'Green Energy Facilitated - the Uncertain Function of the Global Environment Facility'
Published in Energy and Environment, early 1998.

Zoe Young
Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen
Research Institute for Environmental Science and Management
Department of Geography
Faculty of Science and the Environment
University of Hull
Hull, E. Yorks, UK
September 1997

Abstract
The GEF remains, inter alia, the operating entity of the interim financial mechanism (aid) for the Climate Change Convention (FCCC); with $1.6 billion dollars to spend between 1994 and 1997 on the ‘incremental costs’ of implementing certain UN environmental conventions in eligible countries. The paper describes how this multilateral fund has functioned so far in the energy-environment arena, looking at its governance and policies, decision-making criteria, project cycle and strategies for monitoring and evaluation. Through the patterns of GEF assistance to climate change related science, technologies and institutions, we explore the origins and wider purposes of the institution and in the process illuminate some assumptions and principles underlying the work of the GEF secretariat and associated bureaucracies. The purpose is to inform about what can realistically be expected should GEF become a more permanent mechanism to fund ‘global environmental benefits’ after current negotiations for its second replenishment.