Insider tips on working with UN-Habitat

KUALA LUMPUR — After eight years of contentious leadership, UN-Habitat is emerging with renewed energy to deliver projects that help countries leverage their cities to meet national obligations under the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development and the Paris Agreement on climate change. That strategy is poised to offer more opportunities for development professionals in the coming years now that former Barcelona mayor Joan Clos, whose brash, undiplomatic style did not endear itself to donor countries or his staff, has left. The recent appointment of a consensus-building former Malaysian mayor, Maimunah Mohd Sharif, is likely to see countries opening their pockets even more for the Nairobi-based agency, sector watchers say. UN-Habitat, formally the United Nations Human Settlements Programme, may not have the same profile as better-endowed, globally-recognized branches of the U.N. family such as UNICEF or the World Food Programme, but it has new wind in its sails as the agency seeks to capitalize on the recent adoption of the New Urban Agenda, a 20-year roadmap to sustainable urbanization. The New Urban Agenda was launched at the Habitat III summit in October 2016, following a three-year global consultation. While the negotiation and adoption of the SDGs and the Paris Agreement overshadowed the New Urban Agenda, the document is slowly gaining ground within national governments who see investing in better cities as a way of tackling major development challenges. The 23-page New Urban Agenda will guide the U.N.’s urban work for the next two decades, with UN-Habitat particularly dedicated to building on the agenda’s legacy with its core staff of 400 and field personnel, most of them on consultant contracts, numbering around 2,000. UN-Habitat is currently in the first few months of a two-year, $500 million budget, for which the vast majority, roughly $454 million, is for earmarked projects. Sharif’s first job in office will likely be to shore up donations for core funding, which plummeted under the unpopular Clos administration, to keep headquarters operations running. Importantly, however, even as core funding plummeted, projects have seen a record demand as countries clamor for UN-Habitat’s assistance to design municipal finance, legislation, planning, and design models. For example, last month at the ninth World Urban Forum, UN-Habitat’s signature biennial event, the European Commission allocated a fresh 10 million euros ($12.3 million) to the agency’s Participatory Slum Upgrading Programme in Africa, Caribbean, and Pacific countries. Since 2008, UN-Habitat has applied its own methodology, which involves close consultation with slum dwellers on the future of their communities, in 160 cities across the ACP. Raf Tuts, UN-Habitat’s director of programs and the agency’s number three, detailed to Devex some of the opportunities he sees on the horizon for the roughly $200 million in procurement he oversees annually via tenders on Inspira, especially around the implementation of the New Urban Agenda. He broke down that figure as roughly 75 percent at the country level for specific technical assistance to national governments and 25 percent for normative and operational work at the Nairobi campus. Tenders are mostly focused on the need to deliver policy products in areas such as housing, transport, and municipal finance. --— The national government assistance includes little in the way of bricks and mortar, he said, with the agency financing pilot projects at most to demonstrate proof of concept for ideas like well-designed public spaces, better sidewalks, bicycle lanes, and transit-only roadways. Rather, tenders are mostly focused on the need to deliver policy products in areas such as housing, transport, and municipal finance. “As a U.N. agency we have a comparative advantage there,” Tuts argued, distinguishing his agency from a consultancy, which doesn’t have the backing of an international agreement, and a development bank, which is focused on ribbon-cutting hard infrastructure. When it comes to consultants, Tuts is ideally looking for somebody with at least 10 years of international experience outside of the candidate’s own country. A background in urban or town planning is key, as UN-Habitat fields requests as narrowly-tailored a plan as revitalizing a specific neighborhood, or as broad as helping a city prepare for rapid expansion on the fringes. Tuts also needs lawyers who can help draft legislation consistent with a country’s legal code and finance experts who can structure public-private partnership to fund projects. When it comes to consultants, Tuts is ideally looking for somebody with at least 10 years of international experience outside of the candidate’s own country. --— Above all, there are new opportunities to help countries devise national policies on urbanization, as UN-Habitat is pushing half of all countries to have so-called “national urban policies” by 2025. At the moment, Tuts said, 35 countries need studies prepared so they can embark on the policymaking process, a multiyear effort that will likely include a national urban forum to generate ideas from across national government, local government, academia, and civil society about the country’s urban needs. Tuts cited the ability to work closely with ministries of housing, urban development, and local government as an important skill — consultants will sometimes be embedded in such ministries to help negotiate, draft, and shepherd legislation to eventual promulgation. In recent years, the agency has also pivoted to address how its work can reinforce broader international goals including combating climate change. Tuts is adamant that he needs specialists, not generalists. “I’m looking for people who know how to quantify emissions related to urban investments like transport networks and drainage systems,” he said. Migration has also emerged as another hot topic with an urban dimension. UN-Habitat is supporting sister agencies like the International Organization on Migration ahead of this year’s Global Compact on Migration, whose negotiations started last month. The agency hopes that cities can harness the potential positive impact of migrants as a new labor source and a way to revive ailing populations. “How can local authorities deal in a constructive way to integrate migrants into their society?” Tuts said of the agency’s thinking, which is currently designing systems for migrants, who generally are not active civic participants, to advise on municipal affairs. While organizations like IOM and U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees take the lead, UN-Habitat has been working behind the scenes to prepare baseline analyses of cities that receive migrants, map migrant populations in cities, and conduct household surveys. In Jordanian and Lebanese cities, UN-Habitat has hired people to study the impact of a sudden Syrian migrant influx on basic municipal services such as water, sewer, electricity, and garbage collection. Among that broad range of work streams, Tuts sees the coming years as most active in Afghanistan, Haiti, Iraq, Guinea-Conakry, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, South Sudan, and Sri Lanka. Back at the Nairobi HQ, he is looking for specialized expertise in the development of city-level statistical indicators to measure progress toward the New Urban Agenda and SDGs. Tuts acknowledges that UN-Habitat has a reputation for slow hiring and limited resources, as current rules cap the agency’s procurement budget at $200 million, but he’s optimistic that UN-Habitat’s current reform, something of a guinea pig in Secretary-General António Guterres’ systemwide U.N. reform, could make Habitat nimbler in the very near future. “That will help us procure faster, recruit faster, and make agreements faster,” he said.