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November 2006 |
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The roundtable was divided into two sessions on National Strategies and the Resource Allocation Framework respectively.
National Strategies
This session was chaired by Li Yong, Vice Minister, Ministry of Finance, China and featured a presentation by Trieu Van Be, Vice Minister, Ministry of Natural Resources and the Environment, Vietnam who described some of the steps in developing the national environmental strategy in Vietnam. These included ensuring stakeholder participation, hosting national dialogues and consultation workshops, identifying relevant focal areas, and developing a public website.
He also noted some of the challenges faced in the process and placed particular emphasis on how to involve the wider public in GEF projects and the need to strengthen capacity in many sectors and institutions. A number of Heads of Delegation also spoke about their countries’ experiences in developing national environmental strategies. They highlighted the importance of close coordination among government agencies, well-designed and well-functioning institutions, and close monitoring and evaluation of plans and their implementation. They also raised a number of problems they faced in these processes, including a lack of capacity, inadequate resources, and an overall lack of environmental awareness. Many representatives noted that these problems are often accentuated in smaller countries. The representative speaking on behalf of the NGOs encouraged wider consultation in the development of national strategies and suggested that agreed strategies should be publicly available, for example through government websites.
Resource Allocation Framework
Roger Ehrhardt, Director-General, Multilateral Development Institutions, Canadian International Development Agency chaired this session and Ramon Fernandez, Deputy Assistant Secretary, Ministry of Economy, Finance and Industry, France provided opening remarks. He noted that he expected the RAF to improve the transparency of allocations and the predictability of resources, while noting that the real test of the RAF will be whether it enables the GEF to achieve its mandate in a more effective manner. He suggested that, among other issues, the mid-term review of the RAF could address the impact of the RAF on regional programs and on the role of civil society.
A number of common concerns were raised, including: • The need to develop a vulnerability index to better reflect the situation in the poorer developing countries, particularly in small-island developing states (SIDS); • The possible impact of the RAF on the relations between the GEF and the environmental conventions; • The concern that the RAF may make it more difficult to fund regional projects; • The possible impact of the RAF on countries that have poor planning and implementation capacity and the consequent need to reinforce these capacities in such countries; • The low weighting given to marine resources in the Biodiversity indicator; • The lack of transparency in the criteria used for the performance-related parts of the RAF and the lack of involvement of the Assembly in the RAF discussions; • The need to develop a special program for the SIDS, possibly modeled on the small grants program.
The representative of the NGO community also requested that NGOs be involved in the mid-term review process and suggested that the review also consider how national consultations were held.
The discussion note for this roundtable is available on the GEF website at: http://thegef.org/3rd_assembly/46/HighlevelRoundtables.html
Photos of this roundtable are available at: http://www.iisd.ca/ymb/gefassembly3/ |
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