ThaiNGO

Term of Reference (TOR) 

For consultant to conduct a baseline study

for the EMERGE Project  (2026-2028)

Background and rationale

Thailand is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, facing escalating threats from floods, storms, drought, marine plastic pollution, and fisheries collapse-crises that directly endanger coastal economies, health and the ecosystems. Despite these challenges, public awareness, environmental journalism and institutional responses remain fragmented and largely reactive^{[1] [2]}, limiting public engagement and policy influence. Vulnerable groups, particularly women, girls, youth, and Indigenous communities in turn bear the brunt of these challenges, even though their local knowledge is crucial for building resilience.

These challenges highlight an urgent need for inclusive, community-led solutions that strengthen local capacity, improve access to environmental information and foster meaningful participation in climate governance. The Empowering Media & Environmental Resilience for Governance and Engagement (EMERGE) NDICI CSO/2025/489-078 project is designed to address these challenges. Led by Environmental Justice Foundation (EJF), in partnership with Climate Watch Thailand (CWT), EMERGE aims to address urgent gaps in journalism capacity, digital innovation, and inclusion of marginalised voices through targeted training and multi-stakeholder collaboration.

With this, we are looking for an external consultant/service provider to conduct a baseline assessment study and develop a monitoring and evaluation framework that will serve as a foundation for the project activities, and support the project’s outcome and impact evaluation at the end of the project intervention.

Problem analysis

Thailand’s escalating climate vulnerability

Thailand is among the world’s most climate-vulnerable nations, ranking 9th globally between 2000 and 2019^[3]. The International Organisation for Migration (IOM) reports that climate-driven migration is rising in vulnerable provinces, often involving entire communities being displaced from their traditional ways of life. With 23 of Thailand’s 76 provinces situated along the coast, the magnitude of threat from climate-related hazards is indisputable.

Inadequate awareness, institutional gaps, and media challenges

Thailand faces a “public knowledge deficit” on climate change, driven by structural barriers preventing robust environmental journalism. Investigative reporting is often ad hoc and lacks continuity. At the same time, local journalists struggle with limited access to reliable ecological data, editorial restrictions, and scarce funding or incentives for pursuing in-depth climate coverage. Consequently, Thai citizens remain insufficiently informed about the underlying drivers of environmental risk, options for adaptation or mitigation, and opportunities for participation in the local decision-making process. This disconnect is reflected by limited national discourse and the scope and quality of policy responses. Ultimately, this knowledge gap weakens public engagement and accountability, further exposing Thai society to ongoing climate risks.

Disproportionate impacts on vulnerable and marginalised groups

Vulnerable groups, especially women, girls, youth, and Indigenous communities, bear the brunt of these challenges, despite the fact that their voices and expertise are integral to durable solutions. Socio-economic barriers often exclude women and youth, and Indigenous representatives from formal leadership spaces. The lack of access to information and trusted platforms to communicate their demands highlight an urgent need for inclusive, community-led solutions that strengthen local capacity, increase awareness of environmental issues, improve access to environmental information, and foster meaningful participation in climate governance.

Climate challenges at the grassroots level

In-depth fieldwork and local consultations conducted by EJF and Climate Watch Thailand from 2019 to 2024, particularly with climate vulnerable communities, identified three interrelated drivers of climate vulnerability in Thailand: (1) limited institutional spaces for meaningful community engagement, particularly for marginalised groups; (2) inadequate access to reliable, real-time environmental data tailored to local contexts and suited for non-expert audiences; and (3) chronic weaknesses in environmental reporting and public discourse, with insufficient capacity and resources to cover complex, intersectional climate issues. These findings reveal systemic challenges across governance, information flows, and media ecosystems undermining effective climate action.

EMERGE’s focus is climate change awareness, adaptation, and resilience, with a particular emphasis on vulnerable coastal and rural communities. Ocean conservation, marine pollution, and sustainable fisheries are also key concerns, with activities designed to raise awareness and advocate for solutions. The project is national in scope, with a strong emphasis on vulnerable coastal, Indigenous, and rural communities in 6 provinces : (1) Chiang Mai, (2) Phitsanulok, (3) Rayong, (4) Phuket, (5) Nakhon Si Thammarat, and (6) Pattani provinces.

