Deadline: 19-Jun-23
The Nature for Water Facility issues Calls for Proposals for the Watershed Investment Program (WIP) to deliver water security benefits by deploying a defined portfolio of NbS interventions within a specified service area.
The Nature for Water (N4W) Facility is a partnership managed by The Nature Conservancy and Pegasys. The Facility is purpose-built to provide the gold standard in technical assistance for Nature-based Solutions, to help local organizations build out watershed investment programs. They provide a diverse international team featuring expertise in hydrology, GIS, ecology, governance, stakeholder engagement, finance, and project management to deliver effective hand-in-hand support throughout the watershed investment program lifecycle from program preparation to program implementation.
Focus Areas
The Nature for Water Facility delivers three core focus areas:
- Sponsored engagements
- They offer a semi-annual Call for Proposals. Winners receive technical assistance to advance their watershed investment program on a pro- bono basis.
- Fee-for-service partnerships
- Their team can be hired for specific services they provide to support place-based engagements.
- Knowledge management
- They have a dedicated team to facilitate iterative knowledge feedback loops and share project learnings, processes, and tools. All their outputs are shared publicly with the aim of mainstreaming NbS in the water sector.
Support Provided
- Selected applicants will receive sponsored technical assistance to develop their watershed investment program. Support aims to advance local watershed investment programs to the next development phase – e.g. “Prefeasibility”, “Feasibility”, “Design”, or “Execution”. While such support differs on a program-by-program basis, applicants can broadly expect the following in terms of support:
- The relationship between you (the applicant) and us (N4W) is a partnership (as opposed to “client-andservice-provider”), whereby both parties are expected to provide input into all processes, outputs, deliverables, and products.
- Support from us typically takes the form of three components:
- Scoping: relying upon experience from other engagements to date, their staff can support you to appropriately scope the work required to advance your local watershed investment program to the next development phase.
- Technical expertise: which could include the provision of their scientific, governance / institutional, economic, financial, legal and / or stakeholder engagement expertise. This expertise would be used to co-develop outputs such as: hydrological models; a business case; governance and organizational design; monitoring & evaluation program setup; etc.
- Coordination support: which could include additional capacity provided by us to convene key stakeholders, establish interim steering committees, facilitate workshops, conduct site visits and engagements, etc.
- The value of their expert-time typically ranges from USD 75,000 to USD 150,000 per engagement.
- The duration of support typically spans a period of 6 to 12 months, during which time the engagement between your team and yours will be regular (bi-weekly). Each engagement is managed by one of their dedicated Engagement Managers.
- Deliverables / desired outputs, timelines for delivery, and roles and responsibilities are collectively agreed upon at the start of the engagement and captured in the contracted agreement.
Duration: The Call for Proposals and engagement selection process spans approximately three months.
Eligibility Criteria
To qualify for sponsored support, submissions must comply with the following basic conditions:
- Submissions must be made before the specified deadline on their website. Submissions made after this time will not be evaluated.
- Submissions must substantially involve watershed Nature-based Solutions.
- Submissions must be adequately completed; all questions are mandatory, except for two fields marked as optional under “Applicant details”.
- Submissions must be made in English.
- The Applicant’s nominated “Local lead” must be fluent in one of their currently supported languages: English, Portuguese, Spanish or French.
- The Applicant’s Watershed Investment Program must be located in: Africa, Europe, North America, Central America & Caribbean, or South America. These are the only supported regions for Sponsored Engagements given their current staffing model.
- The Applicant organization / consortium must be a legitimate entity with a healthy tax status, that can readily enter a formal, contracted agreement with us.
For more information, visit N4W.
