Delivering Global Environmental Benefits for Sustainable Development: Report to the 5th GEF Assembly

Over more than two decades, the Global Environmental Facility has helped to deliver multiple global environmental benefits. However, threats to the global commons continue to grow, driven by human activities and lifestyle choices. Meeting the challenges of managing and governing the world’s common-pool resources into the future requires a significant overhaul in the GEF’s business model, approaches and ambitions.

The report has three key messages for negotiators at the Fifth Assembly, who will be defining GEF policies for the next four years (the sixth “replenishment period”; GEF-6):

• GEF-funded initiatives should take a more integrated and holistic approach to tackling environmental degradation. Actions within the GEF’s individual focal areas – biodiversity, climate change (mitigation and adaptation), land degradation, international waters, chemicals and wastes – should aim to yield multiple benefits, enhance ecosystem services, and improve governance systems both within and across national boundaries.
• Sustainable development should be at the core of GEF interventions, enabling improved human well-being, health, livelihoods and social equity at the same time as environmental protection.
• The GEF should seek to effect permanent and transformational change, while remaining catalytic and innovative. This will require effectively leveraging the best scientific knowledge from the design of projects through implementation and evaluation, as well as learning from the experiences of past interventions through successful knowledge management.

The authors suggest two new areas for integrated approaches by the GEF: climate resilience and environmental security. They also comment on existing plans to integrate work around sustainable cities, food security, and commodity supply chains and environmental degradation.

While many of the changes called for are already visible in the new GEF Strategy for the coming four-year period (GEF-6), the report argues that they will require significant scientific and technical support, and a clear commitment by both the GEF and its partner agencies. Internal systems for results-based management, monitoring and evaluation, and information and knowledge management will all need to be strengthened.

Learn more and download the report (external link to GEF-STAP)