Evaluations

As the potential of COVID-19 to disrupt GEF activities became clear, the GEF Partnership took measures to adapt to the challenges. In the June 2020 Council meeting the GEF Secretariat presented a White Paper on GEF COVID-19 Response Strategy to discuss how GEF activities are being affected, how GEF is responding, and the strategy it would adopt to respond to the long-term challenges due to the pandemic.

Since inception, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has been explicit about the importance of involving stakeholders, initially described as "the public", in GEF-financed interventions.

Overview

Established in 2002, the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF) is mandated to provide support to parties not included in Annex I of the UNFCCC. With its broad scope covering climate change adaptation as well as mitigation, the SCCF represented the only comprehensive climate change fund under the UNFCCC until the establishment of the Green Climate Fund (GCF).

The 2020 program evaluation of the least developed countries fund (LDCF) covers performance and progress towards LDCF objectives and results in the four years since the 2016 LDCF program evaluation.

Overview

GEF enabling activities are projects to prepare a plan, strategy, or report to fulfill commitments under a Convention. This evaluation assesses the role of enabling activities in helping countries meet their Convention obligations, their role in developing national policies, plans and strategies, and the efficiency of the direct access mechanism.

Overview

Ensuring an adequate supply of clean water for people, livelihoods and ecosystems while also protecting against water-related shocks and stresses are the key components that make up water security. In the GEF, water security is woven into several focal areas, from transboundary water resource management in international waters to protecting against drought in land degradation and limiting water pollution in chemicals and waste.

Projects that use community-based approaches (CBA) at the GEF are those that are designed to use a people-centered approach for management of natural resources, characterized by participation of local communities and resource users (including indigenous people, women, youth, and marginalized or vulnerable people) in decision-making activities.

The strategic country cluster evaluation (SCCE) of least developed countries (LDCs) covers all 47 LDCs, located in Africa, Asia, and Latin America and the Caribbean. Selection of the LDCs for an SCCE is based on the countries' common LDC status and related economic, social and environmental challenges. LDCs are low-income countries confronting severe structural impediments to sustainable development.