The UNDP-GEF POPs Resource Kit - International POPs Elimination ...

IA's should clearly differentiate the roles and objectives of national vs.
regional/global Enabling Activity projects.
Implementing Agencies should maintain flexibility in reallocating project funding
and in redesigning project activities.
4c--The UNDP-GEF Small Grants Programme
Background
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a unique international entity. Its mission,
governance, mandate and internal procedures reflect and represent innovative responses to
the spirit and mandate of the landmark United Nations Conference on Environment and
Development (UNCED), often popularly referred to as the Earth Summit, held in Rio de
Janeiro, Brazil, in June 1992. The GEF aims to protect and promote global environmental
benefits, by funding projects and programmes in the GEF focal areas of biodiversity, climate
change, international waters and persistent organic pollutants (POPs), as well as degradation
of land, desertification and deforestation as they relate to one or more of the aforesaid GEF
focal areas. The implementing agencies of the GEF are the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the World
Bank.
Since its inception in 1992, the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP), implemented
by UNDP, has occupied a strategic niche within the GEF, particularly by supporting
community-based initiatives and interventions responding to the criteria, objectives and
priorities of the GEF. Notably, the SGP:
• supports outreach and awareness raising activities on selected environmental
concerns;
• builds the capacities of non-governmental organisations (NGOs), communitybased
organisations (CBOs) and local communities in addressing such environmental
concerns; and
• provides a mechanism for demonstrating and disseminating community-level or
community-led interventions and solutions to such environmental concerns.
Further, SGP projects often also aim to complement and corroborate the mediumsized
or full-sized GEF projects in a country by providing a window of opportunity for the
participation of NGOs, CBOs and local communities in GEF-related activities. In fact, the
SGP is rooted in the belief that many environmental concerns, challenges and considerations
can be adequately addressed only if multi-stakeholders, like NGOs, CBOs and local
communities, are realistically and meaningfully involved in their remediations.
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