The GEF NGO Network has for a long time expressed its concern about the resource allocation system in GEF and the negative impact of the RAF in drastically reducing the number and scale of civil society projects in GEF4. There must be a proper safeguard introduced to prevent this problem continuing under GEF 5 such as setting clear targets or set asides.

We note that the RAF is being dropped and will be replaced by the System for a Transparent Allocation of Resources (STAR). We are happy to see the flexibility to allow countries to spend across focal areas, the removal of the “50%” rule, and the elimination of group allocations, which are improvements on RAF in the new allocation model. Moreover, the proposal to the Council by the Secretariat that each country should have a National Steering Committee for preparing a Voluntary Business Plans on GEF resources is a good manner to improve the involvement of CSOs in GEF programming, provided that the effective participation of CS in the national steering committees is insured.

For the STAR, The Network supports a hybrid option, in which in addition to climate change and biodiversity, Land Degradation is included, provided there is a replenishment scenario of at least 4.5 billion dollars. This would contribute to strengthening country ownership and help to effectively address the links between productive landscapes and biodiversity conservation.

Regarding the indices used for calculating STAR allocations, the Network would like to flag the issue that the proposed Project Portfolio Performance index (PPI), does not take into account civil society performance within countries. In addition we are not happy with the Index for climate change which does not adequately deal with emissions from land use, land use change and Forestry (LULUCF). LULUCF forms 20% of global emissions and possibly more than 40% of emissions from GEF eligible countries. Therefore the weight for LULUCF should be at least 30% rather than the 5% as proposed. This will enable countries with significant emissions from LULUCF to access resources to address this issue, rather than channeling the bulk of resources to those countries with large fossil fuel emissions.

Finally we feel that there should be some adjustment of the caps and floors for country allocations. At present 10 countries receive 42% of the funds. We believe that there should be a more equitable distribution and that this could be achieved by increasing the floor (minimum allocation); the floor should be increased and Cap decreased.

Linked with the allocation of resources to each country through the STAR it is proposed to integrate the National Dialogue Initiative into an expanded country support program managed by the GEF Secretariat, to continue facilitating the multi-stakeholder dialogue on GEF related issues at the country level, we request that the new dialogues should be organized along the lines of the current NDI with the pro-active participation and engagement of CSOs.

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