ETC - Urban Resilience at World Bank Group

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. For more information, visit www.worldbank.org

Global Context

The Sustainable Development Practice Group

The Sustainable Development (SD) Practice Group (PG) helps countries tackle their most complex challenges in the areas of Agriculture and Food, Climate Change, Environment, Natural Resources & Blue Economy, Environmental and Social Framework, Urban, Disaster Risk Management (DRM), Resilience & Land, Social Sustainability and Inclusion, and Water.

The “Urban, Resilience and Land” (URL) Global Practice

Urbanization is occurring at an unprecedented pace. Cities generate 80% of global GDP and are key to job creation and the pursuit of shared prosperity.  Yet one billion city residents live in slums today, and by 2030 one billion new migrants will arrive in cities.  This concentration of people and assets will exacerbate risk exposure to adverse natural events and climate change, which affects the poor disproportionately.  The absence of secure land tenure underpins deprivation and is a major source of conflict in the urban and rural space.  One and a half billion people live in countries affected by repeated cycles of violence.  In the absence of services, participative planning and responsive institutions, these trends will result in increased poverty, social exclusion, vulnerability and violence.  Finally, avoiding a 4-degree warmer world requires drastically reducing the carbon footprint of cities.

The WBG is in a unique position to support national and sub-national clients to: harness urbanization and enable effective land management in support of both growth and poverty reduction; foster social inclusion of marginalized groups; support the responsiveness and fiscal, financial, and management capacities of local governments – cities, municipalities, and rural districts – to deliver local infrastructure and decentralized services; strengthen resilience and risk management related to natural disasters; reduce conflict and violence; scale-up access to finance for sub-national governments; and reduce the carbon footprint of cities.  The WBG brings a combination of lending ($7-8 billion in annual lending to cities), analytical and advisory services (e.g., social inclusion flagship, urbanization reviews, Sendai dialogue), its growing portfolio of reimbursable advisory services, its convening power (e.g., understanding risk and the land conferences), its leveraging capacity (e.g., guarantees and risk mitigation), and its ability to work with the private sector to tackle the challenges at scale and to effect.

The URL GP covers a wide gamut:

• developing green, inclusive and resilient cities;
• enhancing urban and rural development through supporting and managing the urban-rural transition, assisting local development through developing land tenure, management and information systems; and
• assisting in disaster risk management through issues of risk assessment, risk reduction (including flood management, urban drainage, coastal management, and retrofitting of infrastructure), disaster preparedness (including hydromet services, early warning systems, and civil defense), risk financing (including CAT-DDO), and resilient reconstruction (including post-disaster damage and loss assessment).

Country Context
Cities are at the nexus of the development and climate challenge. 67% of South Africans live in urban areas[1] and this proportion is expected to increase to 77% by 2050.[2] The country’s 8 largest cities currently occupy 2.4% of the land area, employ 50% of the population, and similarly contribute 50% of the country’s Gross Value Added (GVA). Urbanization compounded with the enduring legacy of apartheid spatial planning, including Bantustans, and forced removals, have led to pronounced spatial challenges. These include spatial injustice and inequality, where the urban poor tend to settle in peripheral urban areas far from social and economic opportunities; spatial unsustainability and inefficiencies, enabling failing urban public transport, land, and housing delivery systems; and exacerbation of these inequalities and inefficiencies by climate change and the impact from disasters such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Continued segregated urban settlements, income inequality, limited opportunities for socio-economic development and service accessibility, low levels of infrastructure development and routine maintenance, and existing land use patterns perpetuate a complex set of urban challenges.

South Africa municipalities include 8 metropolitan areas, 44 districts and 226 local municipalities. The eight metropolitan areas are the key to South Africa’s social and economic future, but management of the urbanization process in South Africa is producing an inadequate ‘urban dividend’. Cape Town has the largest population concentration per metropolitan area with over 4 million inhabitants. However, the Gauteng region, encompassing Johannesburg, Ekurhuleni and Tshwane connected and functioning as a single integrated region housed over 11 million inhabitants (22% of the national population) in 2011.[3] The Gauteng city-region contributes to one third of national GDP growth, but the growth potential is affected by the urban socio-economic challenges. eThekwini is the third largest city with a diversified economy including manufacturing, logistics, property, and tourism. Four metropolitan municipalities are on the coast, Cape Town, eThekwini, Nelson Mandela, and Buffalo City.

South Africa is exposed to weather-related hazards such as floods, wildfires, storms, droughts, and sea level rise. Drought and flooding, which are expected to increase in intensity and frequency due to climate change have also severely affected urban centers including the metropolitan areas in recent years. Infrastructure and communities exposed to those hazards have shown to be vulnerable to those hazards, resulting in devastating economic and social losses. South Africa is ranked in the middle at 92nd out of 180 countries worldwide in terms of natural disaster risk[4] and experienced total economic losses of US$9 billion between 1952 and 2019. Furthermore, there has been a 57% increase in recorded events over the past two decades compared to the proceeding two[5]. Disaster losses are expected to increase due to:

direct impact of climate change on weather-related hazards, which is expected to increase temperatures as much as 3°C on the northern provinces, and severity of storms across the country;

the expected increase of unplanned urban growth with poor land-use practices and housing market constraints which increase the likelihood of exposure, i.e. communities settle in risk prone areas with poor access to services and living in vulnerable houses; and

limited consideration of climate change and other uncertainties (demographics, economic growth, etc), adaptation and mitigation in urban planning and urban infrastructure planning, delivery and maintenance.

