Findings Relevant to the GEF IW Learn Confernce

GEF International Waters Programme

Study – 2004

Findings relevant to the GEF IW Conference

Prof. Laurence Mee

IW Study Team Leader

Main objectives of the study

• An assessment of the impacts and results of the IW focal area to the protection of transboundary water ecosystems,

• An assessment of the approaches, strategies and tools by which results were achieved, and

• Identification of lessons learned and formulation of recommendations to improve GEF IW operations.

The Study is a key input to the independent Overall Program Study of the GEF

Status of the portfolio in 2004

• 95 Full-sized projects distributed globally

• Total GEF investment of $691.59 millions

Total GEF and co-financed funding

0

100

200

300

400

500

600

Year

Million US$Cofinance

GEF

• Total co-financing estimated at $1466.84 millions (leverage 1:2)

Case study regions

• The Black Sea basin (including the Danube and Dnipro River basins),.

• The La Plata River basin (including the adjacent Patagonia shelf),

• The African lakes and their catchments (Tanganyika, Malawi and Victoria),

• The East Asian seas (including the Gulf of Thailand, the South China Sea).

The biggest single investment in the GEF IW Focal Area

The highest level of co-funding

Criteria used for measuring success

• Coherent, transparent and practicable design;

• Achievement of global benefits;

• Country ownership and stakeholder involvement;

• Replication and catalysis;

• Cost effectiveness and leverage;

• Institutional sustainability; and

• Incorporation of monitoring and evaluation procedures.

Overall achievement

“The study revealed an impressive portfolio of well-managed GEF-IW interventions and there is increasing success at leveraging collateral funding, including investments. The leveraging ratio is currently 1:2 and the total portfolio exceeds US$2 billions, evincing the largest effort in history to support sustainable use and protection of transboundary waters.”

“… it is the vital ‘groundwork’ behind sustainable development: providing evidence, developing strategies and innovative solutions, improving awareness, promoting stakeholder dialogue, helping to build new institutions, testing new approaches through demonstration projects and creating opportunities for investment. This is a gradual process of stepwise change towards shared goals, and progress is often difficult to assess”.

“The GEF international waters operational strategy aims at assisting countries to jointly undertake a series of processes with progressive commitments to action and instilling a philosophy of adaptive management. Further, it seeks to simplify complex situations into manageable components for action”

An important advance in emphasis in overall rationale

Adaptive management is a process by which agreed long-term goals are achieved in a series of pragmatic action-based steps.

•Adaptive management is a participatory process of ‘learning by doing’. It requires full stakeholder involvement.

•Adaptive management cannot be achieved without continuous monitoring of status, stress reduction and process indicators and a firm commitment by governments to maintain monitoring beyond the GEF project cycle.

Adaptive management

This approach fits well with major policy

initiatives such as the Millennium

Development Goals

Periodic Assessment (TDA, joint fact-finding)•System boundaries (space and time)•Scoping of environmental & social impacts•Research on causality•Review of institutions, laws, policies, economic instruments

EcoQOs(typically valid for 1

decade)

Robust quantitativesystem state indicatorsto measure levels of impact

Regular monitoring (all indicators)

Baseline studies

Regulations and compliance

Slow feedback loop

Status and trends

Operational targets

(typically valid 3-5 yrs)

Fast feedback loop

Operational indicators: process, stress reduction, societal (& project performance)

Implementing adaptive Management

Main problems with implementing adaptive

management• Insufficient understanding of the

process at all levels

• Insufficient development of common status, stress reduction and process indicators

• Insufficient commitment and capacity for long term monitoring

• Continued lack of transparency or bureaucratic delays in releasing key information

Importance of Strategic Partnerships

• SAP implementation is a costly long-term commitment by governments

• The partnership is an opportunity to focus the efforts of governments, donors and financing institutions on key SAP recommendations and demonstrate how change can be achieved.

