UNOPS Water, Environment and Climate (WEC) supports the design and management of multi-stakeholder initiatives by providing services in financial and grant management, procurement, human resources, and project management. The cluster has supported projects in the areas of water resource management, climate change adaptation, mitigation and transparency, energy access and distribution and environmental conservation under the Paris Agreement. The WEC has also supported operations and financial management services, in Vienna, the rest of the ECR region and beyond. The main partners include UN agencies such as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme, bilateral donors (Nordic countries, Germany and Italy), the Green Climate Fund and several NGOs.
The Gulf of Mexico (GoM) is the ninth largest body of water in the world and the largest semi-enclosed coastal sea in the Western Atlantic. Its eastern, northern, and north-western shores span 2,700 km and touch on five U.S. states (Florida, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas); south-western and southern shores span 2,243 km and lie along five Mexican states (Tamaulipas, Veracruz, Tabasco, Campeche, Yucatan, and the northernmost tip of Quintana Roo). On its southeast quadrant the Gulf is bordered by Cuba. The distinctive geographic and biophysical characteristics of the Gulf of Mexico Large Marine Ecosystem (GoM-LME) makes it an important global reservoir of biodiversity and one of the most productive of the 66 LMEs in the world. The GoM-LME provides economic wealth, products, food, services, cultural heritage, and energy directly to the countries that share it and contributes to oceanic biodiversity as a whole. The GoM currently supports approximately 55 million people, 40 million in U.S. coastal states and 15 million in the Mexican ones. Of the numerous rivers draining into the GoM, the Mississippi and Rio Grande rivers in the northern GoM, the Grijalva and Usumacinta rivers in the southern Gulf are the most notable. The GoM-LME is a major asset to its coastal countries in terms of fisheries and seafood processing, tourism, agriculture, oil infrastructure, trade, and shipping.
The UNEP/GEF Project “Implementation of the Strategic Action Program of the Gulf of Mexico Large Marine Ecosystem” (GEF ID 6952; 2020-2024 – GoM SAP Implementation Project) is a 4-year project specifically aimed at facilitating the implementation of the Mexico/U.S. endorsed Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA – 2011) and Strategic Action Plan (SAP – 2013) for the integrated management of the GoM-LME.
Goal: The goal of the project is to address the three main challenges identified by the SAP, i.e., controlling and reducing pollution; recovering living marine resources; and rehabilitating marine and coastal ecosystems. This will result in improved water quality, rehabilitation of the coastal and marine ecosystems, and avoid depletion of marine resources in the GoM-LME.
Objective: The project is specifically aimed at facilitating the implementation of the Mexico/U.S. endorsed Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA – 2011) and Strategic Action Plan (SAP – 2013) for the integrated management of the GoM-LME. The Project will achieve this by prioritizing the implementation of coordinated and integrated sustainable ecosystem-based management approaches (EBM) to address the transboundary concerns of countries bordering the GoM. It involves actions around the following four components:
- Component 1: Improve Water Quality
- Component 2: Avoid depletion and recover living marine resources (LMR - Fish and shellfish)
- Component 3: Conserve and restore the quality of coastal and marine ecosystems through community involvement and enhanced bilateral cooperation
- Component 4: Monitoring, Evaluation and, Knowledge Management
The GoM-LME project is seeking to hire a
Technical Officer, Hydrology for its Project Coordination Unit (PCU) to be based in Mexico (Mexico City or Merida, Yucatan, TBC). The Technical Officer will work together with the GoM-LME Project Coordinator and other PCU Staff to support the overall coordination and day-to-day management of the Project. Close collaboration with other PCU staff members is expected to ensure coherence in the execution of project activities under the different components.
The Technical Officer, Hydrology will
support the technical delivery of the Project’s Component 1: “Improve Water Quality”, in close coordination with the selected Implementation Partners (IPs) and other project partners, and in line with UNOPS project management standards and UNEP’s technical requirements. The Technical Officer will work within a team to support the smooth running of the GoM-LME Project for the timely delivery of high quality technical outputs and ensure that the project’s targets under Component 1 are met and fully compliant with applicable donor/client/UNOPS rules and regulations.
Component 1 considers the following outputs:
- Assess water pollution indicators and reinforce quality monitoring mechanisms
- Strengthen the dialogue between government and industry
- Implementation of the UNIDO TEST methodology in priority hot spots identified in the SAP
- Implementation of the Environmental Monitoring Programme
Several IPs will be engaged as co-executing agencies to carry-out the planned activities under each output. The Technical Officer, Hydrology, will act as the main liaison with the IPs for the successful delivery of the outputs under Component 1.
The position is a full-time assignment for six months (September 2024 - March 2025), subject to satisfactory performance and the availability of funds.