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By Monique Barbut
Monique Barbut is the chief executive officer and chairperson of the Global Environment Facility (/gef/), the world’s largest multinational funder of global environmental projects. Article originally published in Global Dialogue (www.worlddialogue.org)
I am convinced that the seeds of green economies are hidden in plain sight. They are everywhere we look. What they lack is the nurturing soil that will grow the individual seeds into a fully fledged forest. At the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the accumulated portfolio of local, regional and global projects built with our partners over the past twenty years shows us how those seeds can become a towering canopy, protecting lives and livelihoods, and the precious natural resources on which they depend.
Investing in the Planet
Two decades after the founding of GEF, it is appropriate to take a moment and look at what experience has shown as we focus upon our actions, decisions and strategies for the years to come. In its twenty years of existence, the Global Environment Facility has invested $10.5 billion in over 2,700 projects across 168 countries to protect natural resources and support environmentally sustainable development. To leverage this investment, GEF has mobilised an additional $51 billion in co-financing to act on our mission: investing in our planet.
But the painstaking job of identifying and tackling global environmental challenges involves much more than money. GEF has developed a network in which international agencies, government institutions, the private sector and non-profit organisations work together towards a common goal—to serve the world’s varied communities by addressing global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable-development initiatives. As a funding mechanism, GEF provides grants for projects related to six focal areas: biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, ozone-depleting substances, and persistent organic pollutants.
When the international community determines that an environmental problem is global in nature and needs a global response, GEF is the institution of choice to put that determination into practice. GEF serves as the financial mechanism for the Rio Conventions: the Convention on Biological Diversity, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, and the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants. From this mandate as a financial mechanism for global environmental programmes, GEF functions as a liaison and mediator between donors, recipient countries, local communities and constituencies, and the different implementing agencies that set projects in motion.
The efforts of GEF and its partners, international agencies and civil organisations reflect a unified commitment to have a positive impact on the global community and ecosystem. As we work together to raise awareness about the current state of our planet, we must remain focused on the key question that underlies everything we do: How can we build an economically and environmentally sustainable future?
Transparency and Accountability
Accomplishing this task informs virtually all of our day-to-day decision-making. GEF works with its partners to ensure that concrete results benefit real people in real communities and, at the same time, that our programmes positively affect the global environment. In partnership with civil society, the public and private sectors, we practise accountability through transparent public disclosure. We strive to communicate clearly about sometimes complex programmes and initiatives so that the widest possible audience can understand how our projects align both with country priorities and with the global environmental agenda.
Our policy on transparency is integrated at the very core of our mission statement. Acting on this principle, all information associated with GEF policy development and grant-review processes, including documents presented to the GEF governing Council and Assembly, can be easily accessed through the GEF website. We further this commitment to transparency and information sharing by relaying our project documents and funding information in publications, multiple communications and media channels, and various social media platforms. For real-time information dissemination, the Results Based Management system (RBM), with realistically defined results and targets, has been established to make it easier to monitor progress towards the achievement of outcomes and ensure the integration of lessons learned into decision-making at every level—from corporate to focal area strategies, project design, and implementation.
Among ten intergovernmental organisations assessed by One World Trust, a global governance and accountability think tank, GEF ranked highest for its transparency capabilities, with a score of 85 per cent.
GEF’s solid record of leadership in terms of transparency and accountability rests on the vigilance of its Secretariat and supporting elements. The GEF Conflict Resolution Commissioner, for example, is an independent voice reporting directly to the chief executive officer to address complaints, resolve disputes, and help ensure an atmosphere of trust and confidence among GEF and its stakeholders. A critically important entity is the GEF Evaluation Office, which provides independent evaluation within GEF by setting requirements for programme monitoring and evaluation and by ensuring oversight of the quality of programmes and projects via quarterly reports. The Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel provides strategic scientific and technical advice to GEF on its strategy and programmes. The panel consists of six internationally recognised experts in GEF’s key areas of work, supported by a network of additional experts to provide advice and strategy for GEF and its projects.
