Global Environment Facility
GEF Council adopts Operational Strategy for the
International Waters Focal Area
The Global Environment Facility (GEF), a financial mechanism for global
environmental improvements, is also a catalyst. It helps to integrate
international waters issues into national development plans, encourage the
transfer of environmentally sound technology and knowledge, and strengthen
the capacity of developing countries seeking to play a full part in
resolving transboundary environmental issues. The goal is to help groups
of countries employ the full range of technical, economic, financial,
regulatory and institutional measures needed in varying sectors to apply
sustainable development strategies for international waters and their
basins.
Water shapes the face of the Earth, not only as a geologic agent, cutting
valleys and canyons, but also as a major influence contributing to the
rise and fall of civilizations. It has often been a source of conflict and
tension between nations, and where water supplies failed or were
improperly managed, great civilizations collapsed.
For decades, international waters have been seen as a convenient
repository for all kinds of human waste. People assumed that oceans and
large freshwater systems had the capacity to sufficiently dilute the
volume of man-made substances that found their way, deliberately or
inadvertently, into the environment. People also assumed that supplies of
fish from the oceans were endless and that improvements in technology
would meet human needs for protein. Wetlands were often regarded as
unproductive swamps that should be drained for agriculture and urban
development; many were converted to shrimp ponds to provide income for
residents of coastal zones. We now know dilution is not the answer to
pollution; overfishing has damaged the oceans; and wetlands are highly
productive ecosystems that we cannot do without.
We also know that water sustains life, it sustains our environment; and it
sustains our culture. But the global demand for water is skyrocketing,
along with the world's population, and destruction of water-related
ecosystems continues at an alarming pace. Almost a quarter century after
the Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment, there is more intense
pressure on our environmental support system and this pressure is having
global implications.
Cross-sectoral approach needed
The intense degradation of international waters also signals that the
carrying capacities of transboundary freshwater basins, coastal areas and
marine ecosystems have been exceeded by inappropriate sectoral development
policies and projects, as well as misuse of water resources. An
international consensus has emerged that a more comprehensive,
cross-sectoral approach is needed to protect water resources - an approach
that integrates ecological and development needs, and is based on holistic
analyses of the carrying capacity of the water environment. In this
approach, a river basin, groundwater system, coastal area or large marine
ecosystem typically serves as a management unit on which to base
constructive changes for sectoral development policies and activities, as
well as for how priority environmental interventions are made. In many
instances, action programmes are needed to restore proper functioning to
water-related ecosystems or to remedy major human health risks. A
comprehensive approach that integrates such actions across sectors is new
to most countries, difficult to implement, and even harder to achieve when
actions must be coordinated among countries to address transboundary
concerns.
As a consequence of the Earth Summit in Rio, a host of institutions have
accepted new roles to ensure that precious water resources are managed in
an environmentally sustainable manner. The GEF is one of those
institutions with a very special role to play. GEF resources are intended
to complement traditional development funding and facilitate effective
responses by other entities to address global environmental issues. They
are also intended to help mobilize resources from the regular programmes
of the three GEF Implementing Agencies: the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the
World Bank. In October 1995, the GEF Council adopted an operational
strategy, which represents the strategic framework for actions of the
permanent GEF in its four focal areas. According to the strategy's
principles, the GEF will fund projects and programmes that are
country-driven and based on national priorities designed to support
sustainable development.
International action
In the international waters area, the GEF's objective is to contribute
primarily as a catalyst to the implementation of a more comprehensive,
ecosystem-based approach to managing international waters and their
drainage basins as a means of achieving global environmental benefits. The
GEF implementing agencies will assist countries to find means of
collaborating with neighbouring countries so that they change the ways
human activities are undertaken in different economic sectors. The goal is
to help groups of countries use the full range of technical, economic,
financial, regulatory and institutional measures needed to operationalize
sustainable development strategies for transboundary water bodies and
their contributing drainage basins.
The GEF Operational Strategy outlines priorities to be addressed in
this focal area. GEF activities focus on threatened transboundary water
bodies and the most imminent threats to their ecosystems. Five types of
actions are targeting these hazards:
- Control of land-based sources of pollution that degrade the quality of
international waters. Prevention of releases of persistent toxic
substances and heavy metals, as well as nutrients and sediments, into
basins of international waters with rare and endangered species or unique
ecosystems is of particular importance.
- Prevention and control of land degradation where transboundary
environmental concerns result from desertification or deforestation.
- Prevention of physical and ecological degradation of critical habitats
(such as wetlands, shallow waters and reefs) that sustain biodiversity and
provide shelter and nursing areas for threatened and endangered
species.
- Improved management and control measures that better guide the
exploitation of living and non-living resources and stem such problems as
overfishing and excessive withdrawal of fresh water.
- Control of ship-based sources of chemical washings and non-indigenous
species which are transferred in ballast water and can disrupt ecosystems
or adversely affect human health.
The GEF Operational Strategy calls for an initial clustering of
funded activities into operational programmes. In the international waters
area, three initial operational programmes will provide for the design,
implementation and coordination of sets of projects. Each operational
programme will emphasize varying interventions, certain types of water
bodies and particular projects that can combine as more comprehensive
approaches for constructing positive changes in sectoral policies and
activities.
The Waterbody-Based Operational Program will support activities aimed at
helping groups of countries resolve specific transboundary environmental
problems. The GEF will look for a certain geographic distribution of
regionally important transboundary freshwater basins (including river
basins, lake basins and groundwater aquifer systems) or large marine
ecosystems that have significant environmental problems. The Black Sea is
an example of such an ecosystem, and the Black Sea Pilot Phase Project
illustrates how ongoing work will be incorporated into an operational
programme.