• The Danube/Black Sea Strategic Partnership is the first test case of this new GEF strategy.

• We are satisfied that difficulties identified in the study have now been addressed and this key partnership is making good progress.

Main lessons learned – I. Project Cycle

• Donor expectations regarding project timeframes are often unrealistic and force compromises that limit buy-in and eventual sustainability (e.g. through excessive use of external consultants)

• … sustainable mechanisms are rarely created in less than a 10 year total timeframe.

Sustainable institutions

Main lessons learned – I. Project Cycle

• Some of the GEF interventions do not appear to have established, from the outset, clearly stated outputs and outcomes together with an ‘exit strategy’.

• This exit strategy should constitute an agreement between all parties regarding the actions that will be taken at the end of the intervention or earlier if basic assumptions are not met or if required outputs are not achieved.

Main lessons learned – II. The Transboundary Diagnostic

Analysis• Sometimes regarded as a bureaucratic pre-

requisite for donor funding rather than an element of an adaptive management strategy enabling the identification of transboundary issues and their causes.

• TDA should be periodically updated to reflect the changing regional situation (this has not happened in any of the IW projects though it is planned for the Black Sea).

Main lessons learned – II. The TDA

The TDA is an effective tool if it:

• sets appropriate boundaries,

• identifies all relevant stakeholders,

• conducts studies by joint fact finding (without excluding any relevant regional expertise),

• includes an appropriate balance of disciplines,

• identifies the socio-economic causes of the transboundary problems identified,

• evaluates the institutional capacity and

• makes all the information available to the stakeholders in a

concise and non-jargonistic manner.

Main lessons learned – II. The TDA

• Many IW projects have failed to conduct careful analyses of stakeholders, institutional capacities and responsibilities.

• This has led to difficulties in strategic planning and effective operationalisation of projects at a later stage.

• It also risks ‘capture’ of projects by particular sectors.

• Stakeholder analysis and institutional mapping should be an integral component of all TDAs and proposals for demonstration sites.

Main lessons learned – III. The value of demonstration

projects• Early use of demonstration projects has helped

build confidence amongst stakeholders.

• Replicability requires careful site selection, stakeholder exchanges, capacity building and technological transfer.

• Demonstration projects alone do not resolve problems that exist at greater scales.

Main lessons learned – IV. Appropriate scales for assessment

and management• The ‘ecosystem approach’ may be applied at a variety

of different scales within predominantly natural boundaries.

• In some projects, political considerations have overridden the selection of appropriate natural boundaries, and the ecosystem-wide objectives are unlikely to be met.

Note the importance of the ecosystem approach as a basis for non-eligible regions as well as for the GEF

Main lessons learned – IV. Appropriate scales for

assessment and management• Not all transboundary problems however,

require a common regional approach (e.g. harmonised laws and regulations) for effective management in order to meet agreed regional and global objectives.

• The strategy employed at each site must be tailored to the geographical scale of pressures on the system, the local governance structure and the available human capacity

Main lessons learned – V. The value of strategic planning

• Projects developed to date have shown that a great deal of pragmatism is required in order to develop a SAP.

• The SAP should enable the achievement of the agreed region-wide objectives through specific national actions and, at a regional level, identify, reinforce or create the sustainable institutions necessary for effective regional coordination.

• The transboundary issues identified in the TDA should be addressed according to their agreed priorities.

Main lessons learned – V. The value of strategic planning

• Well designed country-driven SAPs, together with NAPs (National Action Programmes) provide a benchmark to encourage and assess progress towards commonly defined goals and milestones.

• Those focusing upon declaratory statements have encountered greater difficulties to implement than those with more detailed targeted and costed operational strategies.

Main lessons learned – V. The value of strategic planning

• Establishment of EcoQOs, or water use objectives, together with a statement of ‘vision’ has not occurred in many projects and their effective public diffusion is often ignored

• Greater care should be taken to integrate social issues in SAP/NAP recommendations.

