Highlights and images for 8 June 2016

Summary

The second day of the 50th meeting of the Global Environment Facility Council began with a briefing by Rosina Bierbaum, Chair, Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP). Bierbaum, inter alia, addressed selected areas of work, including: the Mercury Platform focusing on mercury concentrations in fish; the Green Chemistry holistic approach to curtailing marine litter from plastics; areas beyond national jurisdiction (ABNJ); wildlife trade; and a knowledge management system that can capture replicable lessons and best practices. Bierbaum outlined STAP’s engagement with the Rio Conventions, and presented STAP’s vision of the GEF going forward, recommending that: environmental degradation be handled in a more integrated and holistic way; sustainable development be at the core of GEF interventions; and the GEF continue to be catalytic and innovative while actively seeking to effect permanent and transformational change.

During the morning, the GEF Council also discussed the Semi-Annual Evaluation Report June 2016, the Sixth Overall Performance Study (OPS6) Approach Paper and the Evaluation of the GEF-CSO Network.

At the beginning of their afternoon deliberations, the Council discussed relations with the conventions and other international institutions, with presentations by the Executive Secretaries from the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) and the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), as well as the Principal Coordinator of the Minamata Convention on Mercury.

The Council concluded the day with a review of the proposed Work Program for the GEF Trust Fund, which includes 38 project concepts and five programmatic frameworks. The total resources proposed in the Work Program amount to US$449.7 million. Council deferred the final decision on the Work Program until Thursday.

IISD Reporting Services, through its ENB+ Meeting Coverage, has provided daily web coverage from the GEF Council Consultation Meeting with CSOs, 50th GEF Council Meeting and 20th Meeting of the LDCF/SCCF Council. In addition, IISD Reporting Services has also produced a summary video of the event, which is available in HTML and PDF format.
Photos by IISD/ENB | Francis Dejon
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Report of the Chairperson of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP)

View of the STAP presentation

L-R: Naoko Ishii, GEF CEO and Chairperson; Co-Chair Caroline Leclerc, Canada; and William Ehlers, GEF Secretariat

L-R: Thomas Hammond, STAP Secretary and Rosina Bierbaum, STAP Chair

Evaluation Reports

L-R: Francisco Grahammer, Carlo Carugi and Juha Uitto, Independent Evaluation Office (IEO)

L-R: Baljit Wadhwa and Juha Uitto, IEO

IEO presentation on the evaluation of the GEF-CSO Nework

Joshua Wycliffe, Fiji

Aida Ghebre Selasie, Norway

Daniel Reifsnyder, US

David Higgins, Australia

May Gicquel, France

Alancay Morales Garro, GEF-CSO Network Indigenous
Peoples
representative

Carlos Raul Delgado, Mexico

Victor Kawanga, Vice Chair, GEF-CSO Network

Weifeng Yang, China

Mohamed Abdel Raouf, GEF-CSO Network West Asia

Relations with the Conventions and other International Institutions

L-R: Jacob Duer, Principal Coordinator of the
Minamata
Convention
on Mercury; Braulio Ferreira de Souza Diaz, Executive Secretary,
Convention
on Biological Diversity (CBD); Naoko Ishii, GEF CEO and Chairperson; Co-Chair Caroline Leclerc, Canada;
and Monique Barbut, Executive
Secretary, UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)