The Cities Support Programme (CSP) was designed as an “umbrella” programme that seeks to enable cities to address the dysfunctional spatial form and inefficiencies in the built environment. The CSP supports inclusive urban economic growth by strengthening the enabling intergovernmental environment for this agenda and providing city implementation support. The programme outcome is focused on improving performance and strengthening governance to ultimately result in inclusive economic growth. The CSP has five distinct but aligned components namely: Governance and Fiscal, Climate and Sustainability, Economic Development, Public Transport, and Integrated Human Settlements.

In this context, South Africa’s National Treasury (NT) has engaged the World Bank in a Reimbursable Advisory Service (RAS) agreement entitled, “Infrastructure Investment and Integrated Urban Planning”. This RAS aims at providing technical assistance to eight metropolitan cities across South Africa. The work under this agreement is being co-funded by both the Government of South Africa, through the RAS agreement, and the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs of Switzerland (SECO), through the World Bank’s Urban Multi Donor Trust Fund for South Africa. Under the climate resilience component, the work aims to align and integrate adaptation and mitigation strategies with city plans and support the scaling up of delivery of required infrastructure and services.

To this end, the AFR Urban, Resilience and Land Unit brings together a wide range of important and interrelated development and financing instruments to support national and sub-national clients to: harness urbanization and enable effective land management in support of both growth and poverty reduction; foster social inclusion of marginalized groups; support the responsiveness and fiscal, financial, and management capacities of local governments – cities, municipalities, and rural districts – to deliver local infrastructure and decentralized services; strengthen resilience and disaster risk management related to natural disasters; reduce conflict and violence; scale-up access to finance for sub-national governments; and reduce the carbon footprint of cities.

Position context

The AFR Urban, Resilience, and Land East Africa Unit (SAEU3) is seeking a qualified and motivated professional to help deliver the ongoing and pipeline program in South Africa. In particular, she/he will support the management of analytical and advisory services, preparation and implementation support for lending investments, and policy dialogue in the areas of urban resilience and disaster risk management in South Africa.

Roles & Responsibilities:

This position calls for a cross disciplinary approach that seeks to build the capacity of cities to strengthen their urban resilience. The Disaster Risk Management Specialist is expected to provide technical and operational expertise to implement and develop the AFR Urban, Resilience, and Land program with a focus on South Africa. The candidate is expected to carry out specific duties which will include, but are not limited to:

• Support the World Bank Task Team, and metro Governments in preparing resilient capital investment projects across multiple sub-sectors, including the quality control and supervision of external consultants and technical specialists as well as developing targeted Terms of Reference.
• Support the strengthening of the government led Emergency Planning and Response efforts from the national, provincial, and local levels.
• Support strengthening of linkages between urban resilience and informal settlement upgrading through improving data for risk-informed upgrading interventions in informal settlements, integrating resilience to disaster and climate risk into selected urban upgrading planning instruments/tools, and enhancing communities’ emergency preparedness and response capacity.
• Support and provide technical inputs on urban growth analytics to assess the impact of climate change risks and urban growth choices on the overall livability and productivity of urban clusters in South Africa.
• Support and participate in various project task teams to deliver advisory activities, develop new business opportunities related to urban resilience and help enhance the capacity of our clients to respond to DRM challenges through programs and projects.
• Help adapt global good practice in DRM, urban resilience, resilient infrastructure, risk assessment and green infrastructure to local contexts within Bank-supported activities, including Bank-executed technical assistance.
• Contribute to the execution of lending and trust funded projects, including: (i) or participate in missions and developing mission documents; (ii) Develop Project Concept Notes (PCNs), Project Appraisal Documents (PADs), and other related project preparation documentation; (iii) prepare and review terms of reference; (iii) prepare implementation status and results reports; (iv) prepare project briefs; (v) develop funding proposals; and (v) presentations.
• Support the dialogue with and coordination among government counterparts and development partners in the urban/DRM sector.
• Provide support, as needed, to emergency response including contributions to various forms of post-disaster assessments, and to recovery and reconstruction planning.
• Participate in field missions in the areas of specialization, provide technical inputs and guidance to client counterparts as required by operational and analytical task team leaders.
• Provide technical leadership on projects in a dynamic environment.
• Support the reporting of Trust Funded activities and manage the activities.
• Draft technical notes, reports, Terms of Reference and policy documents; and
• Participate and support knowledge sharing activities across countries in the region and contribute specific knowledge both within the assigned countries and in the World Bank.

Selection Criteria

• Master’s or PhD degree in technical fields relevant to DRM and urban resilience such as civil engineering, architecture, urban infrastructure and planning, disaster risk management, environmental planning, public management, or equivalent, and a minimum of 5 years of relevant experience. 
• Extensive knowledge of urban development, disaster risk management and local government in South Africa. 
• Experience working on flood risk management, risk reduction measures design or implementation including nature base solutions.
• Experience working on complex urban risk programs involving multi-stakeholder coordination.
• Strong conceptual and research/analytical skills with the ability to rapidly analyze and integrate diverse information from varied sources into conclusion and recommendations.  
• Demonstrated skills to engage and effectively lead dialogues with both local communities affected by urban risks as well as city leaders and decision makers charged with action.
• Strong conceptual and research/analytical skills with the ability to rapidly analyze and integrate diverse information from varied sources into conclusion and recommendations.
• Demonstrated effective communication skills, speaking and writing, and outstanding interpersonal skills, effective team member. 
• Experience in donor-funded projects and/or project management in land administration / governance, sustainable landscapes, territorial development, or regional planning dimensions;
• Excellent interpersonal skills and the ability to lead teams and function effectively as a member of a multi-disciplinary team;
• Proven track record of delivery of high-quality outputs while working under pressure, in a multi-sector environment, and within tight deadlines.
• Knowledge of World Bank operational policies, practices and procedures is an asset.
• Excellent and effective command of English in verbal and written forms required.