Project Structure and Partners

The IW:LEARN Project Coordination Team (PCT) spans roughly 20 international agencies and organizations across four continents. The PCT consists of a multi-agency Steering Committee, a 6-person Project Coordinating Unit and over a dozen Partnership Activity Leads and other partners. PCT members represent:

The PCT consists of a 5-agency Steering Committee (SC), a 6-person Project Coordinating Team (PCT) and over a dozen Project Activity Leads (PALs) and partners.

Principal Funder

Global Environment Facility (GEF)

Implementing Agencies

• United Nations Development Program (UNDP), IW:LEARN ACTIVITIES: B3, B4, C1, C2, E1, E2
• United Nations Environment Program (UNEP), IW:LEARN ACTIVITIES: A1, A2, D1
• World Bank (IBRD), IW:LEARN ACTIVITIES: B2, D2, E1

Executing Agencies

• United Nations Office for Project Services (UNOPS)
• United Nations Environment Program (UNEP)
  

Steering Committee

The IW:LEARN Steering Committee consists of representatives from the GEF and its three Implementing Agencies (UNDP, UNEP and the World Bank Group), the World Bank Institute, as well as from UNOPS, IW:LEARN's executing organization. This committtee provides strategic guidance to the IW:LEARN project through an semi-annual face-to-face meetings in Washington DC, as well as ongoing discussions in various media.

IW:LEARN's Steering Committee includes:

• Johannes Akiwumi (UNEP-DEWA)
  
• Al Duda (GEF)
• Andrew Hudson (UNDP)
• Tessa Goverse (UNEP)
• Vladimir Mamaev (UNDP)
• Andrew Menz (UNOPS)
• Takehiro Nakamura (UNEP-DGEF)
• John Pernetta (Project Representative)
• Christian Severin (GEF)
• Vincent Sweeney (Project Representative)
• Samuel Taffesse (Project Representative)
• Isabelle van der Beck (UNEP)
  
• Mick Wilson (UNEP-DEWA)
  
• Mei Xie (World Bank Institute)
• Ivan Zavadsky (GEF)
  

Partnership Activity Leads (PALs)

IW:LEARN established Memoranda of Understanding (MOU) and/or contract with a set of institutional "partnership activity leads (PALs). The PCU will realize most activities in collaboration with a PAL and supporting partners. PALs will also be responsible for contributing to and helping to implement sustainability plans for their respective activities. Including those PALs listed here and, up to 20 sub-contracts may be required to fully realize this project.

Project Coordinating Team (PCT) Personnel

· Dr. Dann Sklarew, Ph.D., Director/Chief Technical Advisor, UNOPS

Dann Sklarew, Ph.D., leads the International Waters: Learning Exchange and Resource Network (IW:LEARN), a full-sized project (FSP) of the Global Environment Facility (GEF). IW:LEARN strengthens International Waters (IW) management via information sharing and learning among stakeholders world-wide. After directing IW:LEARN's successful 3-year pilot phase, Dr. Sklarew authored the 4-year, $6.28 million FSP proposal. As Chief Technical Advisor, he manages approximately 20 activities and sub-activities. He directly oversees IW:LEARN learning activities related to public participation, lakes, coral reefs and marine ecosystems; the GEF IW portfolio's multimedia outreach; Integrated Water Resource Management (IWRM) roundtables; and the GEF IW Conference series. He also serves on the Steering Committee for the GEF's Lake Basin Management Initiative.

Dr. Sklarew previously worked in the private sector as a senior facilitator, environmental scientist, and environmental information systems analyst. He consulted to regional, national, and international agencies and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) to apply collaboration and Internet-based electronic tools to advance their water resource management goals. His contributions included facilitating alternative dispute resolution (ADR) processes for the United States Environmental Protection Agency (USEPA); promoting civil society involvement and information transparency in the Chesapeake Bay watershed; assessing stakeholder needs in implementing a prototype watershed information management system (WIMS) for Cook Inlet, Alaska; economic analysis and evaluation of municipalities' costs in implementing America's storm water protection regulations; designing and developing various web-based environmental information management systems (EIMS) related to state and federal waste, wastewater, and environmental management programs; preparing GIS maps showing effects of land-use change on watershed nutrient loading; and statistically-based national geographic targeting of animal feedlot operations (AFOs) by county and watershed.

While an adjunct faculty member at George Mason University (GMU), Dr. Sklarew taught courses in ecological decision-making and environmental analysis and modeling. His doctoral research at GMU focused on contentious issues at the crux of environmental science and IWRM in the tidal Potomac River. His Master's research at Boston University designed and successfully applied hybrid fuzzy logic-neural network algorithms to analyze remote sensing data for early signs of seasonal drought in West Africa. Through subsequent fellowships with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center (SERC) and USEPA, Dr. Sklarew identified, developed and assessed various tools to support community-based watershed management. He has authored or co-authored over 50 professional papers and presentations in four languages. His most recent is on promoting public participation in IW management, a chapter in the forthcoming book, Public Participation and Governance in Water Resources Management (UNU Press, Tokyo, 2005).

