By Jim Lobe
WASHINGTON, Nov 8 2000 (IPS)

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), the multilateral agency which provides grants to poor countries to address cross-border environmental problems, announced that it has approved almost 154 million dollars for non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and governments involved in 14 new projects.

The projects, which will be co-financed with another 310 million dollars by other donor agencies, will address three major global environmental problems under the GEF’s mandate: climate change, bio-diversity, and the pollution of the oceans. The GEF also provides grants to address desertification and ozone depletion.

The Washington-based GEF, the only multilateral environmental agency created as a direct result of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio de Janeiro, provides about 500 million dollars a year in project funding. In its seven- year history, the agency, which is based at World Bank headquarters here, has so far committed a total of about 3 billion dollars in grants and raised another 8 billion dollars in co-financing for more than 700 projects in 140 countries.

Unique among multilateral agencies in its governance, the GEF is controlled by a governing council of 32 representatives equally divided between developing and industrialised countries, giving both blocs veto power over major policy decisions. GEF projects are normally implemented jointly with the UN Development Programme (UNDP), the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), or the Bank.

Thirty-nine countries, including some key developing countries – Argentina, Bangladesh, Brazil, China, Cote d’Ivoire, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, and Pakistan – contribute to the GEF. The United States and Japan are the top two donors, although European countries, led by Germany and France, have funded more than half of its budget to date.

The governing council approves four work programmes each year and convenes once every six months. Its latest meeting concluded Friday with the announcement of the current work programme.

In this round, most of the GEF’s funding will be directed at projects related to preserving bio-diversity in poor countries and helping them protect their own biological resources.

The GEF will contribute 26 million dollars to a 39-million-dollar project to help countries develop national frameworks on bio-safety to prepare for the entry into force of the Cartagena Protocol on Bio-safety, an outgrowth of the Bio-diversity Convention signed at the Earth Summit. Among other provisions, the Protocol requires that exports of genetically modified organisms be approved in advance from the importing country.

It will also provide 18.6 million dollars to a 43.5-million-dollar project to set up a decentralised system to help local communities in four key ecological regions of the West African nation of Burkina Faso manage their natural resources so as to limit agricultural encroachment in conservation areas while ensuring that farmers can continue to make a living.

GEF is also funding two bio-diversity projects in Mexico at a total cost of 23 million dollars; one designed to strengthen conservation efforts by the government, local and indigenous groups, and NGOs in four key regions, the second to fund conservation in the Sierra Gorda Biosphere Reserve, a priority conservation area which harbours a total of 14 key vegetation types, several of which are unique.

Finally, the GEF will provide 10.2 million dollars to a 35-million- dollar wildlife management project to be implemented by the World Bank and the Asia Development Bank (ADB) in Sri Lanka.

A second top priority for the GEF is global warming and climate change – an issue which received renewed attention last week when the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) predicted that the Earth’s average surface temperature is likely to increase from 1.5 C to 6.1 C during this century unless major efforts to reduce the emission of carbon-based and other greenhouse gases are not urgently implemented. The latest forecast was substantially greater than the IPCC’s past predictions.

“Global warming on such a scale would have the most disastrous effects on people and the environment in the most vulnerable countries,” according to GEF chairman Mohamed El-Ashry, who added that the GEF’s latest work programme on this problem is “most timely”.

The GEF will provide 7.85 million dollars to a 12.5-million-dollar UNEP project to assess the impact of climate change in several developing-country regions where little research has been done on the effect of global warming and on strategies by which they may adapt. The project will also stress building the capacity of local researchers and planners to develop such assessments, according to the GEF.

The agency also will provide 6.8 million dollars to a nine-million- dollar UNEP project to assess the market potential for solar and wind energy to be used in poor countries.

It will also fund two projects in China: one, a research effort to strengthen Beijing’s capacity to estimate its greenhouse-gas emissions in both the transportation and agricultural sectors; the second to help fund a 99-million-dollar UNDP/ADB programme to develop the use of wind power in three key provinces. China, which depends heavily on coal and oil, is currently the world’s third largest energy consumer.

Finally, the GEF will provide 4.6 million dollars and 10 million dollars, respectively, to Croatia and Romania to improve energy efficiency in both countries.

On oceans, the GEF will provide 4.8 million dollars to a 9.2 million dollar project to halve the amount of fish caught in nets of shrimp trawlers in six tropical countries – Costa Rica, Indonesia, Iran, Nigeria, the Philippines, and Venezuela – and reduce the accidental killing of sea turtles. The project, which was developed by the Food and Agricultural Organisation (FAO), will promote the use of technologies that will reduce the so-called “by-catch” of trawler nets.

The GEF will also provide almost 17 million dollars for a 31.7- million-dollar UNEP project to promote regional co-operation and management in the badly degraded South China Sea among the governments of Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam and 11 million dollars for a 19.8-million-dollar project for conservation in the Chaco region in Argentina and Bolivia.

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