These and other key contributors help GEF fulfil its commitment to achieving results in an ethical, cost-efficient and transparent manner. This is essential because the global environmental challenge is so daunting, be it in the villages of Kounghani and Manael, suffering from degradation of vegetation and loss of biodiversity due to eight months of dry season near the Senegal River, or on the Rumassala reef in Sri Lanka, where the coral has experienced unprecedented levels of mortality because of coral reef bleaching caused by the El Niño ocean current.1 Nearly 2.5 billion people in the developing world depend almost entirely on small-scale practices for their livelihoods, and these practices depend on the protection and sustaining of key ecosystems.2 This is where GEF lends a hand to ensure that those affected most by climate change, forest degradation, diminishing natural resources, and other environmental pressures can develop workable strategies, and gain access to funding support.
The Green Climate Fund
The success of a green economy relies heavily on the convergence of the economic, social and environmental pillars identified as the keys to a sustainable development agenda. Experience has shown us the many linkages between these pillars, and also the linkages among seemingly separate environmental challenges. To give just two examples: the work we do to protect ground water in an inland valley may well prove vital to restoring an ocean fishery hundreds of miles downstream; and our programmes on sustainable forest management aim to support sustainable livelihoods but also advance the global climate agenda. We also believe in the convergence of ideas and funds for a stronger and unified approach to information sharing and networking.
These lessons are very much in mind as GEF works closely with its partner, the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change, on implementing the decisions taken in 2011 at Durban concerning the Green Climate Fund. Still under development, the Green Climate Fund seeks to generate and allocate $100 billion a year by 2020 for mitigation and adaptation projects. The international financial landscape already includes a plethora of funds established with laudable objectives—but lacking sufficient resources to meet their ambitious agendas. Each new fund comes with its own complex set of rules, befuddling lower-capacity countries already burdened by the administrative work required to gain access to international aid. This proliferation ultimately penalises the very countries the funds were intended to help by straining their capacities to capture international funding. Recipient countries seek from international institutions a more streamlined and democratic structure of governance so they can focus on creating programmes with long-term environmental benefits that reflect their actual needs.
From the point of view of donor countries, the spread of climate funds leads to perpetually anaemic funding mechanisms delivering below-par results that erode support for continued funding. Challenging economic times increase demand for assistance to poor countries while decreasing the ability of developed countries to respond. That is why it is all the more important for the international community to craft carefully its financial plans, strategies and tools for addressing climate change and other global environmental threats. In our work on the Green Climate Fund, as in other focal areas, GEF aims to reduce the chaos and under-resourcing of the global climate finance system.
Empowering Communities
In all of our efforts, GEF recognises the importance of civil society and community-based organisations in bringing real-world expertise to the development of programmes. Their participation helps us communicate more effectively with the communities and people we serve. GEF is working to empower communities and invest in community-based organisations to take on these global environmental challenges. Empowering communities means empowering whole communities—women as well as men—and at GEF, we are conscious that both must participate to bring positive change to their communities, their homes, and the lives of their offspring.
Gender relations, and particularly the involvement of women in environmental and economic decision-making, play a key role in securing access to and control over environmental resources and the goods and services that they provide. Accounting for gender is important when running projects that address global environmental issues. To be successful, projects must recognise the role women play in many regions as the primary managers of land and resources, and must consider the different ways women and men regard conservation initiatives. GEF has long understood the importance of gender in successfully investing in local actions to achieve global environmental objectives. Mainstreaming gender in GEF’s six focal areas presents opportunities to enhance the value of projects as well as to advance gender equality, and the key lies in our deep understanding of the relationships among household welfare, women’s equality and environmental sustainability.
To cite one example, the Peruvian National Trust Fund for Protected Areas revolutionised the way in which long-term protection of ecosystems and biodiversity conservation catered to communities. The $773,000 project sought to increase the participation of women in planning, managing, monitoring and evaluating protected areas, making women more present and involved in the decision-making process.3 In the end, local women who had specialised in protected-areas issues were employed to train other local women how to use resources more efficiently to reduce pressure on protected areas, how to add more value to non-timber resources, and how, for instance, pastures can be improved to increase their loading coefficient.
