PCAsia is seeking two active and motivated candidates to fill 2 positions of Specialized Trainers on two subjects:
- Legislative Scrutiny of Climate Change Budgets
- Basic Concepts of Climate Change, Climate Finance and Roles of Parliaments
PARLIAMENTARY CENTRE OF ASIA
The Parliamentary Centre of Asia (PCAsia), established in early 2021 in Phnom Penh, is the successor of the Parliamentary Institute of Cambodia founded in 2011, a transition that reflects an expansion of activities with Parliaments across Southeast Asia and encouraged through an MoU and the Resolutions of the General Assembly of the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Assembly (AIPA). The mandate of PCAsia is therefore to contribute to the strengthening of Southeast Asian Parliaments through capacity building of their staff, based on the demands or requests of each parliament. It draws on the expertise of national, regional, and international partners (Parliaments and research centres).
ROLE OF DEPARTMENT
The training of Parliamentary staff is at the core of PCAsia’s mission, and the Capacity Development (CD) department is responsible for carrying out the majority of this work. CD is responsible for curriculum and syllabus design for many training programmes, and its staff provides practical training and facilitation according to their respective expertise for most of the training programmes. With the transition to blended learning and learning by distance, CD staff increasingly play a facilitation role, working with external experts to design and deliver content suitable for digital platforms, then working with trainees to complete the related assignments.
Other responsibilities include mentoring and quality control of research products produced by the trained parliamentary researchers, and providing quality control technical advice with regards to newly-trained parliamentary staff members when back working in their institutions of provenance in applying their newly-acquired skills.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION ON THE SPEICAL LECTURE ON CLIMTE CHANGE BUDGET
The impacts of climate change have already been felt by many countries. During the 26th UN Climate Change Conference of the Parties (COP26) in Glasgow on 31 October – 12 November 2021, all nations agreed to promote scaling up of climate change actions and the increase of climate finance for implementing climate change adaptation and mitigation. COP 27 reiterated the need for providing grant-based climate financing to developing countries, in particular for adaptation, and in particular for the least developed countries and small island developing states.
Parliaments, in this regard, play a crucial role, not only to adopt budget and finance legislation, but also to scrutinize government policies and legislation. Parliaments need to ensure that the fiscal legislation and policies proposed by the government have been integrated with climate change perspectives properly and how those commitments are translated into practice.
This Special Lecture is specifically designed to mainstream climate change budget into the Fiscal Analysis Capacity Training (FACT) program. It seeks to provide the necessary knowledge and basic concepts on how climate change perspectives can be integrated into the scrutiny of the budget process and the legislation or policies carried out by Parliament. The goal of this Special Lecture is to contribute to building basic knowledge on budgeting for climate change to parliamentary staff who will assist Members of Parliament to work on areas related to fiscal analysis work and scrutiny related to government’s budgeting on climate change.
There are a total of 13 participants from the parliaments of Cambodia, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand.
POSITION DESCRIPTION
In order to undertake this task with high quality and relevance, the Environment and Climate Change Program needs 2 specialized trainers to provide a special lecture on “Legislative Scrutiny of Climate Change Budgets” and “Basic Concepts of Climate Change, Climate Finance and Roles of Parliaments” to the programme participants. The role of the specialized trainers is to deliver a special lecture on climate change budget aimed at providing the concepts/theories and framework on climate change policies, climate finance and parliamentary legislative scrutiny of climate change budgets. In this training course, the background and the overview of the process of legislative scrutiny and how climate change perspectives can be integrated in budget oversight will be provided.
