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five years and hence, the UNDP
thematic areas of natural resource management, capacity building for
leadership (decision-making), informa-tion, advocacy and participation and
management of development would also be addressed. Some countries, including India, were
late in participating in the SGP. The Pilot Phase In India, the pilot phase of the GEF SGP was
initiated with a total outlay of approximately US$ 3,00,000 in late 1995.
Between 1995 and 1997, 24 projects were approved. Most of these projects ended
by late 1998. While Operational Phase One of the SGP commenced with the
reconstitution of the National Selection Com-mittee in March, 1998 and 20 odd
projects sanc-tioned during 1998, the projects could not be initiated due to
certain technical snags. However, these projects are now in the process of
being funded under the sec-ond Operational Phase II, beginning in 1999. In
1998, the GEF coordin-ation unit (UNDP) commissioned an independent
evalu-ation to review the purpose of the programme, specially for the period
1995-1997. The evaluation was based on interviews, reviews of key documents,
visits to seven countries, combined studies on two further countries and a
self-evaluation questionnaire sent to the country programmes. The evaluation
was carried out by three international consultants who observed that with an
amount of about US$2,00,000 made available per year to each country and small
operating budgets (less than US$50,000 per year), the achievement had been a
remarkable one. The GEF/SGP has been under
considerable pressure to reduce its non-grant expenditure or transaction cost
and has strived to keep this under 25 per cent during the operational phase.
This has only been achieved at the cost of keeping country-operating budgets
so low that many essential activities could not be carried out, in addition to
cutting the services provided by the New York Coordination Unit (NYCU) to a
completely unsatisfactory level. Apart from the success achieved, the
evaluators also observed that the UNDP/GEF SGP still lacks an explicit
strategy for grappling with the programme’s key technical and operational
challenges like: (a) how to use small grants to
achieve reconciliation between local community priorities and the global
environmental problems defined as the GEF’s focal areas; (b) how to measure or assess the
performance and impacts of the programme and its projects; and (c) how to reconcile the management
of a diverse and technically complex programme in 45 countries with very
modest resources for central and national level management. A Strategic Framework In view of these observations, the
evaluators recommended preparation of a GEF/SGP Strategic Framework and
Operational Plan which was anticipated but not carried out during the
Operational Phase I. It was also decided that this should be UNDP’s first
priority, whether or not it took the explicit shape of another programme
document. The above observations were in line
with the internal conclusions drawn about the pilot phase in India which are
as follows:- · · Networking or sharing of experience for replication of results was not attempted amongst implementing NGOs.
In view of these observations, the NYCU is in the process of finalizing the SGP ‘strategic framework’ and ‘monitoring and evaluation framework’ documents to guide the programmes. While these documents are still in the preparatory stages, it appears that the primary objective of the second operational phase of the UNDP/GEF SGP would be to secure global environmental benefits in the areas of biodiversity, climate change and international waters - three of the four GEF focal areas - through community based approaches. Operational Phase - II The UNDP/GEF SGP aims to protect the global environment by funding community based conservation and sustainable natural resource use projects. Since, different local and national conditions require different kinds of interventions, project components may include one or more of the following: demonstration, capacity building, targeted research, policy dialogue and information dissemination and raising awareness among critical constituencies. Achieving a better ‘fit’ with the GEF Operational Strategic Programme and demonstrating the global benefits obtained through implementing through local community - based projects are the high priority goals in the second operational phase. The approach of the programme continues to be based on the belief that local solutions to global environment problems are feasible and have been successfully implemented by the SGP, while at the same time recognizing that there is a significant potential to enhance the global benefits of the programme. This will be achieved through more rigorous focusing of projects to address the GEF criteria, increased capacity building and technical assistance, better monitoring and evaluation and more effective communications and outreach. The rationale for support of projects addressing GEF thematic areas is that some global environmental benefits would occur and reduce the threats or needs to ensure conservation and sustainable management of natural resources. It is envisaged that GEF funds would not substitute for regular or traditional sources of development funding but should be treated as additional funds earmarked solely for the purpose of enhancing global environmental benefits. Although, it is still being debated whether it would ensure sustainability both from the natural resource management perspective as well as for livelihoods development and whether GEF funds should be used only for ensuring global environmental benefits, which if restricted to natural resource management and livelihoods development, would make it difficult to ensure community participation as well as achieve sustainability. However, it is possible that the GEF Council may consider funding of the livelihood component as beyond the purview of GEF funding. If this happens, the onus of raising co-financing or community contribution and funds from other sources by the implementing organisation may become critical to ensure local participation and environmental sustainability.
A Participatory Approach The other aspect which makes the operational phase II different from the pilot phase is the importance being given to participatory monitoring and evaluation. Specifically, the rationale for developing a framework for monitoring and evaluation, generation of proper reports etc., is to help projects and programmes achieve sustainability,allow for replication and provide opportunities for eliciting and communicating lessons learnt. Ideally, the results or lessons learnt from monitoring and evaluation will assist in improving project and programme design and implementation. Monitoring and Evaluation In the case of the UNDP/GEF SGP, monitoring and evaluation are required at three levels: project, country and global. The goal of project monitoring and evaluation is to assess project implementation and its results. It is an important part of the project cycle and would help ensure project success with regard to local community participation and environmental sustainability. Thus, project monitoring and evaluation would serve (amongst others) the basic three purposes:
To be successful, ‘monitoring’ and ‘evaluation’ begins with a clear project design. However, monitoring involves collection and analysis of data about project activities. The data should be easy to collect and understand. The focus of monitoring is to use the knowledge gained to correct and adjust project implem-entation and management in order to achieve project objectives. Monitoring allows project participants to keep track of project objectives, activities, and expected results. ‘Evaluation’ considers the results and impacts of a project in terms of the local and global environment and the quality of life of the local communities. Through evaluation, project participants and others are able to understand and explain the impact of a project. The evaluation builds the links among environmental problems, causes and solutions identified in the project proposal; focuses on the general and specific objectives of a project and assesses how and to what extent it has been achieved. The evaluation should include an explicit appraisal of whether the project has achieved its stated objectives in terms of the GEF thematic areas and operational programmes. Evaluation of projects is generally done towards the end of project implementation and should be included, along with monitoring, in project design. Participatory monitoring implies use of participatory rural appraisal techniques and logical framework analysis for ensuring that each sanctioned project identifies not only broader goals, specific and immediate objectives, results or anticipated outputs, but also activities to be carried out under the project to achieve the outputs and the inputs required for carrying out the activities. Linked to these above aspects of logical framework analysis would be the need to identify indicators for measuring impacts and progress, tools for measuring these indicators, assumptions, risks, etc. related to the project hypothesis for proper monitoring. In other words, in case an NGO does not have the capacity to undertake logical framework analysis and provide assistance to the monitoring team to conduct these assessments, using these tools, it would be a compulsory need for the NGO to acquire these skills to make proper monitoring possible, both internally and as may be desired by the National Selection Committee through the National Coordinator. This has become necessary to ensure that continuous systematic monitoring is carried out to ensure the quality of work on the ground. qAlok B Guha is the National Co-ordinator of the UNDP/GEF/SGP.
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