This week in Guardian Me­dia's en­vi­ron­men­tal space, The Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF) Small Grants Pro­gramme, presents the sec­ond of an ex­clu­sive se­ries for Clean­ing Up The Mess en­ti­tled help­ing civ­il so­ci­ety groups make a dif­fer­ence in their en­vi­ron­ment.

Think­ing Glob­al­ly, Act­ing Lo­cal­ly

The GEF is the largest pub­lic fun­der of projects de­signed to ad­dress glob­al en­vi­ron­men­tal pri­or­i­ties at the na­tion­al lev­el. Projects fund­ed by the pro­gramme fall with­in five fo­cus ar­eas: bio­di­ver­si­ty con­ser­va­tion, pro­tec­tion of in­ter­na­tion­al wa­ters, pre­ven­tion of land degra­da­tion, cli­mate change (mit­i­ga­tion and adap­tion) and re­duc­tion of per­sis­tent or­gan­ic pol­lu­tants.

A unique com­po­nent of the GEF ini­tia­tive has been its Small Grants Pro­gramme (SGP), launched in 1992- the year of the first Rio Earth Sum­mit. Root­ed in the be­lief that glob­al en­vi­ron­men­tal prob­lems are best ad­dressed when lo­cal com­mu­ni­ties take own­er­ship, the SGP funds and pro­vides tech­ni­cal sup­port to civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions for com­mu­ni­ty-based en­vi­ron­men­tal projects.

Grants up to US$50,000 can be award­ed to groups whose project pro­pos­als: fall with­in the GEF's five fo­cal ar­eas; sat­is­fy the GEF SGP eval­u­a­tion cri­te­ria; and demon­strate a clear con­sid­er­a­tion for and in­clu­sion of sus­tain­able liveli­hoods and gen­der equal­i­ty fac­tors.

Ex­am­ples of civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions el­i­gi­ble to ap­ply in­clud­ing char­i­ties com­mu­ni­ty-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, youth groups, faith-based or­gan­i­sa­tions, vil­lage coun­cils, acad­e­mia, pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tions and non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions. To date, the GEF SGP has in­vest­ed over US$450 mil­lion in over 12,000 com­mu­ni­ty projects in 122 coun­tries.

From Char­lot­teville to Ca­roni - GEF SGP gains trac­tion in T&T. For coun­tries like Trinidad and To­ba­go where Gov­ern­ment's de­vel­op­ment fo­cus has tra­di­tion­al­ly cen­tred on pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion, the SGP's com­mu­ni­ty-cen­tred ap­proach to en­vi­ron­men­tal sus­tain­abil­i­ty is crit­i­cal to the im­ple­men­ta­tion of en­vi­ron­men­tal and nat­ur­al re­source man­age­ment poli­cies on the ground.

Ac­cord­ing to UN res­i­dent co­or­di­na­tor and UNDP res­i­dent rep­re­sen­ta­tive to Trinidad and To­ba­go, Suri­name, Aru­ba, Cu­ra­cao and St Maarten, Dr Mar­cia de Cas­tro, this par­tic­i­pa­to­ry ap­proach to en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment and sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment is the heart and soul of the UNDP.

Com­ment­ing on the grow­ing trend of civ­il so­ci­ety or­gan­i­sa­tions in Trinidad and To­ba­go tak­ing ac­tion to ad­dress en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues with­in com­mu­ni­ties, De Cas­tro notes, "There are a lot of peo­ple out there who are in­ter­est­ed in do­ing a lot of good things for their com­mu­ni­ties. At the same time, get­ting them or­gan­ised, get­ting peo­ple to vol­un­teer their time, get­ting the ex­per­tise to put to­geth­er a project pro­pos­al on a vol­un­tary ba­sis is the chal­lenge. Un­less we in­vest in build­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of CBOs and NGOs, it will be­come hard­er and hard­er to see State-led de­vel­op­ment pol­i­cy have an im­pact."

Build­ing this ca­pac­i­ty, she be­lieves, is the work of the UNDP in col­lab­o­ra­tion of oth­er key stake­hold­ers. "We can­not lose sight that when work­ing with com­mu­ni­ty based groups we al­so have to help them de­vel­op skills -the lead­er­ship, the man­age­r­i­al, the op­er­a­tional skills re­quired to move from a good idea to good re­sults. This is where all play­ers -state, pri­vate sec­tor and in­ter­na­tion­al donor and de­vel­op­ment agen­cies like the UNDP - need to come to­geth­er".

The SGP's pop­u­lar­i­ty and track record of suc­cess has shown steady im­prove­ment since its in­tro­duc­tion to the twin is­land 17 years ago. Eighty-five projects, im­ple­ment­ed by 55 CBOs and NGOs in over 36 com­mu­ni­ties through­out Trinidad and To­ba­go, at a to­tal cost of US$1.5 mil­lion are im­pres­sive num­bers by any stan­dard.

This ar­ti­cle ap­pears cour­tesy the Glob­al En­vi­ron­ment Fa­cil­i­ty (GEF) Small Grant Pro­gramme (SGP) pub­lic ed­u­ca­tion se­ries. The GEF SGP pro­vides grants of up to US$50,000 to civ­il so­ci­ety groups for projects in Bio­di­ver­si­ty, Cli­mate Change, In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ters, Per­sis­tent Or­gan­ic Pol­lu­tants and Land Degra­da­tion. For fur­ther in­for­ma­tion on ap­ply­ing for GEF SGP grants please vis­it: www.undp.org.tt/GEF-SGP/or www.face­book.com/GEF­S­G­PTT

If your com­pa­ny or pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tion is in­ter­est­ed in part­ner­ing with the UNDP to men­tor or coach grantees of the GEF SGP, please call 623 7056 ext. 252