At its 51^st meeting in October 2016, the GEF Council requested the Trustee, in cooperation with the Secretariat, to initiate discussions on the 7^th replenishment of resources of the GEF Trust Fund (GEF-7). The 1^st replenishment meeting provided an opportunity for Contributing Participants to review GEF performance and evaluate progress, assess future funding needs, and agree on a financing framework.

The 8th African evaluation Association (AfrEA) International Conference "Evaluation of the SDGs: Opportunities and Challenges for Africa" will take place from March 27-30, 2017 in Kampala, Uganda. The IEO will participate in two workshop sessions:

Climate Change and Resilience: Evaluation and Learning
Wednesday 29 March, 17:00-18:00 local time, Room 18

The IEO has been invited to present its Land Degradation VFM study at the ‘Land and Poverty' conference hosted by the World Bank. The IEO session is on 21st March at 10:30 am.

Juha I. Uitto, Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the GEF, conducted a presentation during the session on Evaluation Governance in the high level policy meeting Tracking Development Progress & Evaluating Development Partnerships in the Post 2015 Era. The session also features presentations by Richard Levin, Director-General of the National School of Government in Pretoria, and by Cristina Magro, Partner, Rio Academy: Independent Consultant, International Development Association, Belo Horizonte.

Juha I. Uitto, Director, the Independent Evaluation Office of the GEF, will moderate the plenary session "Protection, Management, and Restoration of Future Forests" atGeography 2050 held at Columbia University in New York, NY. The 2016 Fall Synopsium of the American Geographical Society is the third in multi-year strategic dialogue about vital trends that will reshape geography of our planet by 2050. The session will be held Friday, November 18 from 8:45 - 9:45. The list of speakers include:

Networks operate in dynamic, complex and open environments in which changing responsibility flows from and around autonomous members. Since the establishment of Agenda 21, the increase in number and influence on sustainable development of civil society organization (CSO) networks worldwide has allowed for their formation and capacity building to be the subject of greater scrutiny.

Evaluation Use in the UN System: Conclusions from the Data

Stemming from the paper by the UN Evaluation Group (UNEG) on Evaluation Use in the UN System: Conclusions from the Data, this webinar discussed how communications can improve engagement with evaluation users, and how evaluator can improve communications to increase evaluation use.

Speakers:

Organized by UNDP Independent Evaluation Office in collaboration with UNEG, the webinar "Comprehensive evaluation of the GEF: Topics, approaches and methodological innovations" was held on Tuesday, November 8, 2016 from 12:30-1:30 pm. The webinar discussed the upcoming Sixth Overall Performance Study (OPS6), a comprehensive evaluation containing around twenty evaluations and sub-studies focusing on GEF performance, results, organizational and institutional issues.

Speaker: Juha I. Uitto, Director of the Independent Evaluation Office of the GEF.

The Evaluation of the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) influences the COP22 guidance to the GEF.

The findings and conclusions Program Evaluation of the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) were welcomed by the United Nations Climate Change Conference of Parties (COP22) in November 2016.

The Independent Evaluation Office (IEO) of the GEF presented six case studies from the biodiversity, international waters, and land degradation focal areas of the GEF at the First Geospatial Day celebrated at the World Bank on 1 November 2016.

The case studies demonstrated how the IEO has been using geospatial science combined with big data analytics and cutting edge technology to complement traditional evaluation methods.