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An Overview
India is one among the eighty-three countries globally, which operates
the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) administered by the United Nations
Development Program (UNDP). SGP India became operational in September
1997. After the Pilot Phase and Operational Phase I and II, now the SGP
is in its third operational phase (2005-2008).
Overall responsibility of SGP in India rests with the National Steering
Committee (NSC), which comprises representatives from the Government of
India, UNDP, NGOs and academicians. The programme is being implemented
(since September 2000) by the National Host Institution – Centre for
Environment Education (CEE).
The SGP in India has the following objectives:
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Promotes innovative
local responses that reduces threats to the global environment in one or
more of the five thematic areas – biodiversity conservation, climate
change mitigation, protection of international waters, prevention of
land degradation and phasing out of persistent organic pollutants (POPs).
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Builds capacities of
experts, self and communities on issues and concerns for sustainable
local initiatives.
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Demonstrates the
effectiveness and potential for wider application of small-scale,
decentralized, community based initiatives leading to local
entrepreneurships;
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Generate learning's
from the community based initiatives and support the spread of
successful approaches and methodologies;
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Creating public
awareness and advocacy on global environmental issues.
The potential courses
of action that could be supported under operational phase III will
include actions that could be taken to ameliorate the threat and to
ensure that the biodiversity/ international water body/natural resource
or energy base of global significance be conserved or rehabilitated or,
in the case of energy, reduced to sustainable levels of use and
management. This step helps to identify a SGP intervention that would
deal with the threat and contribute to eliminating it. 'A carefully
thought-out project concept or proposal, by following this reasoning,
makes explicit the link between the proposed intervention and potential
global environmental benefit, by focusing on benefits in the GEF focal
areas, which meet both global conventions and local objectives.' The SGP
will also identify proactively project themes, which CBOs/NGOs can
consider when they develop their own project concepts/proposals and
ideas.
Monitoring and Evaluation
The SGP-India views monitoring and evaluation as an ongoing
participatory process, which enables enhancement of skills,
understanding and applying lessons learned from the projects’
experiences. SGP-India has, from the beginning, insisted to project
partners to incorporate clearly defined indicators of performance in all
projects. This is a way of promoting learning among the involved and
getting their views on the progress of the project. Participatory
monitoring and evaluation involves stakeholders and beneficiaries in the
collective examination and assessment of a project. Moreover it is
people centered: Project stakeholders and beneficiaries are the key
actors of the evaluation process and not merely 'objects' of the
evaluation.
Stakeholders are groups that
have a role and interest in the objectives and implementations of a
project. The SGP provides a flexible window to meet the
unforeseen circumstances and time extensions which are possible to
happen in projects. The NGO's and CBO's as implementing partner
therefore need to be led by more genuine concern on a 'process driven
approach' rather than a targeted way of working, leading to better
empowerment at the grassroots level.
All project proposals will also be required to present a “Risk Analysis”
stating the critical assumptions and external factors upon which the
achievement of project objective depends.
Each field project partner whose project is approved and functioning is
required to submit Quarterly Progress Reports (QPR). These QPRs will
also identify any assistance needed by project partners in the form of
technical, social, financial or other inputs that were not foreseen at
the time of preparing the project report. The National Coordinators (NC)
and Regional Coordinators (RC) will, to the extent possible, arrange for
provision of these inputs and provide advice on any mid-course
corrections needed. |