Objectives

The baseline assessment serves as a foundation of data and information that will enable the project implementation to establish improvements in the targeted audience, communities and areas. This includes assessing the capacity of Thai journalists and media practitioners, grassroot leaders, civil society, policy makers to respond to the impacts of climate change and environmental challenges. The themes of these issues should include; fisheries, plastic pollution, global warming.

The baseline assessment will also provide an overview of the target groups’ levels of knowledge, attitudes, practices, constraints, challenges, and needs related to environmental justice, inclusive climate governance, and climate resilience. The findings will inform the refinement of indicators, measurement tools, and the project’s monitoring and evaluation framework to enable tracking of outcome- and impact-level change over the project period.

The specific objectives of the baseline survey are:

• To assess the understanding, reporting capacity, and analytical depth of targeted Thai journalists and media practitioners in covering key environmental/climate issues with utmost accuracy, depth and nuanced narratives.
• To assess the risks, constraints, and challenges faced by Thai journalists and media practitioners in environmental and climate reporting, particularly on illegal fishing, labour issues in fisheries, oil and gas development, plastic pollution, greenwashing, and related concerns.
• To assess the capacities of grassroots leaders, civil society organisations, and policy makers to promote more equitable, participatory, and evidence-informed climate governance.
• To assess the extent to which communities in the 10 constituencies across the target provinces understand the impacts of climate crises on their well-being, livelihoods, financial stability, bodily autonomy, and resilience.
• To identify community needs, constraints, and challenges related to policy participation, access to public services, social protection, livelihoods, and cultural practices in the context of climate change.
• To establish a baseline for measuring increased capacity among target groups, including journalists, media practitioners, grassroots leaders, CSOs, and policy makers, to address climate change and environmental challenges through inclusive climate governance.

The assessment process will consist of a desk-based study, field visits, surveys, focus-group interviews with key stakeholders. The modality of the assessment can be on-site, online, hybrid, or any other means necessary for data collection.

Target populations and sampling

The baseline assessment will target the following groups in the 6 EMERGE project provinces: Chiang Mai, Phitsanulok, Rayong, Phuket, Nakhon Si Thammarat, and Pattani.

• Thai journalists and media practitioners, including reporters, editors, and media producers covering environmental, climate, fisheries, and related development issues.
• Community members from the 10 constituencies in the targeted provinces, with a focus on vulnerable coastal, rural, and climate-affected populations. These include Indigenous Peoples (e.g., Mountain and Sea Gypsies communities of Moken, Urak Lawoi), women, farmers, informal workers (e.g., street vendors, domestic workers), formal workers (e.g., factory or unionised labour), LGBTQIA+ community, coastal/fisherfolk, youth, people with disabilities, and the elderly in Thailand.
• Civil society actors and community-based organisations working on environmental governance, climate resilience, fisheries, marine pollution, and related advocacy.
• Relevant policy makers and duty bearers, including local government representatives and public service actors involved in climate and environmental governance.

Scope of work

As part of the inception stage, the consultant is guided to initially review all the programme indicators and to propose the needed refinements of indicators across all levels of objectives in the logical framework. These will be discussed and confirmed by the project implementers before proceeding with the study.

Based on the project’s conceptual framework, theory of change and the agreed logical framework, the monitoring and evaluation framework will be provided by the consultant, alongside its tools and processes. The monitoring and evaluation framework will focus on outlining the key monitoring and evaluation activities throughout the project implementation period, including project closure. The development of the monitoring and evaluation framework is expected to be consultative with the project management team and include training of staff to understand the proposed tools, processes and data flows and utilisation.