Investments such as this have borne fruit, with hundreds of projects empowering communities in making a difference. We are laying the seeds for green economies to flourish throughout the developing world.
Our actions have mobilised additional investment, created jobs and protected environments while pioneering innovative financial instruments and promoting market-based mechanisms. The result has been the widespread adoption and dissemination of climate-friendly technologies. Initiatives supported by GEF have helped secure 734 million hectares of land and ocean dedicated to biodiversity conservation and the sustainable use of biological resources. GEF-supported projects have served as catalysts for the transfer to developing countries of thirty climate-friendly technologies for energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable urban transport, and methane reduction, as well as other benefits.
Information Systems
With communities alarmed by the devastating effects of climate change upon local economies and ecosystems, GEF supports and finances initiatives designed to allow donor and recipient countries to develop a network of information sharing, knowledge development and skill sets so as to enhance the ability of local, regional and national stakeholders to carry out their projects.
We believe that information systems are vital for the adequate management of natural resources and because of the intellectual capacity they offer. They play a very special role in bridging the technological and educational gap between the developed and the developing worlds, creating opportunities where environmental information and computer applications can have transformative power in the field.
In those terms, GEF has become a major provider of resources that allow geographic information systems (GIS) and remote-sensing technologies to be applied in the developing world to support sustainable natural-resource practices. For example, with GIS technology, Moldova is now monitoring and supervising sites polluted by persistent organic pollutants.4 The work involves identifying and classifying environmental and health risks in the area caused by the improper use, exposure and storage of pesticides in the 1980s, when the incidence of chronic ailments rose significantly in both men and women in rural agricultural areas. On average, 10 per cent of the budgets of most projects that GEF finances—amounting to approximately $500 million to date—is used to secure hardware, GIS, and remote-sensing software, along with the proper training required to operate such systems.
We firmly believe in providing communities and community-based organisations with all the necessary tools and knowledge to move forward. For example, GEF has supported dozens of technicians from the six countries of the Congo Basin to be trained in Brazil in using lower-cost and customised remote-sensing and monitoring systems for tropical forests. These systems are essential for identifying deforestation and illegal logging, and for the deployment of enforcement responses. The Congo Basin and the Amazon are the repositories of the largest expanses of tropical forest in the world, and technologies developed in Brazil are now proving more effective and affordable both in Brazil and the Congo than more expensive systems available on the market. These systems allow local and regional managers to learn how to use new technologies, creating more work opportunities and generating higher-end jobs in the beneficiary countries.
Looking Ahead
In a matter of weeks, we return to Rio, and while it will be tempting to look back on the accomplishments of the past twenty years, it is much more important to look forward to the challenges ahead. Much has been accomplished, but this is no time to rest and congratulate ourselves. The economic and environmental challenges we face demand new strategies to ensure that our investments achieve our goal of environmentally sustainable development. We have a job to do: to tend the garden of a green economy and to sow the seeds that will flower into a sustainable environmental future.
Endnotes
1. See Global Environment Facility, “Experiences from SGP [Small Grants Programme]: Protecting International Waters through Climate-Resilient and Community-Based Actions”, Washington, D.C., May 2010 [/sites/default/files/publication/SGPIW_Repor..., pp. 18–19, 28–9.
2. Global Environment Facility and the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification, Land for Life: Securing Our Common Future (Washington, D.C.: Global Environment Facility, 2011).
3. Global Environment Facility, “Mainstreaming Gender at the GEF”, Washington, D.C., October 2008 [/sites/default/files/publication/mainstreami....
4. Global Environment Facility, “Building Partnerships for Sound Management of Chemicals”, Washington, D.C., April 2011 [/sites/default/files/publication/Partnership..., p. 34.