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GEF Biennial International Waters Conference - Executive Summary
Executive Summary Report on the
4th Biennial GEF International Waters Conference
31 July – 3 August 2007
Cape Town, South Africa
Overview: GEF IW Portfolio Learning
Around the world, GEF-supported International Waters (IW) projects are working in parallel at the scale of transboundary aquifer, river and lake basin systems, open oceans and large marine ecosystems (LMEs). Cooperating countries and their project partners are frequently faced with similar issues and challenges. Within this portfolio of projects, there is a tremendous wealth of practical experience that can be shared to deepen and accelerate results in GEF IW projects to improve transboundary water governance.
To promote inter-project learning across the GEF IW portfolio, IW:LEARN (the GEF International Waters Learning Exchange and Resource Network) has organized four GEF Biennial International Waters conferences since 2000. The Fourth Biennial GEF IW Conference (IWC4) was hosted in Cape Town by South Africa’s Department of Environment and Tourism and GEF’s Benguela Current IW project, from July 31 to August 3 2007. 314 delegates from 70 GEF IW projects came from about 68 countries, including government and project representatives, implementing and executing agency staff, and representatives of NGO and other project partners.
Building on prior lessons and recommendations, the objectives of IWC4 were to:
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provide a forum for sharing experiences and innovative approaches
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promote mutual learning and capacity building
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develop strategies to enhance stakeholder collaboration
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encourage projects to apply evolving GEF policies and procedures to improve project implementation
An innovative conference design was developed by a planning committee comprised of GEF, Implementing Agency and IW:LEARN staff, with the Global Environment Technology Foundation (GETF) also providing event implementation support. The program was progressively refined based on feedback from IW:LEARN PALs (Partner Activity Leads) working with GEF IW projects, and in direct response to priorities expressed by participants as they registered on-line. Participative learning sessions were geared to four priority transboundary water resources management (TWRM) themes:
- Good International Waters Governance and Institutions
- Successful Scientific and Technical Innovations
- Sustaining International Waters Partnerships
- Project Management, Performance and Impact
With a Lead Facilitator from the World Bank Institute, a new suite of 'active-learning' methodologies was introduced – morning reflections videos, world café conversation tables & open space workshops, focused learning discussions, peer-assist clinics, participant-driven workshops and an Innovation Marketplace - marking a radical departure from the traditional format of previous IWC conferences.
GEF IW:LEARN has prepared this Executive Summary for email dissemination to participants. Full proceedings, including presentations and outputs from the each of the thematic sessions, full text of rapporteur reports, a tabulated summary of participant evaluations, and all recommendations received for the GEF and Implementing Agencies, or IW:LEARN regarding future learning activities, are available on the GEF IW:LEARN website: http://www.iwlearn.net/iwc2007
Introduction: GEF IW vision, challenges and achievements
Now more than ever, as fresh water conflicts, pollution, destruction of aquatic habitats, depletion of fisheries and global climate change continue to restrict human development and degrade the quality of life worldwide, ecosystem-based approaches to management are seen as crucial to sustain transboundary water systems and increase shared benefits across international borders. Global Environment Facility investments form the single largest united response to water-related environmental threats, bringing nations and peoples together to restore and protect our common ‘life support system’ and natural heritage. For over 15 years, the GEF has served as a catalyst, providing incremental financing as an incentive for cooperation among nations sharing water resource systems. Now the fruits of the first decade of GEF IW investment are starting to emerge.
The 4th GEF IWC opened with a call for collaboration, cooperation and investment in regional and international water resources management - also a challenge to participants to step up their response to global inequities in poverty and access to water resources – as well as a caution not to allow the exacerbating effects of climate change to mask poor water resources management Inspiring keynotes from Minister of Fisheries and Marine Resources Abraham Iyambo of Namibia and Environment Deputy-Director General Fritz Holzwarth from Germany, shared their wisdom, vision and legacies, including major GEF milestones such as the transition this year of the flagship Danube Regional Project after 15 years of GEF support to a self-sustaining basin organization supported by all member governments, and the solid foundations for cooperation across sectors in the recent establishment of the Benguela Current Commission.