The assessment will support the project in defining a comprehensive set of measurements, data collection and analysis methods that encompass the expected results of this project. The baseline assessment will be completed at the beginning of the project to measure the current status of all indicators prior to project implementation, and to determine the starting point of key elements of the work against which later progress will be measured. This will enable project indicators at output and goal/outcome level to be substantively measured and tracked. The project monitoring and evaluation framework will guide on-going monitoring and evaluation activities and track progress of the indicators and the project.

Based on the results of the assessment, the consultant is expected to develop the project indicators to define the degree and quality of change in project outcomes and impacts between baseline and endline evaluations.

Roles and responsibilities

The consultant will be hired to conduct the project baseline for the EMERGE Project (NDICI CSO/2025/489-078), working closely with EJF’s SEA Regional Manager, Project Manager and Project Coordinator. The activity will be overseen by the EJF project staff, who will assist in contacting the target groups, key stakeholders and beneficiaries, as well as facilitating field visits for the consultant. In case of emergencies or any concerns related to field visits and data collection approaches, the consultant team is required to report to the EJF project staff.

During assignment, the travel expenses, accommodations, fees, food and beverages, paperwork, data analysis, documentation, arrangements for key informants for interviews, and surveys are included in the total payment of this assignment, and shall be covered by the consultant. The consultant is therefore responsible for managing these costs independently and providing the supporting documents to EJF as requested. National travel, travel at short notice or on weekends may be required to meet project objectives. The consultant must notify the EJF project staff at least seven days prior to any travel, except in cases of short notice, where at least one day’s notice is required.

Deliverables 

With regards to the roles and responsibilities above, the consultant is expected to produce the following outputs:

1. Digital copy of the draft(s) and the final baseline study report, including methodology, datasets, survey tools, sampling frame, analytical framework, a refined list of indicators and analysis.
2. Preliminary presentation of baseline findings for validation.
3. Digital copy of the draft(s) and final monitoring and evaluation framework, including all the relevant tools and reporting templates and forms. This should also include a performance monitoring plan and result tracking matrix.
4. Digital copy of the M&E training report, handbook, or any other handover materials that provide guidance on how the EJF project staff can navigate and utilise the M&E framework.

Timeline

• Recruitment announcement: DD MONTH YYYY
• Implementation period of 5 months: 1 September 2026 - 31 December 2026 *Timelines are subject to change.

Remunerations and payment terms

Total budget 6,000.00 EUR

Payments shall be disbursed based on the deliverables as follows:

• 20% upon the conception of the assignment
• 40% upon the acceptance of the Baseline Study Report, including the presentations of the baseline study findings
• 40% upon the acceptance of the Monitoring and Evaluation Framework

Required qualifications

The lead Consultant should have the following qualification and experience:

• A minimum of 5 years of hands-on experiences in conducting baseline surveys, evaluations for development projects/programmes, managing evaluations, assessments, audits, research, or review of development projects/programmes;
• Extensive knowledge of Monitoring and Evaluation in project development, as well as approaches and methodologies in monitoring and evaluation, especially theory of change and logical framework is preferred;
• Proven track of records on quantitative and qualitative data collection tools and analysis and participatory approaches.
• Proven track record of baselining of capacity-building and development projects.
• Good presentation and reporting skills, especially the ability to produce high-quality reports;
• Strong interpersonal skills and ability to work with people from diverse backgrounds to deliver quality products within a short time frame;
• Flexible, responsive to changes and demands and open to feedback.
• Fluent in English and Thai;
• Excellent attention to detail;
• Strong commitment to social justice, gender equality, and human dignity;

Desirable qualifications

• Proven experience in monitoring, evaluation, and learning of project development in the development sector is preferred;
• Good understanding the Thai media landscape, CSOs, policy advocacy, state services, and not limited to human rights, environmental issues and climate crises;
• Ability to work and conduct field work independently while coordinating closely with project teams.
• Ability to travel to different provinces across Thailand to conduct ground work.

How to apply

Candidates are encouraged to apply by 31 August 2026. The applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis.

Please submit a CV with a covering letter to recruitment@ejfoundation.org and cc pruksa.singhapol@ejfoundation.org no later than 31 August 2026