GEF Brown Bag Series

Results and Challenges of the GEF's
Capacity Building Approach: NCSA

Thursday, March 25, 2010
12:30 - 2:00 PM

Speakers:
Mr.Tom Twining-Ward, Regional Technical Advisor, UNDP
Mr.Kevin Hill, Technical Advisor, UNDP/UNEP Global Support Programme
Ms. Jyoti Mathur-Filipp, Sr.Communications Advisor, UNEP

Moderator:
Dr. Danielius Pivoriunas, Sr.Operations Officer, Capacity Building, External Relations Team
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At G6-151 (GEF Secretariat)

Food and Drinks will be served

The National Capacity Self-Assessments (NCSAs) emerged from the Capacity Development Initiative that was approved by the GEF Council in May 1999 to address the fragmented nature of capacity building and its growing importance under the three Rio Conventions. With the GEF approval of the Strategic Approach to Enhance Capacity Building (GEF 2003) in November 2003, the NCSAs form the first strategic and comprehensive approach to developing country capacities to produce global environmental benefits and achieve effective implementation of the Rio conventions.

A total of 146 NCSA projects were implemented by UNDP (117), UNEP (35) and the World Bank (1). By January 2010, 111 of these NCSAs have been completed, with 21 countries following up the NCSA with capacity building medium-size projects. An additional three (3) follow-up projects are awaiting approval for their follow-up projects. By June 2010, most of the 146 NCSAs will have completed their work.

The lessons to be learned from the NCSAs represent a unique opportunity to target capacity development activities to achieve sufficient capacity for implementation of Rio conventions. The results of the NCSA programme include a synthesis of the priority capacity development issues and needs, as well as good practices that could be replicated and extended in other countries. The NCSAs overall are a source of empirical data upon which to legitimize the types of capacity development services provided by multi- and bilateral development agencies.

While many of the challenges and issues are not new, the NCSAs took a bottom-up consultative approach to increase the legitimacy and national ownership of the set of issues, priority needs and recommended actions to achieve environmental sustainability. The NCSAs were in effect a logical progression of stock-taking, analysis, and prioritization of a strategic set of capacity development actions that should increase the likelihood of success through targeted intervention. For example, Kyrgyzstan has embarked on a pilot project of environmental fiscal reform to increase the revenue stream for conservation activities at the regional level.

The Talk will be presented by Mr. Tom Twining-Ward, Principal Technical Adviser for Capacity Development, UNDP and Mr. Kevin Hill, Technical Advisor of the NCSA Global Support Programme.

Mr.Tom Twining-Ward is the UNDP Regional Technical Advisor for Climate Change Adaptation, UN-REDD and Capacity Development, based in South Africa. He has 20 years experience with development, management, journalism, climate change and environment issues, and has worked globally – the last 13 years with UNDP, both in the field and HQ.

Mr. Kevin Hill, Technical Advisor of the NCSA Global Support Programme, began working in the environment field in 1984 when he was part of a FAO/IFAD project development team in Guangzhou, China. He worked in his native Jamaica as a Project Coordinator for the creation of the wetland nature reserve, and later was an advisor with the UNCED secretariat to support policy negotiations on Agenda 21 and the Forest Principles. After a brief stint with the FCCC secretariat, he moved to UNDP/GEF supporting the technical design and review of biodiversity and international waters projects. Taking a hiatus from UNDP to pursue doctoral research on the social construction of institutional sustainability, Kevin returned to UNDP/GEF in 2009 to support the NCSAs.