From Hutton Archer, Global Environment Facility
Since 1991, the Global Environment Facility, a fund set up by the UN and the
World Bank, has allocated more than $730 million to biodiversity projects
in developing countries and economies in transition. Much more needs to be done
by the GEF, individual governments and other international institutions. But in
the opinion of many, including leading nongovernmental organisations, the GEF’s
investments have helped to conserve the world’s remaining biodiversity.
Your article reports that even the agencies that run them rate 12 per cent of
GEF biodiversity projects as “unsatisfactory”
(This Week, 6 June, p 18). Put
another way, 88 per cent of the projects were deemed “satisfactory”—an
impressive result considering the state of environmental decay, the complex
social and political circumstances facing local populations, and the fragile
institutional structures of many of the world’s poorest countries.
Furthermore, you have selectively quoted the independent evaluation of the
GEF. The conclusion of that study was that “GEF has generally performed
effectively with regard to rapidly creating new institutional arrangements and
approaches to programming its resources in the four focal areas.”
Your article also questioned our priorities. By design, developing countries
have a strong say—through majority membership on the GEF’s governing
council, which determines the GEF’s operational strategy and programmes, and
through participation in the conference of the parties to the Convention on
Biological Diversity. The GEF, which runs the financial mechanism of the
convention, receives guidance on policy and programme priorities from the
convention.
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Finally, it should be noted that the GEF is factoring the critical issue of
land degradation into all its work—on biodiversity, climate change,
international waters and ozone depletion—and is doing more to support the
objectives of the desertification convention than any other multilateral
entity.
Washington DC