• Projects that have linked reforms to the provision of alternative livelihoods, poverty alleviation and gender issues have been particularly successful at engaging community support.

• This may result in trade-offs between measures that would maximise economic yield, environmental benefits and social benefits.

Main lessons learned – V. The value of strategic planning

• NAPs are an essential part of the planning mechanism but we have seen little evidence of their widespread development to date.

• They need to give detailed information on how the regional objectives will be operationalised.

• This should include deployment of human capacity (or capacity-building needs), infrastructure, legal and policy reforms, finance and investments.

• Care must be taken not to lose sight of the global benefits in the national-scale planning process; costs, benefits and alternatives should be fully explored

Main lessons learned – VI. The inter-ministry process

• Inter-Ministry Committees (IMCs) have not been developed in many projects but they are crucial at a national level in order to avoid ‘capture’ of the project by a particular sector or avoidance of difficult discussions that will be needed in order for the project to succeed.

• The IMC should be chaired by a Minister or Deputy Minister from the appropriate sector. Special arrangements will be required in highly decentralised countries in order to ensure inclusion of relevant government entities

Main lessons learned – VI. The inter-ministry process

• The IMCs by themselves may not be sufficient to maintain the necessary political momentum.

• Local-level actions should be included with full stakeholder involvement and clear public participation plans but these are currently absent from almost all SAPs.

• This may require additional inter-sectoral groupings at the regional, national or local levels

Main lessons learned – VI. The inter-ministry process

• Involvement of the private sector in IW projects has, until recently, been rather limited.

• The emergence of the first Public/Private Sector Partnership Investments (PPPIs) is encouraging though this model should not be regarded as ‘one size fits all’

Main lessons learned – VII. Project operational arrangements and

support • Benefits of close coordination between implementing agencies

at all levels far outweigh the transaction costs.

• The current low level of management fees that can be charged by the IAs makes such task sharing increasingly unattractive however.

• For co-implemented projects to be successful, there needs to be active technical coordination between IAs at the regional level, otherwise there is a tendency for the projects to be split into self-standing components with a consequent danger of fragmentation

Main lessons learned – VII. Project

operational arrangements and support

• Current inter-project coordination remains ad-hoc and often deficient, particularly between projects in different focal areas (e.g. between International Waters and Biological Diversity or Climate Change).

• Valuable opportunities for synergy are being lost at the regional level

Main lessons learned – VII. Project operational arrangements and

support • There is chronic over-commitment of some public officials

acting as counterparts or providing expertise as a national contribution for project implementation. This limits their support to projects.

• Some projects have adopted systems for formally accounting for counterpart contributions, an approach that should be further evaluated in the interest of transparency and future institutional sustainability.

• In some cases, GEF support to joint implementing mechanisms has been gradually ‘tapering down’ to ensure smooth transfer of institutional responsibility

Implementation of the previous IW Study

0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100%

Clarify role of Ops

Increase OP10 emphasis on LBA

TDA as a basis for all SAPs

Guidelines on major concepts in OPs

Increase suitability assessment of EAs

Mid-term reviews on projects

Final evaluation after project on common format

IA advisory function within GEF

Formalise IWLearn and IW-Conferences

Comparable indicators

Evaluation of project development in S America

Streamlined oversight methodology

Improvements in M&E reviews

Better document archiving (GEF Sec)

Unique document identifier

Study recommendations1. The production and use of an accessible GEF

International Waters Focal Area manual;

2. To develop a comprehensive M&E system for IW projects ;

3. The incorporation of a regional level coordination mechanism for IW projects ;

4. The redefinition of the GEF International Waters Task Force

Difficult to assess progress of projects from current process indicators.

Little information on outcomes (process, stress reduction and status)

Crystal clear information targeted on particular user groups

Some successes to report here but more work needed

Should ensure greater system-wide coherence and provide technical guidance. Management cost review needed.