Rukwa, Mwanza, Kagera, Singida, Manyara and Mtwara.
The new official poverty figures announced by Government on 14 November 2013 indicated a rate of poverty incidence of 28.2 percent in 2011/2012 using a basic poverty measure line of Tshs. 36,482 which translates roughly to $1.36 per adult per day at 2005 purchasing power parity (PPP). Although this figure indicates a decline in poverty incidence from 33.6 percent in 2007, changes to the survey instruments and poverty estimation methodologies mean that caution should be applied when comparing the two sets of figures.
The Government of Tanzania has taken a number of policy and programme initiatives to spur economic growth, respond to the poverty situation and ensure the country’s improved management of the environment and natural resources (ENR) sector. Since 2010, the government under the leadership of Ministry of Finance (MoF) and President’s Office Planning Commission (POPC) has been implementing MKUKUTA II and FYDP. The MKUKUTA I and II entail goals and objectives that focus on pro-poor growth, poverty reduction and environmental sustainability and gender. In Tanzania the five year plan and long term development plan have been given additional attention and further focus on economic growth and to realize the targets set in TDV 2025. MKUKUTA II remains the main framework for poverty eradication while FYDP focuses on strategic growth aspects. Hence the sector/districts strategies, plans and Medium Term Expenditure Frameworks including budget guidelines are guided by MKUKUTA II and FYDP and they incorporates cross cutting concerns such as environment and gender issues.
The MKUKUTA II and Five-Year Development Plan are coming to an end next year (2014/15) and a year after (2015/16) respectively. The government has already produced the first document for the post 2015 development agenda and will be preparing new national development frameworks in the context of Post 2015 that will guide the country for the coming years. Obviously, there are challenges in translating development plans into effective programmes as well as ensuring coherence and co-ordination between different implementation levels such as Central Ministries – POPC, MoF, VPO and PMO, Line Ministries, Departments, Agencies and Local Authorities. These challenges include ensuring sufficient budget and other investment allocations consistent with national development plans and increasing and more effectively using revenues from natural resources.
The 2012 policy dialogue on inclusion of environmental sustainability into budget guidelines and environmental fiscal reform revisited the budget guideline from financial years 2006/2007 to 2011/2012 with regard to, how environmental issues have been featured in the budgeting system in Tanzania and to suggest, how this could be improved. It was identified that the challenges of establishing a Multi-sector approach makes it difficult to navigate from the budget guidelines to the budget speeches and implementation. Also, it was noted that the budget guideline and budget speech, are not well aligned. Therefore, environmental fiscal reforms need to be undertaken to generate increased revenue mobilization and to create incentives towards sustainable resource use.
Pro-Poor Growth and Poverty-Environment Initiative in Tanzania
Among the programmes that have been established to support national efforts to mainstream poverty and environment in national development frameworks is the UNDP/UNEP supported Pro-Poor Growth and Environment Sustainability Project. The project aims to increase the contribution of environment and natural resources to national development goals, including poverty reduction, sustainable economic growth and the broader achievement of MDGs, in particular MDG 1 on hunger and food security.
The Poverty Environment Initiative (PEI) is contributing to that project through country led supports to mainstream poverty-environment objectives into national development policy, planning and budget processes.
Key objectives of PEI Africa country programmes include:
As part of the Pro-poor Economic Growth and Environmentally Sustainable Development programme, the Poverty and Environment Initiative (PEI) 2014-2017 component will be focusing on enhancing national and district (Local Government Authorities) capabilities to mainstream and implement environmental sustainability, poverty reduction, gender and climate change issues into development plans and develop better architecture for financial mechanisms in Tanzania.
Tanzania has implemented the UNDP-UNEP supported Poverty-Environment Initiative programme (PEI), since it was launched in 2003/4. Since then substantial progress has been made to mainstream poverty-environment in national development frameworks, in budgeting processes and in monitoring and evaluation. See http://www.unpei.org/what-we-do/pei-countries/tanzania. Despite these efforts the implementation of the interventions remains a major challenge, mainly because the budget resources and re-investment in relevant sectors have continued to be inadequate. Therefore, the Districts focus as a pilot part of this initiative is important to demonstrate concrete development results that can be scaled up in line with national and sectors policies.
Deliverables:
Timing and Management Arrangements
The International Technical Advisor (ITA) will take up the assignment on 1st October 2014 and will be based in the Ministry of Finance, Poverty Eradication Unit. The ITA will be under the direct Supervision of the Deputy Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Finance, Responsible for Policy and will be working closely with President’s Office Planning Commission (POPC), UNDP and PEI Africa.
The ITA will be responsible for the provision of guidance and technical advisory services for the implementation of the Pro-poor economic growth programme 2014-2017 and MoF strategic work on budgeting, M&E and extractives. The overall objective is to ensure timely and results-based implementation of the pro-poor growth programme.
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Duties and Responsibilities | |
Provide technical guidance to ensure that the implementation of the pro-poor growth program in Tanzania contributes to strengthen policy formulation, budgeting and management of ENR:
Ensure the PEI Tanzania component of the Pro-poor growth program is implemented in a timely manner, with quality outputs and a stronger focus on poverty elements including poverty-gender impacts:
Support capacity development on poverty-environment-gender nexus and natural gas:
Impact of Results
The key result will be the successful implementation of the Pro-poor Growth Program, PEI Tanzania component 2014-2017 such that increased investment for implementation of poverty-environment objectives has taken place under the guidance of strong policy documents.
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Competencies | |
Core Competencies:
Functional Competencies:
Results-Based Programme Development and Management:
Contributes to results through primary research and analysis
Building Strategic Partnerships:
Maintaining a network of contacts
Innovation and Marketing New Approaches:
Enhancing processes or products
Resource Mobilization:
Providing inputs to resource mobilization strategies
Promoting Organizational Learning and Knowledge Sharing:
Basic research and analysis
Job Knowledge/Technical Expertise:
Fundamental knowledge of own discipline
Global Leadership and Advocacy for UNDP’s Goals:
Preparing information for global advocacy
Client Orientation:
Establishing effective client relationships
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Required Skills and Experience | |
Education:
Experience:
Language:
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INTERNATIONAL TECHNICAL ADVISOR FOR POVERTY-ENVIRONMENT INITIATIVE (PEI)/PRO-POOR GROWTH PROGRAMME TANZANIA
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