The Fifth Overall Performance Study (OPS5) assessed progress toward sustained impact and identified priorities for strengthening programmatic approaches.

Drawing on portfolio analysis and country-level evaluations, it synthesizes findings from 33 evaluations conducted since OPS4 to provide early evidence for the sixth replenishment, examining the extent to which the GEF is meeting its objectives and identifying ways to strengthen progress toward impact.

OPS5 finds that although global environmental trends continue to worsen and funding remains inadequate, GEF projects show strong performance: over 80 percent of those completed during GEF-4 and GEF-5 achieved moderately satisfactory or higher outcomes, and more than 70 percent generated positive impacts, primarily at the local level.

GEF support has also advanced legal, regulatory, and institutional changes, but scaling results to broader levels requires replication, mainstreaming, market transformation, and other mechanisms.

The study notes high responsiveness to convention guidance and alignment with national priorities, though independent advisers caution that alignment must be evident in results as well as policies.

The report recommends that strategies for GEF-6 clearly incorporate pathways to broader adoption and strengthen programmatic, multifocal approaches consistent with convention guidance.