IOM: CON 2025-02 NATIONAL PROTECTED AREAS SYSTEM PLAN – Belmopan

  • Location:
  • Salary:
    $47,000 - $77,000 / YEAR
  • Job type:
    CONTRACTOR
  • Posted:
    4 months ago
  • Category:
    Environment and Natural Resources
  • Deadline:
    06/09/2025

JOB DESCRIPTION

Job Summary

1. Duty Station of the Consultancy: Belize – Primarily remote, with required field visits to key sites in the southern and western borders.

2. Duration of Consultancy: 6 months (from September 2025 – February 2026)

3. Nature of the consultancy: This consultancy provides technical expertise to update Belize’s National Protected Areas System Plan (NPASP), ensuring it reflects current biodiversity priorities, climate commitments, and international obligations. It focuses on strengthening conservation governance, enforcement, and resilience through policy review, threat assessment, stakeholder engagement, and the development of a costed implementation and monitoring plan.

Key Responsibilities

Objectives

The objective of the consultancy is to provide the technical expertise and guidance to the Government of Belize to undertake the updating of the National Protected Areas Policy and System Plan (NPAPSP) for a ten-year period, ensuring it reflects current biodiversity priorities established in the NBSAP (2025-2035), NDC 3.0 biodiversity and climate linkages, community needs, and international obligations such as the CBD and SDGs, by carrying out the following activities:

i. Review the current Belize National Protected Areas Policy and System Plan (NPAPSP) and supplemental documents, to highlight implementation successes, gaps, opportunities, and lessons learnt, with a focus, but not limited to, the western and southern regions.

ii. Conduct a legal and institutional analysis to identify overlaps, gaps, and conflicts in policies, and consider institutional opportunities to strengthen governance, enforcement and monitoring, and other programmatic areas that are core to resource protection.

iii. Assess the status of protected areas in border regions, including management effectiveness, governance structures and threat assessment (including illegal logging, wildlife poaching, illicit drug transit, human trafficking, illegal fishing, pollution and cross border encroachment), with a view to establish baseline information for the development of strategies and actions in the System Plan.

iv. Develop an updated NPAPSP, with aligned Policy statements reflecting findings and recommendations from the policy analysis, and a comprehensive System Plan, indicating a core set of prioritized strategies and actions, that will ensure meeting the long-term vision of the Policy and System Plan.

v. Develop a costed Implementation Plan, particularly for the prioritized strategies and action areas. The Costing will indicate implementation needs for core action areas of enforcement and monitoring, education and awareness, social and stakeholder inclusion, and others.

vi. Develop a Monitoring and Evaluation Plan to support tracking implementation of System Plan.

Organizational Department / Unit to which the Consultant is contributing: EU-Belize Multi-Indicative Programme (MIP 2021-2027) – Priority Area 2: Regional Integration and Border Management

Reporting: The consultant will report to IOM Belize and will coordinate with an established Technical Committee comprised of relevant government and conservation agencies.

Required Qualifications

i. Advanced degree in Environmental Management, Natural Resource Management, Conservation Policy, or related field.

ii. Minimum 10 years of experience in conservation policy development, protected area management, conservation planning, or related sectors.

iii. Experience working with inter-agency coordination, biodiversity conservation environmental security and land use policy.

iv. Working knowledge of Belize’s environmental and protected areas context, particularly with the threats and pressures affecting the protected areas system

v. Proven stakeholder engagement and training facilitation skills, including solid Mediating and Consensus-building skills

vi. Strong skills in project costing, strategic planning and M&E design

vii. Familiarity with national and regional conservation, climate, and development frameworks.

viii. Strong report writing and communication skills.

ix. IBM experience would be an asset.

Required Competencies
IOM’s competency framework can be found at this link. Competencies will be assessed during the selection process.
Values – all IOM staff members must abide by and demonstrate these three values:
  • Inclusion and respect for diversity: Respects and promotes individual and cultural differences. Encourages diversity and inclusion.
  • Integrity and transparency: Maintains high ethical standards and acts in a manner consistent with organizational principles/rules and standards of conduct.
  • Professionalism: Demonstrates ability to work in a composed, competent and committed manner and exercises careful judgment in meeting day-to-day challenges.
  • Courage: Demonstrates willingness to take a stand on issues of importance.
  • Empathy: Shows compassion for others, makes people feel safe, respected and fairly treated.
Core Competencies – behavioural indicators
  • Teamwork: Develops and promotes effective collaboration within and across units to achieve shared goals and optimize results.
  • Delivering results: Produces and delivers quality results in a service-oriented and timely manner. Is action oriented and committed to achieving agreed outcomes.
  • Managing and sharing knowledge: Continuously seeks to learn, share knowledge and innovate.
  • Accountability: Takes ownership for achieving the Organization’s priorities and assumes responsibility for own actions and delegated work.
  • Communication: Encourages and contributes to clear and open communication. Explains complex matters in an informative, inspiring and motivational way.
Notes
  1. Any offer made to the candidate in relation to this vacancy notice is subject to funding confirmation.
  2. Appointment will be subject to certification that the candidate is medically fit for appointment, verification of residency, visa, and authorizations by the concerned Government, where applicable.
  3. IOM covers Consultants against occupational accidents and illnesses under the Compensation Plan (CP), free of charge, for the duration of the consultancy. IOM does not provide evacuation or medical insurance for reasons related to non-occupational accidents and illnesses. Consultants are responsible for their own medical insurance for non-occupational accident or illness and will be required to provide written proof of such coverage before commencing work.
  4. IOM has a zero-tolerance policy on conduct that is incompatible with the aims and objectives of the United Nations and IOM, including sexual exploitation and abuse, sexual harassment, abuse of authority and discrimination based on gender, nationality, age, race, sexual orientation, religious or ethnic background or disabilities.
  5. IOM does not charge a fee at any stage of its recruitment process (application, interview, processing, training or other fee). IOM does not request any information related to bank accounts.
  6. IOM only accepts duly completed applications submitted through the IOM online recruitment system. The online tool also allows candidates to track the status of their application.
For further information and other job postings, you are welcome to visit our website: IOM Careers and Job Vacancies
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