While governments worldwide try to deal with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and look for solutions to get their economies back on track, work on maintaining and restoring the health of our global environment has never been more important.
This edition of the GEF-7 Scorecard reflects the GEF’s work before the start of the current crisis, and also makes clear that the GEF Partnership remains active and is delivering on our collective goal to deliver global environmental benefits. Together, countries, agencies and the GEF Secretariat have prepared a robust Work Program while operating on a virtual platform.
With this June 2020 Work Program, the GEF utilizes 61% of its seventh replenishment resources. It includes the third tranche of the Food Systems, Land Use and Restoration Impact Program targeting four new countries. Child projects of approved program framework documents are now under preparation and are moving toward CEO endorsement in the coming weeks and months.
The GEF is making steady progress in delivering on its Core Indicator targets to generate global environment benefits. Impact Programs contribute to a large extent to this achievement. Already, GEF-7 projects exceed the targets for three of its Core Indicators.
The GEF is bringing more resources to protect the global environment with its partners and reached a co-financing ratio of 8.3:1 with the current programming, continuing to surpass its level of ambition of seven dollars of cofinancing for every “GEF dollar” for the entire portfolio.
Private sector engagement is crucial to achieve systems change. Building on the last work program, this June 2020 Work Program includes four new non-grant instrument projects that deliver environmental benefits in innovative ways, by leveraging the role of private sector companies.
The Country Support Program (CSP) has delivered National Dialogues in response to country requests and had increased the delivery of Expanded Constituency Workshops in 12 constituencies until February 2020. Due to the COVID-19 crisis, the CSP was forced to postpone face-to-face events but it has quickly moved to leveraging IT tools to engage with countries on progress made in using GEF-7 resources with countries’ specific demands: five Constituency Meetings were held virtually in May 2020.
Upstream country consultations also take place to increase country capacity and understanding in strategic programming of GEF-7 resources.
Implementation of the gender and stakeholder engagement policies are making good progress. Projects continue embedding a gender-responsive approach in their design to advance environment objectives. Likewise, GEF projects increasingly engage and work with stakeholders from project design to implementation.
A growing emphasis on digital communication and strategic partnerships has helped to raise the GEF’s profile, build awareness, and support action on the global environment. Knowledge and learning activities support this work via e-courses available on the GEF website.