West Bank and Gaza Resilient Municipal Services Project

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The project will consist of four components: Component 1: Performance Based Service Delivery Grant Transfer. Through this component the project will provide participating municipalities with the performance-based grant financing needed to advance in the process of fulfilling their mandated service delivery responsibilities. To participate municipalities will have to first comply with a series of Minimum Conditions (MCs) which are the basic requirements that all participating municipalities should comply with to become eligible to receive the grants tied to the achievement of performance measures. The grants will finance municipal infrastructure sub-projects that participating municipalities will identify and prioritize based on their Strategic Development and Investment Plan (SDIPs). Municipalities will identify such sub-projects through a participatory public consultation process and will be limited to the sectors outlined in the legal framework. It will finance the transfer of two cycles of bi-annual grants and investments, the first of which will occur during the first year of project implementation and the second two years later. These will be composed of two sub grants, the first of which will be based on an evaluation of municipal needs, the second will be performance based, where the allocation will be determined by a formula that considers the achievement of Performance Measures (PMs). This is a similar approach to the one taken as part of the MDP project series, but with a significant stronger focus on the performance of municipalitiesComponent 2. Capacity Development. This component will provide capacity development support to municipalities and national level institutions, namely, the MDLF and the MoLG. The MDLF will prepare a Capacity Development Plan at the start of the project in consultation with all stakeholders, which will provide a detailed description of the priorities, activities and their inter-linkages for this component.Component 3. Natural hazard and Climate Change Resilience (competitive): The component will cover technical assistance as well as offer financing of small-scale physical works supporting municipalities’ effort to reduce natural hazard and climate change related risks in support of the PA’s efforts to climate change and reduction of all forms of environmental pollution. More specifically this component will cover:Subcomponent 3.1. Participatory natural hazard and climate change risk assessment. Building on the recent urban hydrological and climatological risk research, as part of the first cycle of grants to be distributed, the project will support the development of a detailed participatory risk assessment for hydrological and climatological risks in select major urban areas of the WB&G. Gender equality and integration will be ensured through these capacity development initiatives, as too will be the focus on vulnerable groups. These will ultimately lead to municipal hazard reduction plans which will propose a series of small-scale risk mitigation interventions within a subset of preferred activities, which include energy efficient building rehabilitation, rooftop solar energy, SWM (Slurry management) urban nature-based solutions like green roofs, green corridors, urban farming, urban parks and forests, among other urban heat and flood management works. Subcomponent 3.2. Natural hazard and climate change adaptation structural works. It will subsequently finance climate change mitigation and adaptation works as part of the second cycle of activities. The selected municipalities will be responsible for implementing the infrastructure projects identified, under the MDLF’s oversight and supervision. Support will be provided to prepare plans and designs for such prevention measures and plans for the management, operation and maintenance of each structural measure built. Municipalities are encouraged to propose investments of larger scale targeting more than one municipality to reap economies of scale and consolidate service delivery (building on the success of implementing joint projects as part of the LGSIP). Component 4: Project implementation support and management. This component will finance the functioning of the teams that are part of the MDLF supporting the implementation of the project. It will finance the management costs of the MDLF as well as the required goods and consultant services (local technical infrastructure supervision) needed for the effective monitoring and evaluation, social and environmental safeguards management, procurement, outreach and communications for the project. Component 5: Contingency Emergency Response (CERC).