The Integrated Land, Water, Multiple Focal Area Operational Program
addresses transboundary concerns needing broad interventions to address
international waters concerns that stem from, or are interlocked with,
problems in other focal areas. Land degradation and integrated coastal
area management provide examples. Components of this operational programme
will include projects that target: land degradation and drylands issues,
the special needs and conditions of Small Island Developing States (SIDS),
and water bodies that yield benefits for several GEF focal areas (such as
the biodiversity found within an ecologically important transboundary
wetland).
Finally, the Operational Program on Contaminants aims to develop and
implement projects that demonstrate how to overcome barriers - barriers to
best practices that prevent the release of priority contaminants. Such
barriers include improper or inadequate policies, lack of awareness of
alternative, environmentally sound technologies, and insufficient
cooperation between countries.
Some toxic pollutants persist after being discharged, and can be
considered 'global contaminants' because they are transported long
distances and accumulate in living organisms. One component of the
operational programme will include projects to address these contaminants.
Another component develops projects that address ship-related wastes,
principally non-indigenous species in ballast water, and demonstrations of
modern technology for preventing accidents, discharges and releases are
therefore planned. Another component will contain projects that address
land-based activities which degrade marine waters. A Global Programme of
Action was adopted by governments in November 1995 and now serves as a
component that supports technological demonstrations on how to address
these issues.
Cooperating to succeed
A fundamental feature of all GEF-financed international waters projects is
close cooperation between the respective GEF implementing agency and
groups of countries involved. In addition, the GEF plays a catalytic role
with its grant financing by helping countries leverage other funds for the
efforts at hand. The GEF further aims to garner the involvement of the
'regular' programmes conducted by the implementing agencies to help solve
transboundary environmental problems. In order to accomplish this, the GEF
often assists countries prepare what is known as a Strategic Action
Programme (SAP), which helps to define the transboundary priority concerns
and determine the array of baseline and additional action programmes
needed to solve priority problems. The boxes on this page and the previous
one outline how to initiate an international waters project through the
GEF, if several countries have expressed interest in cooperating.
PERSISTENT ORGANIC POLLUTANTS (POPs)
-
A GROWING GLOBAL CONCERN
In the Arctic, a place where there are no chemical-producing industries,
polar bears carry among the heaviest burdens of persistent toxic
substances of any creatures anywhere on the globe. In remote reaches of
the North Pacific Ocean, Laysan and black-footed albatrosses have
sufficient levels of furans and dioxin in their systems to cause negative
health effects in their populations. In the middle of pristine national
reserves, certain isolated lakes contain fish bearing levels of persistent
toxic substances sufficient to impair their reproductive capacities,
despite the absence of any obvious source.
Each of these examples illustrates the ubiquitous, even sinister
phenomenon of the increasing spread of dangerous Persistent Organic
Pollutants (POPs) to even the remote reaches of international waters.
These POPs resist physical, biological and chemical degradation; they
bioaccumulate and biomagnify in living tissue; can readily move over long
distances in a semi-volatilized state; and, tragically, are known to cause
hazards or risks to the environment generally and to humans specifically.
Once released into the environment, which occurs intentionally and
unintentionally, POPs cannot be retrieved; thus they circulate until they
come to rest in the bodies of living things, including humans.
While there is continuing research on the exact nature and breadth of the
damage that POPs cause to living organisms, scientists are now convinced
of a number of specific effects. Scientists and others familiar with POPs
convened in November 1995 at an International Experts Meeting in
Vancouver, Canada. They concurred on a number of sobering realities
regarding POPs in the broader environment. They know, for example, that a
greater incidence of immune system dysfunction, reproductive deficits,
developmental abnormalities, neurobehavioural impairments, and cancer and
tumour induction or promotion have been recorded in humans as a result of
chronic exposure to certain POPs, such as dioxin and PCBs.
That knowledge has led the International Forum on Chemical Safety Working
Group on POPs to conclude that available scientific evidence was
sufficient to demonstrate the need for international action on 12 specific
substances: Aldrin, Chlordane, DDT, Dieldrin, Dioxins, Endrin, Furans,
Heptachlor, Hexachlorobenzene, Mirex, Polychlorinated Biphenyls and
Toxaphene.
These are all good and important reasons for the GEF's Operational
Programs for the International Waters Focal Area to have included the
broad issue of contaminants, and the specific issue of chemical
contaminants, as a programme priority in the International Waters
Portfolio. Working with and through UNEP, one of the GEF Implementing
Agencies, the issue of POPs will be receiving special emphasis in the
overall GEF agenda.
GEF
The GEF was set up as a pilot programme in 1991 to provide grant and
concessional funds to developing countries for projects and activities
that aim to protect the global environment. In March 1994, participating
governments successfully concluded negotiations to restructure the
Facility. The Core Fund of the GEF was also replenished with over $2
billion to be committed over a three-year period. GEF resources are
available for projects that address climate change, biological diversity,
international waters and depletion of the ozone layer. Activities
addressing land degradation, primarily desertification and deforestation,
as they relate to the four areas, are also eligible for funding. The GEF
is jointly implemented by the United Nations Development Programme, the
United Nations Environment Programme and the World Bank.
For further information on the Operational Strategy for International
Waters, please contact Alfred Duda at the GEF Secretariat, 1818 H Street,
N.W., Washington, D.C., 20433, Fax: (202) 522-3240/5.
Alfred Duda, Principal Environmental Specialist
at the GEF Secretariat.
Edited by Laura A. Edwards,
Writer and Editor at the GEF
Secretariat.
