ET Consultant

Organization: World Bank
Sector: Sustainable Development
Grade: EC1
Term Duration: 1 year 0 months
Recruitment Type: Local Recruitment
Location: Hanoi,Vietnam
Required Language(s): English, Vietnamese
Deadline: 1/11/2021

Description

Do you want to build a career that is truly worthwhile? Working at the World Bank Group provides a unique opportunity for you to help our clients solve their greatest development challenges. The World Bank Group is one of the largest sources of funding and knowledge for developing countries; a unique global partnership of five institutions dedicated to ending extreme poverty, increasing shared prosperity and promoting sustainable development. With 189 member countries and more than 120 offices worldwide, we work with public and private sector partners, investing in groundbreaking projects and using data, research, and technology to develop solutions to the most urgent global challenges.
We are seeking analysts to support a public investment program in Vietnam that includes US$2 billion of ongoing investments, and US$1 billion of investments in preparation. The objective of these investments is to increase the resilience of cities to climate change across Vietnam, while increasing the efficiency of cities to unlock economic potential. Prior experience in international development is not necessary; rather, we are seeking hard working and ambitious individuals that would like to join a strong team environment to create a positive impact on society. The role will focus on Vietnam but would expand to other large countries in East Asia as the work program evolves.
The selected candidate(s) would be trained on the job to support policy advice, investment planning and the implementation of policy reforms through investment projects. Key areas of focus include the integration of climate change and disaster risk into city and regional master plans and the integration of new technologies to build thoughtful cities initiatives.

Background

Urbanization is the defining phenomenon of the 21st century and government investment priorities are shifting as a result. For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population lives in cities, with 90 percent of urban growth taking place in the developing world. Cities provide a diverse range of services to their residents and are increasingly responsible for finding the means to fund them. Engaging directly with cities provides opportunities to holistically address multi-sectoral development challenges and to bring to bear alternative sources of finance, including from the private sector. This includes investments in city resilience that require an approach beyond the scope of single sector engagements.
As cities grow, so does their exposure to natural disasters. Increasing population and wealth lead to an expansion in the quantity and value of the building stock and infrastructure. The risk that growing cities face may further be exacerbated by haphazard and unplanned development. Many of the disaster risks in urban areas are created by the ways that people locate, design, construct, and provide services. In the absence of formal solutions, the poor and vulnerable disproportionately build their lives in areas where they are highly exposed to natural disasters.
Strategic context. Targets for climate change adaptation, mitigation, and poverty reduction are all impossible to meet without city governments becoming much better at creating resilient urban environments. Along with addressing the challenges of disaster and climate risks, the additional complication of rapid urbanization in developing countries requires substantial and well-planned infrastructure investments to meet resource demands and enhance economic growth as well as to mitigate potential damages and losses from natural disasters.
Most city-level projects supported by the World Bank have focused primarily on one of three streams: infrastructure, governance and systems, or finance. However, to become resilient, cities need to better connect and demonstrate value across all three. In a single stream approach, a public transport project (infrastructure) may only consider overall economic impact in terms of change in transport user benefits, change in system operating costs and revenues, change in externality costs and investment costs. This would provide a quantification of a tangible benefit but not a long-term solution to improving the resilience of the client city’s economy.
An integrated approach would enable that same engagement to consider urban challenges holistically and include supplementary activities such as an assessment of infrastructure policies and manuals to improve construction standards (governance and systems) or a review of private capital financing opportunities (finance). The result would be a better project – higher quality construction and lower public investment – and would also fit into a better coordinated long-term strategy to improve resilience incrementally and strategically over time. By simultaneously and iteratively making progress concurrently across the infrastructure, governance and systems, and finance streams, cities can become increasingly capable of addressing disaster and climate risks and urban development challenges in a comprehensive manner. In turn, poverty alleviation becomes a more achievable objective.

Roles and Responsibilities

Working under the supervision of the task team, the selected candidate will provide support across the portfolio of investments that are ongoing and in preparation. S/he will support the team’s overall program with some initial focus on developing the city/country engagement strategy and building/implementing the technical assistance and lending portfolio. S/he will hold the following duties and accountabilities:

Support the team in developing and advancing policy dialogue with government counterparts and strategic partners on how to most effectively build urban resilience, apply and integrate new technologies in government systems, transition to a low carbon city environment, and improve waste management. This includes support to the conceptualization, development and dissemination of policy reforms and lending opportunities considered global good practices. Support coordination with key partners to advance Urban Development and Resilience.
Contribute to knowledge products through the preparation of documentation and publications on: (i) qualitative and quantitative analysis for city engagement strategy; (ii) quantitative models for different modules under the potential lending portfolio; (iii) synthesis of focus group discussions; (iv) best practices for the integration of urban development and resilience principles into national and sectoral development strategies and program.
Support task team(s) in the design and supervision of urban and disaster risk management projects, including the preparation, presentation, and processing of: (i) project concept notes; (ii) project appraisal documents and Board packages; (iii) operation manuals, procurements plans, disbursement schedules, and project activity matrices.
Prepare and design visual presentation of knowledge products and disseminate concepts for urban development and resilience in meetings with partners, professional and policy forums, and publications; and
Perform any other business as needed and agreed with the task managers in support of urban development and disaster risk management projects.

Deliverables

The engagement will include the following results: i) just in time reports on project progress and reporting; ii) mission and project organization activities; iii) aide memoire inputs; iv) inputs to technical project implementation documents; and v) specific reports, concept notes, and presentations based on agreement with the Task Team.

Selection Criteria

Advanced university degree in urban planning, and/or any relevant social science fields relating to international development and policy analysis
Experience between 3 and 7 years in an international development, consulting or banking sector.
Fluency in both written and spoken English and Vietnamese.

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Note: The selected candidate will be offered a one-year appointment, renewable for an additional one year, at the discretion of the World Bank Group, and subject to a lifetime maximum ET Appointment of two years. If an ET appointment ends before a full year, it is considered as a full year toward the lifetime maximum. Former and current ET staff who have completed all or any portion of their second-year ET appointment are not eligible for future ET appointments.