UNDP Malaysia’s biodiversity and sustainable development portfolio is responsible for providing leadership and technical support towards the progress of the Sustainable and Resilient Development pillar of the Country Programme Action Plan 2016 – 2020 between Government of Malaysia and UNDP. Its focus is on helping Malaysia develop the capacity to fully incorporate environmental sustainability into development at national and sub-national levels.
The objective of UNDP’s biodiversity and ecosystems work is to assist countries to maintain and enhance the beneficial services provided by natural ecosystems to secure livelihoods, food, water and health security, reduce vulnerability to climate change, sequester carbon, and avoid greenhouse gas emissions.
Project information:
Enhancing Effectiveness and Financial Sustainability of Protected Areas in Malaysia (PAF)
The PAF project was developed to address systemic issues in different protected area (PA) networks in Malaysia, where they are largely characterized as sub-optimally managed and severely under-financed.  There are four main reasons: (i) non-existent uniform system of national PAs under a common umbrella for achievement of biodiversity conservation goals;  (ii) insufficient understanding of the economic value of the PAs and essential contribution they make to national development; (iii) insufficient incentives on the part of the state government to invest in PA management due to the perception that they are foregoing revenue generation opportunities through other forms of land use; and (iv) sub-optimal capacity at the PA management agencies for site management and PA system management.
The project aims to establish a uniform national wildlife PA system in Peninsular Malaysia and to establish a performance-based financing structure to support effective PA system management through interventions in three project outcomes:
Outcome 1 – Systemic & Institutional Capacities to manage and financially support a national PA System
Outcome 2 – Technical and institutional capacities to manage sub-national PA networks, including capacities for effective financial management
Outcome 3 – Effective site-level PA management

In the context of the above, UNDP Malaysia Country Office is looking to recruit the services of a Knowledge Management and Communications Specialist who will produce three Photo Essays (undp.exposure.co) for the project described above and promote these essays via UNDP Facebook and Twitter.