A native of the transnational Tiajuana River basin, Dr. Sklarew began his IW management pursuits in studying water treatment while living along the shores of Lake Geneva in 1986. He has lived on four continents, always within walking distance of some shared body of water.

· Ms. Janot-Reine Mendler de Suarez, Deputy Director/Project Coordinator, UNOPS

Janot-Reine Mendler de Suarez has been central to the development of the Global Environment Facility’s International Waters Learning Exchange and Resource Network project, IW:LEARN. Since 1998, when she was instrumental in launching an experimental distance MSc degree program targeting junior environmental professionals from developing countries and countries with economies in transition, she has served as Project Coordinator and Deputy Director and currently oversees a diverse portfolio of regional and thematic partnership and structured learning activities. Janot holds a Bachelor’s degree in Biological Sciences and Political Science from Mount Holyoke College and a Master’s from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy with a certificate in Leadership and Management. She taught for 3 years as a Sr. Lecturer and then held a 3 year appointment as an Honorary Research Associate with the Centre for Developing Areas Research in the Department of Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Janot has a particular interest in Latin America and the Caribbean, organized for CATHALAC the 2004 Regional Consultative Meeting on the GPA Programme of Work in the Wider Caribbean, and is working with the Gender & Water Alliance to launch a traveling gender and water exhibit that will culminate its LAC tour at the 4th World Water Forum in Mexico in March 2006.

With extensive hands-on experience in project implementation and resource mobilization across multiple disciplines, Janot’s background includes smallholder farming, goat research and embryo transfer, community planning and agricultural cooperatives, sustainable building, cottage industry product development and marketing, graphic design, fine art, photography and 16mm film. She has organized healing racism institutes for community and public safety personnel, edited and produced a timber framing trade journal and technical newsletter, and has published a number of peer-reviewed papers and articles. Holding a private pilot license, SCUBA certification, a certificate in celestial navigation and offshore sailing, Janot also rides and trains horses, has been a skiing, rock & ice-climbing instructor and technical mountain rescue team member, speaks fluent French, some Spanish, German and Swahili, and has worked or traveled in about 50 countries.

Fax: +1.508.358.5204
Home: +1.508.358.5204
Work: +1.508.358.5204

. Mr. Mish Hamid , Project Officer, UNOPS

Mish Hamid has performed a variety of roles for the GEF IW:LEARN project since 2000, covering a broad spectrum from project management, to partnership development, workshop training, to development of information management solutions for GEF IW projects. He was directly involved with the development of the original International Waters Resource Centre. At present, in addition to supporting IW:LEARN’s overall efforts, he leads the project’s activities in eastern Europe and central Asia. IW:LEARN has been directly involved with fostering international cooperation over shared water resources in the Western Balkans. As part of that work, he supported roundtables and workshops with project stakeholders throughout the region that focus on increasing their capacity to govern those resources, as well as develop joint visions and action plans.His primary interests lie at the confluence of conflict management and international development, with a particular interest in governance. In addition to IW:LEARN, he worked for the OSCE in both Serbia and Kosovo on elections and post-conflict peace implementation. In 2005, I completed a master’s in conflict management and international economics from the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. His languages are Dutch, German and some limited Russian.

Work: +421.2.59337.168

· Mr. Sean Khan, Project Manager, UNEP DEWA

· Mr. Richard Cooper, UNEP DEWA

· Ms. Khristine Custodio, UNEP

Stakeholder Involvement

Since the last GEF International Waters Conferences (September 2002), substantial consultation with representatives from GEF IW projects and their partners (e.g., global, regional, national and local agencies, NGOs, etc.) informed design of this project. Continued consultation via electronic forums, one-on-one interviews and regional and global IW learning exchanges will ensure that stakeholder interests are regularly recorded, reviewed and systematically addressed by the project and its regional, thematic and institutional partners. Given the number of recent GEF IW project briefs and documents that explicitly identify planned cooperation with IW:LEARN, the project expects to establish more formal agreements to further incorporate stakeholder involvement through these partnerships.

To optimise GEF IW project stakeholder involvement, all IW:LEARN activities are aligned with a stakeholder involvement plan and outreach and dissemination strategy. These include five objectives based on lessons learned from the experimental phase:

1. Enhance ownership of and buy-in to IW:LEARN through participatory project development and implementation
2. Raise awareness about the role of IW:LEARN, GEF IW Portfolio and IW management in sustainable development (e.g., achieving Millennium Development Goals, Johannesburg and World Water Forum objectives, etc.)
3. Provide customized service through personal relations with key personnel at projects, partners and service providers.
4. Develop effective delivery mechanisms which leverage the use of appropriate tools for ICT-mediated dissemination to, for and through GEF IW projects and their partners.
5. Assist in replication of useful GEF IW experiences, innovations, lessons, opportunities and tools across the GEF IW portfolio