The objectives of the training are as follows:
- To provide the basic concepts of climate change science, and the history of international climate change policy frameworks, the relevance of climate change and health pandemics and emergency responses
- To share knowledge on adaptation and mitigation options, the roles of parliaments in addressing climate change and climate finance with specific country case/examples
- To explain the process of legislative scrutiny and how climate change perspectives can be integrated in budget oversight
- To enable the trainees to see the case examples of climate change budget scrutiny in some countries in the ASEAN/or Asia Pacific Region and apply those concepts for practical exercises and presentations
MAIN TASKS AND RESPONSIBILITIES / SCOPE OF WORK
1. The specialized trainer on “Legislative Scrutiny of Climate Change Budgets” is expected to:
- Provide input into the course syllabus/curriculum/schedule on the subject
- Produce training materials including practical exercises and country-cases to meet the identified needs of the trainees,
- Deliver the training course and administer the training for effective learning, adopting a varied, interactive and practical approach
- Provide input to assessment tools and/or in-class evaluation (quiz, Pre- and Post-test) to monitor and assess the training progress
- Provide input to a final evaluation report after completing the course including identified challenges and lessons learnt, and provide recommendations for future improvement
- Collaborate constructively with the ECC programme team to ensure the training is effective.
2. The specialized trainer on “Basic Concepts of Climate Change, Climate Finance and Roles of Parliaments” is expected to:
- Provide input into the course syllabus/curriculum/schedule on the subject
- Produce training materials to meet the identified needs of the trainees
- Deliver the training for effective learning, adopting a varied, interactive and practical approach
- Provide input to assessment tools and/or in-class evaluation (quiz, Pre- and Post-test) to monitor and assess the training progress
- Provide input to a final evaluation report after completing the course including identified challenges and lessons learnt, and provide recommendations for future improvement
- Collaborate constructively with the ECC programme team to ensure the training is effective.
TIMEFRAME
- Training duration for “Legislative Scrutiny of Climate Change Budgets”: 2 days, 12-13 September, 2023
- Training duration for “Basic Concepts of Climate Change, Climate Finance and Roles of Parliaments”: 1 day, 11 September, 2023
- Training delivery: face-to-face sessions with Cambodian trainees at PCAsia training facility in Phnom Penh (online sessions with other trainees)
EXPECTED DELIVERABLES/OUTPUTS
The outputs to be produced from the training are:
- Input to the course syllabus, course outlines and schedule on the subject
- Input to the results of the progress of the trainees using the assessment tools, class monitoring and evaluations
- Training materials (including lectures/slide presentations, practical exercises, or case-studies)
- A list of reading materials to support the training (textbooks, data sources, additional reading materials, glossary)
- Training delivery within the suggested timeframe
- Input to the final report of the training including assessment of the trainees’ progress, challenges that arose in the training and recommendations for future improvement.
REQUIRED QUALIFICATIONS, SKILLS AND EXPERIENCE
1. Trainer on “Legislative Scrutiny of Climate Change Budgets”
Essential
- A Masters’ degree or higher in public financial management, climate finance or related fields. PhD is preferable
- A minimum of five years of experience in providing training/lectures and/or conducting research on public financial management, climate finance or related fields
- Proven experience in designing and administering training courses, developing training materials and assessing the progress of the students
- Strong understanding of regional public financial management and legislative scrutiny of climate change budgets, in different member states of ASEAN or in the Asia Pacific Region
- Strong spoken and written English proficiency.
2. Trainer on “Basic Concepts of Climate Change, Climate Finance and Roles of Parliaments”
Essential
- A Masters’ degree or higher in climate change, climate finance, environment or related fields. PhD is preferable
- A minimum of five years of experience in providing training/lectures and/or conducting research on climate change, climate finance or related fields
- Proven experience in designing and administering training courses, developing training materials and assessing the progress of students
- Strong understanding of country climate change policies, climate finance and the roles of parliaments in different member states of ASEAN or in Asia Pacific Region
- Strong spoken and written English proficiency.
APPLICATION INFORMATION
Interested applicants should send a cover letter and CV to [email protected] with “Specialised Trainer: Climate Change Budget” for the PCAsia in the subject line and indicate the fee expectation in the email message. The application deadline is 11 August 2023. Only short-listed candidates will be contacted.