Short-Term Consultant -Agricultural MRV Expert
Application Closing Date: April/22/2026
To Submit Your Application:
Interested candidates should send their CV and a letter of interest to Kichan Kim(kkim11@worldbank.org) and Jimin Shim (jshim2@worldbank.org). Please ensure that both email addresses are included as recipients. The subject line of the email should be "STC Application_MRV_[Your Name]". Only shortlisted candidates will be contacted for an interview.
Description of the Project:
Agriculture and Food GP global knowledge report on AI-enabled digital measurement, reporting, and verification (dMRV) for sustainable land management (SLM) incentive schemes in smallholder settings.
Background:
The Agriculture and Food Global Practice (AGF GP) supports countries to advance inclusive, resilient, and sustainable agrifood systems through policy reforms, investments, and knowledge. A growing share of this agenda depends on changing land-use and farm-level practices at scale—improving soil health, reducing land degradation, strengthening climate resilience, and sustaining productivity under increasing climate variability. Yet these reforms often hinge on delivery constraints: governments and implementing agencies must be able to identify eligible farmers and plots, track compliance or performance over time, and distribute benefits in ways that remain credible, timely, and administratively feasible in smallholder-dominated landscapes.
Recent advances in satellite-based Earth observation, digital soil information, cloud computing, and machine learning are changing what can be operationalized in routine delivery. The key shift is not that EO exists, but that AI-enabled processing and digital workflows increasingly make monitoring repeatable, automatable, and operational within policy timelines—supporting targeting, supervision, learning, and risk-based validation rather than after-the-fact reporting alone. However, these gains materialize only when evidence generation is embedded in end-to-end delivery systems.
Within this context, the World Bank is developing a global knowledge report under the PASA “From Intelligence to Impact: AI in Agricultural Extension and Payment for Ecosystem Services (P508786).” The report examines how AI-enabled digital measurement, reporting, and verification (dMRV) can make evidence actionable at scale for SLM-related incentive schemes (including PES-type arrangements where relevant)—clarifying what is operationally feasible, what minimum conditions must be in place, and where common failure modes arise in smallholder and mixed-farming settings. It also considers how improved verification readiness may, in some contexts, support more credible assessment of whether selective carbon-credit pathways are relevant to incentive programs. The central challenge is not lack of ambition; rather, monitoring and verification approaches remain costly and operationally brittle as programs expand—often pushing schemes toward practice-based payments with weak feedback loops and limited ability to recalibrate incentives based on measured performance.
To develop a technically solid and operationally realistic technical core, the Bank will engage two complementary short-term consultants who will work closely: (i) an EO/ML and delivery-workflow specialist, and (ii) an MRV/validation specialist (this assignment). The EO/ML specialist will lead development of EO/ML and delivery-workflow content for the shared technical note (use cases, evidence patterns, minimum conditions, and technical failure modes). This consultant will lead consolidation and editing of the shared note to ensure verification realism, audit-ready evidence packaging requirements, and disciplined claims language, informed by validation/verification realities in smallholder settings. Together, they will ensure coherence with the report’s portfolio evidence and recommendations, and coordinate as needed on the interface with the report’s cautious treatment of carbon-credit pathway considerations.
Objective:
The objective of this consultancy is to provide technically defensible and implementation-grounded inputs for the report’s technical core chapter, focusing on:
- validation/verification readiness;
- uncertainty management and claims discipline for agriculture/SLM outcomes (including SOC/soil health where relevant); and
- practical, audit-ready evidence packaging requirements usable in program operations.
The consultant will also support consistency of verification-related terminology and minimum conditions across the technical core and other relevant report sections (e.g., portfolio evidence and recommendations). The assignment should clearly distinguish between operationally useful evidence and evidence suitable for stronger verification claims.
Duties and Responsibilities:
Under the supervision of the report lead and in coordination with the companion EO/ML STC and the climate/carbon team, the consultant will:
A. Define fit-for-purpose verification logic and disciplined claims
• For priority SLM-related use cases (including PES-type arrangements where relevant), specify fit-for-purpose layered verification logic that combines digital indicators with targeted validation (what it supports; what it cannot substitute).
• Provide uncertainty framing and conservative claims language for outcome-oriented indicators (including SOC/soil health where relevant).
• Specify minimum conditions and common failure modes that determine whether a use case is decision-ready, conditional, or M&E-only.
B. Specify audit-ready evidence packaging requirements
• Define practical requirements for an “audit-ready evidence package” (QA/QC routines, traceability, versioning, documentation, evidence logs, dispute readiness).
• Summarize common credibility and integrity pitfalls and governance factors that typically undermine credibility or extend verification cycle time.
C. Contribute to cost and cycle-time realism
• Provide a concise driver map of where time accumulates in validation/verification processes and what program design choices drive transaction costs, including where delays reflect governance, third-party review, documentation quality, or sampling/validation design.
D. Conduct targeted practitioner reality checks and integrate into the chapter draft
• Lead three structured interviews with verification stakeholders (e.g., verifier/VVB, standard/registry, implementers as appropriate) and produce standardized one-page interview memos.
• Coordinate with the companion EO/ML STC so the shared technical write-up uses one consistent structure and terminology (use case → evidence pattern → minimum conditions → Common failure modes → claim label), and reflects “what is realistic” without over-claiming.
• Participate, as needed, in brief alignment discussions to ensure verification/evidence requirements are consistent with the report’s cautious treatment of carbon-credit pathway interfaces referenced in the report.
Selection Criteria:
The ideal candidate will possess the following qualifications and experience:
• Advanced degree in environmental economics/science, climate policy, soil science, MRV, or related field.
• Minimum 8–10 years of experience in MRV/quantification, validation/verification, or integrity/governance for land/soil/agriculture outcomes.
• Demonstrated experience producing or reviewing verification-ready evidence packages (e.g., sampling plans, QA/QC, uncertainty statements, audit trails, traceability/versioning).
• Demonstrated experience drafting uncertainty/claims language suitable for verification contexts (including SOC/soil health where relevant).
• Familiarity with verifier/VVB evidence expectations (auditability, documentation, and dispute readiness) and how these affect verification cycle time.
• Strong writing and synthesis ability for policy/operations audiences, including ability to consolidate/edit integrated technical inputs into disciplined, implementation-grounded narrative.
• Ability to translate verification logic into operationally realistic guidance for non-specialist policy and delivery audiences.
Terms of the contract: This assignment will run from May 1, 2026 to June 30, 2026, for a total of 30 working days. The consultant will report to Jeehye Kim (Senior Agricultural Economist; ADM TTL) and coordinate with Kichan Kim (Agricultural Economist Consultant; report lead), working closely with the SAEA2 Uganda team and the companion STC. The consultant will participate in a weekly joint check-in with the companion STC to coordinate scope, terminology, and integration of inputs. The assignment will be remote/home-based with virtual meetings. All deliverables will be reviewed and finalized in consultation with the TTL and report lead. Additional days may be agreed if additional alignment support is requested, subject to budget and approvals.