Recent Activities

Saint Lucia was represented by Senator Lisa Jawahir and OECS Head of Environmental Sustainability Division Mr. Chamberlain Emmanuel.

The purpose of the discussion was for the GEF CEO to share his vision on Policy Coherence and to hear from the participants their views on the roles the legislators could play to support the GEF investments in their countries. This is a very important matter for the CEO because Policy Coherence is a key dimension to increase the efficiency of investments to secure tangible and long-lasting results for the benefit of the environment and people’s livelihoods.

Without Policy Coherence, it will not be possible to deliver long-lasting impact of the investments of the GEF and other funders, including the governments themselves. Policy Coherence and the GEF Policy Coherence (PC) is the "systematic promotion of mutually reinforcing policy actions across government departments and agencies to create synergies to deliver tangible and durable results for the benefit of the environment and people’s livelihoods."

Policy Coherence is a "whole of government" approach for an in-depth review of the legal frameworks to identify interactions between different sectors that either undermine or reinforce each other. This approach allows:

1. ensuring that the interactions among various policies in the economic, social, and environmental domains support countries on their pathway towards sustainable environmental objectives;
2. putting in place institutional mechanisms, processes, and tools to produce effective, efficient, sustainable, and coherent policies in all sectors;
3. developing evidence-based analysis, sound data, and reliable indicators to inform decision making and help translate political commitments into practice; and
4. fostering multi-stakeholder policy dialogue to identify and break down the barriers for durable change.

Policy Coherence matters to the GEF to ensure that the Global Environmental Benefits (GEBs) created by its projects are not undermined or negated due to misaligned policies that reduce their permanence, result in investment in environmentally damaging behaviors, or allow leakage (i.e., when actions aimed at reducing undesirable effects in a target place lead to these effects occurring elsewhere). As stated in the GEF-8 Strategic Positioning Framework, "the importance of policy coherence is being progressively recognized and mainstreamed in global dialogues as a critical mechanism which, if left unattended, can hamper the world’s ability to reverse the current environmental trends and to reach its crucial nature-positive targets". UNEP, as the custodian of the SDG indicator 17.14.1 on Policy Coherence, developed the indicator as a critical component for the implementation of all of the SDGs (OECD 2018. Policy Coherence for Sustainable Development 2018: Towards Sustainable and Resilient Societies, OECD Publishing, Paris).

Current conversations are converging around the conclusion that the world’s environmental and sustainable development goals can only be realized if the funding gap to nature is narrowed.

Closing this gap therefore requires a two-pronged approach: increasing financial flows from multiple sources, while simultaneously reducing financial needs. Positive impacts on the gap can also be achieved through the action of countries in the creation of regulatory and policy environments at the national scale that both discourage/eliminate harmful practices and encourage large-scale finance for nature, or Policy Coherence. Without this alignment of public policy for global environmental benefits, misaligned domestic policies can serve to lessen the impact of the very funds to the environment that are being increasingly required from domestic and international sources. Improving coherence within the set of national policies relevant to the global environment can "crowd-in" private investments that increase national and global environmental benefits without depending on greater inflows of either foreign assistance or tax-supported public finance. Improved policy coherence can also greatly enhance domestic resource flows towards the investment required to achieve critical environmental goals and eliminate perverse incentives that conflict with nature conservation efforts; domestic policy coherence is an essential component of maximizing the long-term continuity and resilience of the impacts created by GEF investments and to their national and global benefits.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is the largest source of multilateral funding for the environment.

In June 2022, donors to the GEF pledged a record $5.33 billion in support for its latest four-year replenishment cycle, which runs until June 2026. The GEF provides grants and blended finance for projects related to biodiversity, international waters, land degradation, persistent organic pollutants (POPs), mercury, the ozone layer, food security, and sustainable cities in developing countries. The GEF was established ahead of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit and includes 184 countries in partnership with international institutions, civil society organizations, and the private sector. It supports country-driven sustainable development initiatives in developing countries that generate global environmental benefits. To date, the GEF has provided more than $22 billion in grants and mobilized another $120 billion in co-financing for more than 5,200 projects and programs.

The Discussion

GEF CEO Carlos Manuel Rodriguez opened the dialogue by stating the importance of policy coherence and highlighting a case study from Costa Rica in which deforestation was incentivized in the agrarian law, despite the government’s ongoing efforts to create institutions to ensure the sustainable management of natural resources and the environment. Costa Rica’s success in stopping deforestation and restoring forest cover was achieved by phasing out and dealing with deforestation incentives, creating the right institutional framework, and implementing Payment for Environmental Services.

He went on to explain that the GEF does not work with countries as a whole; the GEF works with small agencies in the countries, usually the Ministry of Environment of the Executive branch. Ministries designate political and operational focal points who make decisions on how to use the GEF allocations. It is essential that legislators are involved in the work of the GEF, and the GEF wants to be seen as a strategic ally by congresses and parliaments in advancing efforts and achieving progress to green the economy, preserve biodiversity, and stop deforestation. To strengthen the GEF involvement with legislators, the GEF CEO will propose to the GEF Council the implementation of some changes, including moving away from focal points toward steering committees that include ministers of finance, agriculture, planning and environment, and the congress. This change can bring perspectives from among and across sectors.

The GEF CEO also explained how congresses can access GEF resources to fund their needs, for example strengthening and generating data to analyze the cost-benefits of deals and strengthening their environmental commissions or conservation caucuses. The GEF also wants to work and strengthen its relations with local governments and municipalities.

A key challenge for the GEF is to bring high-level decision makers to the GEF council such as congress members and ministers. It is essential for high-level authorities and congress members to understand how the GEF operates to take advantage of all that it offers. Congresses can help to build the political understanding that the GEF money is not a monopoly for the environmental sector or for the executive branch. The GEF resources should contribute with political processes to align public and private investments to accomplish environmental goals. He closed by inviting members of congresses/parliaments to get involved in the GEF council.

Following the remarks by the GEF CEO, the audience was invited to make comments and ask questions. Senator Jawahir shared that St. Lucia has the world’s newest conservation caucus in its parliament, supported by ICCF Group through a GEF-funded project. She brought up the issue of long response times from submission of projects until approval and said that countries near easier ways to access GEF resources. The GEF CEO agreed and shared that the GEF is working to streamline and shorten the project cycle. One way in which it envisions doing so is by expanding the number of implementing agencies. He also shared that, in the past, the GEF has used criteria such as per capita income to determine funding allocations; however, he believes that this causes large oceanic small island states to lose out at times since they may have high per capita income but are very vulnerable to natural disasters. He is working to shift the focus of the GEF from income-based criteria to a vulnerability index for assessing resource allocation. He also stressed the role of policymakers in engaging with the GEF to access funds.