Designing Projects in a Rapidly Changing World
Guideline for embedding resilience, adaptation and transformation into sustainable development projects.
Reducing Black Carbon Can Save Lives and Help Combat Climate Change
A GEFSTAP advisory document.
Delivering Global Environmental Benefits for Sustainable Development: Report to the 5th GEF Assembly, México, May 2014
This STAP Report to the Fifth GEF Assembly is intended to demonstrate how the GEF must increasingly:
- Deliver global environmental benefits within the context of environmentally sustainable development;
- Enhance technical and scientific support for collective action to sustain the Earth’s life-support systems through targeted investments;
- Enable improved human well-being, health, security, livelihoods and social equity at the same time as environmental benefits;
- Support innovation and transformational change to tackle the root causes of inter-connected environmental problems; and
- Simultaneously meet multiple environmental and developmental objectives to ensure sustainable futures.
Sustainable Urbanization Policy Brief: Proliferation of Urban Centres, their Impact on the World’s Environment and the Potential Role of the GEF
The world is in the midst of a massive, unprecedented shift in population distribution towards urban centers. The United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) reports that in 2008, for the first time there were more people living in cities than in the countryside1. Moreover, by 2030, it is estimated that five billion people will live in urban centers, with the predominant growth occurring in Africa and Asia. The newly published IPCC Report (Chapter 12) on Human Settlements, Infrastructure and Spatial Planning2 states that expansion of urban areas is on average twice as fast as urban population growth, and that the expected increase in urban land cover during the first three decades of the 21st Century will be greater than the cumulative urban expansion in all of human history.
Mainstreaming Biodiversity in Practice - A STAP Advisory Document
The challenges confronting the conservation of the planet’s richness of life threaten to overwhelm our collective efforts to limit species loss and degradation of ecosystems and the services that they deliver. The foundation of biodiversity conservation for well over a century have been protected areas (PAs). While successful, they are increasingly vulnerable to land use changes taking place around them. In response to these trends, conservationists and international organizations have developed and actively supported a new biodiversity conservation paradigm: biodiversity mainstreaming.
Assessing the Effects of Terrestrial Protected Areas on Human Well-Being: A STAP Advisory Document
The creation of protected areas (PAs) has been a central strategy of biodiversity conservation for more than a century. Increasingly, in the last few decades of the 20th century a new requirement was added – that the cre¬ation and maintenance of PAs should strive to alleviate poverty, and should in no case exacerbate it. The Durban Accord agreed at the Vth International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) World Parks Congress in 2003 was a milestone in the process of mainstreaming PAs in development agendas.
The Political Economy of Regionalism: The Relevance for International Waters and the Global Environment Facility
There is strong evidence that contemporary regionalism and regional cooperation influence both the context and quality of transnational policy making in most sectors, ranging from economic development, social affairs, trade, health, and education, to peace and security. The importance of using regional or collective action approaches to address a range of environmental issues is also widely recognized in both policy and research. Indeed, most freshwater and marine resources are transboundary in nature and are of vital importance for economic and social development, food security, and the sustainable use and management of ecosystems.
Managing Soil Organic Carbon for Global Benefits
The publication highlights the relationship between sustainable land management, soil organic carbon, and human developmental benefits as a significant entry point to delivering global benefits.
Revised Methodology for Calculating Greenhouse Gas Benefits of GEF Energy Efficiency Projects (Version 1.0)
A step-by-step guide on how to use the methodology and four examples demonstrating the use each module in the methodology.
GEF Guidance on Emerging Chemicals Management Issues in Developing Countries and Countries with Economies in Transition
In the face of rapid globalization and demand for products, increased trade, expansion of manufacturing into Developing Countries and Countries with Economies in Transition (CEIT), new chemicals, uses, or products, along with an increased awareness of real or potential negative impacts of chemicals, the last two decades has also seen the rapid implementation of a number of regional and international agreements regarding chemicals management, which have focused concerns on the need for a globally effective and sustainable chemicals management process. One particular chemicals management response of note, is the Strategic Approach to International Chemicals Management (SAICM), which pays particular attention to chemicals, products, uses, releases, or wastes that are currently not under consideration or taken up by existing Multilateral Environmental Agreements (MEAs).