Evaluations

The African Biomes Strategic Country Cluster Evaluation (SCCE) covers GEF activities in 23 countries situated in two Sub-Saharan African biomes: the Sahel and the Sudan-Guinea Savanna. Selection of these two biomes is based on the countries' comparable land-based environmental challenges.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has a long history of supporting micro, small, and medium enterprises (MSMEs). As the GEF has shifted into more integrated approaches, it has also increasingly engaged MSMEs not only as a source of innovation and as beneficiaries, but also as a partner in scaling up the generation of global environmental benefits through a value-chain approach.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has a long history of investing in interventions to solve the environmental and health issues associated with the artisanal small-scale gold mining industry (ASGM). The signing of the Minamata Convention on Mercury in 2013 prompted an increased investment by GEF into the removal of mercury from human processes, including ASGM.

The Seventh Comprehensive Evaluation of the GEF (OPS7) provides solid evaluative evidence to inform the negotations for eighth replenishment of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) will take place in an international context that is very difficult to predict and navigate. The global environment continues on a downward trend, and more than a decade after the financial crisis of 2008.

Scaling up is not new to the GEF and in the last decade, all GEF focal areas have been shifting from site-level pilot projects towards projects or programs implemented at higher scales. Based on a review of focal area strategies and interviews with the GEF partnership, the GEF has gradually shifted its focus from pilots to scaled-up interventions over the last 25 years.

The GEF Annual Performance Report (APR) prepared by the GEF Independent Evaluation Office (GEF IEO) provides an overview of the performance of GEF activities and processes, key factors that may affect performance, and the quality of Monitoring and Evaluations systems (M&E).

The GEF introduced the integrated approach in 2014, building on its long and evolving history on integration. This major reform aimed to address the main drivers of global environmental degradation and deliver multiple benefits across multilateral environmental agreements using the GEF programmatic approach modality.

Since the creation of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) as a pilot program in 1991, there has been an expectation that the GEF would be an innovative institution and will use innovation to maximize its impact on global environmental benefits. More recently, the GEF2020 Strategy and GEF-7 Programming Directions called for the GEF to continue to be an innovator while actively seeking to effect transformational change.

GEF's results architecture is based on information provided by the Agencies through project documents, project implementation reports (PIRs), tracking tools, mid-term reviews and terminal evaluations. The data on results and performance of the projects and programs is aggregated for reporting. The GEF portal - including its earlier incarnation as PMIS - provides a platform to store, manage and retrieve data on GEF projects and program.

The Country Support Program (CSP) is a GEF-funded corporate program with the objective to assist GEF stakeholders increase and maintain capacity necessary to navigate the GEF landscape and work more effectively with GEF financing in a way that increase country ownership.