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'Governing
Access'
The GEF’s unprecedented openness to ‘civil society’ means
these interests include civil society organisations of many
hues: from the big Washington-based policy groups such as
the World Resources Institute (WRI), the scientific World
Conservation Union (IUCN) and others interested in tapping
new environmental finance, to the more critical and Southern
organisations including the Climate Action Network, Third
World Network (TWN) and Delhi’s Centre for Science and Environment
(CSE) who watchdog GEF policies and projects, drawing attention
to common and serious problems. Also represented are UN agencies
with a sustainable development remit, the organised transnational
private sector, and myriad consultants: technical experts,
environmental economists, international lawyers, and others
with the skills to advise on protecting the global environment.
GEF programmes are supposed to be science-based, guided by
a Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP) managed by
UNEP. Many environmental scientists therefore have an interest
in GEF, some for kudos or rent seeking, others just to see
their insights applied where it counts. But with UNEP’s interests
sidelined in the GEF by the World Bank’s (and increasingly
UNDP’s) dominant ‘development’ agenda, scientists’ high hopes
for GEF have in general not been met. Beyond some consultancies
and financial assistance for research in Southern countries
to complete global data sets, scientists’ inputs have seemed
to legitimate as much as effectively guide project funding
decisions made on political and economic grounds by Northern
donor governments who logically enough, while paying for most
of the GEF, sought to control its strategic directions.
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