The consultants’ work would entail, but not exclusively, a review of the potential environmental impacts and social risks likely to be associated with the project activities, both for existing operations as well as future mining operations. Specifically, for those intervention areas outlined in the project. The consultant will be required to perform the following tasks (but not necessarily in the same chronological order as many of these will occur in an iterative cycle):

Task 1: Desk review – The consultant will be required to study all relevant documents to ensure a comprehensive understanding of the relevant issues. These documents include, but are not limited to:

The Banks Project documents; such as the Project Concept Note (PCN), Project Appraisal Document (PAD), the Integrated Safeguards Data Sheet (ISDS), Operational Policies OP 4.01, OP 4.11 and OP 4.12, the WB labor influx guidance note.
The Afghanistan Agribusiness Charter.
The Governments documents: including the RPF, relevant social law, Pesticides Law,Fertilizer Law and Regulation, Land acquisition law (2017), land management law (2017), environmental laws, ESIA regulations, and by laws, Water law, regulations and strategies, land use and planning documents, labor laws, National Action Plan for Women (NAPWA) and MoE’s gender strategy, previous ESMF, PMP’s produced by Ministry of Agriculture Irrigation and Livestock), Additionally, NHLP, AAIP and other World Bank funded project ESMF, PMP and GRM documents available within MAIL.
Task 2: Consultations with MAIL, MoIC and other potential relevant entities – The environmental and social management processes to be included in the ESMF, PMP and RPF, must be completely aligned with and integrated into the existing MAIL, MoIC and potential stakeholders and its project planning processes. The ESMF, PMP& RPF processes and requirements must be compliant with World Bank Operational Policy OP4.01, OP 4.11 and OP 4.12 and with the relevant social and environmental laws and regulations of the GoA. Therefore, the consultant should consult closely with the relevant officials of the relevant national and sub national agencies, to be fully informed about how the planning processes work and the project design, to ensure the ESMF, PMP, and RPF processes are fully integrated and aligned with the national and project processes.

Task 3: Consultations with the Bank Preparation Team – Pursuant to Task 2, for the consultant to determine the project implementation and institutional arrangements, monitoring arrangements, ministries planning procedures, identification and selections of investments, obtain a fuller understanding of OP4.01, OP 4.11, OP4.12 and the ESMF, PMP andRPF concepts, the consultant shall also consult with the Bank’s preparation team based in the World Bank, Kabul Office.

Task 4: Field Visits – The consultant will be required to carry out field visits to a representative sample of facilities and potential sites, in the targeted provinces, to ensure a full understanding of the complexity, nature, physical environment, etc., of these facilities is derived, and thereby to further ensure, that the screening processes, potential environmental impacts, possible tangible mitigation measures and technical guidelines that are to be designed/stated in the ESMF, PMP, & RPF are relevant and responsive to the project and the MAIL and MoCIneeds, and those who will use and implement them on the ground during implementation of the project.

Task 5: Consultations – OP4.01 requires that the ESMF, PMP and RPF documents be subjected to consultations with all stakeholders, including the affected people and groups potentially affected by civil works. The consultant is therefore required to conduct meaningful and participatory consultations, using participatory methods that are culturally appropriate and gender sensitive, to consult with all stakeholders including PAPs to explain the process of the ESMF and PMP to them and to solicit their views, so as to inform the final design of the ESMF and PMP, and ultimately the project design itself. The consultant will also be required to document and record the proceedings of the consultations, in an acceptable way without necessarily disclosing the identity of those consulted and without direct attribution of any statement to any individual, if these issues would raise concerns or without their expressed consent. As part of the consultant’s inception report, the consultant will be required to include a simple consultation plan explaining how the ESMF, PMP& RPF consultations would be carried out and the methodology for identify PAPs and their representation at the consultations.

Task 6: GRM- The consultant will be required to prepare grievance handling mechanism for the project and shall recommend measuresfor the successful implementation of the grievance mechanism. Apart from this, the consultant will require to include effective citizen engagement (CE) tools in the ESMF and PMP. These may include: (i) mechanism for meaningful consultation with public/stakeholders (ii) a multi-level Grievance Redress Mechanism (GRM) to be applied for the project. The consultant shall also include/suggest at least two CE indicators to be considered.

Task 7: Labor influx assessment- There shall be the employee code of conduct” and labor influx risk mitigation plan included in the proposedESMF document.

Task 8: Public Disclosures – Bearing in mind that this is a social and environmental category-A project, propose steps and timeline to ensure that public disclosures of key findings are adequately implemented, and in synch with the overall project preparation calendar.

Task 9: Preparation of the ESMF, PMP& RPF Documents – As stated in earlier sections of these TORs, the output/deliverable for the consultant will be the development ofthe ESMF, PMPand RPF documents (including GRM) to acceptable quality to the World Bank.

Task 10: ESIA ToR development– In addition, the consultant shall develop separate ToR for the Environmental & Social Impact Assessment study to be conducted for the proposed project.