African Achievements worthy of global recognition were celebrated in a session highlighting results of successful cooperation among countries in the Senegal River Basin – where participation in basin management has been established from Heads of State to the community level, in addressing risk management in the Iullemeden Aquifer, in cooperation with Indian Ocean states in coastal and marine management in Tanzania, pioneering work in understanding environmental variability in the Benguela Current LME project and addressing the introduction of invasive alien species through the ballast water of ships through a pioneering GloBallast demonstration site in South Africa’s Western Cape.
In working sessions organized around projects’ top priority management themes, all participants were coached to contribute their own ideas and expertise – to discuss and analyse transboundary concerns and challenges together and to learn from each other’s experience so that practical TWRM approaches can be more readily transferred, adapted and replicated where appropriate.
Each day opened with a “Reflections” video prepared overnight by a Cape Town-based film-maker, giving participants an opportunity to share views on each day of the conference in their own words. The daily videos were mentioned frequently as an active learning approach participants would like to adapt for their own institution or project. Participant expectations, reflections, and assessment of the IWC in their own words can be viewed on the IWLEARN website: http://www.iwlearn.net/iwc2007
Key Findings: feedback from participants
In the popular Reflections videos, evaluation forms and direct communications with organizers, participants consistently testified to significant cross-fertilization of ideas and experiences across projects, countries, regions, and partner agencies. Over 25% submitted evaluation forms, two-thirds of whom were project managers, staff, and national project representatives. About 80% gave the IWC4 high marks, with many expressions of personal professional benefit and enthusiasm for overall success. The vast majority found the IWC learning experience directly applicable to their work functions, that it helped to learn how other projects are delivering results and increased understanding of innovative methods and ways to increase project effectiveness. Of the 33 GEF IW project exhibits in the Innovation Marketplace, the DLIST project earned the Participants’ Choice award for originality, replicability, sustainability, and impact of the project innovation showcased, as well as for visual appeal and creativity of the exhibit. Participants chose Lake Chad’s website for the IW:LEARN “WOW” award for the best GEF IW project website: http://www.iwlearn.net/websitetoolkit/wow/
Participants on the whole heartily endorsed the new and previously untested participative conference modalities, expressing excitement about the active learning approach. Key factors which made the IWC a worthwhile experience were: enhanced opportunities to interact with a broad cross-section of GEF IW peers, emphasis on interactive breakout sessions in which everyone had a chance to speak and be heard rather than plenaries, majority of presentations given by projects and governments, and project storytelling at the Innovation Marketplace. Rich feedback and many specific recommendations for improvement were contributed in session reports, evaluation forms, and direct communications received from participants. As one wrote: “the movement toward greater participation and more informal learning was long overdue. The challenge now is to strike the proper balance in getting broad participation and strong technical content and depth specific to transboundary waters learning.”
In small group conversation tables and subsequent open space workshops sessions, participants found the following four principles to be key to good governance and IW partnerships: (i) Define “win-win” outcomes (notably if the private sector is involved, demonstrate the benefits for them to get engaged), or a common “vision” between organizations (e.g. through a bottom up approach); (ii) Deliver results and communicate/publicize -including to affected communities- (using media, events, opinion leaders…) results and small successes to create and maintain transparency and ownership, spirit of co-operation, and momentum (e.g. through demonstration projects demonstrating clear link with economic benefits, project twinning); (iv) Ensure continuity of effective leadership; (iii) Mandates and capacity within each organization must support partnerships and provide for continuity of regional organizations beyond the term of the project.
While praised for encouraging active participation among all who attended, as a new modality the “world café” (www.theworldcafe.com/) conversation tables to some extent failed to deliver what many considered to be new information or innovative practices. Two schools of thought emerged: on the one hand a general recommendation that the leading questions provided as discussion prompts should be better formulated to encourage the audience to probe more deeply into the issues and to achieve more valuable results. On the other hand, participants new to the GEF IW community derived considerable benefit, and emphasized that some issues - especially capacity building needs - while critiqued by some as far from new remain of critical concern.
A team of GEF representatives fielded questions on GEF policies and procedures in a ‘talk show’ style interview session. Concerns were raised about affects of the Resource Allocation Framework on funding, onerous procedures for developing proposals, potential for future inclusion of biodiversity components, and continually changing GEF-wide procedures. With the time constraints, many questions went unasked or superficially addressed. Some frustration was also heard as to whether and how the GEF will or will not respond to input from the IWC with regard to new GEF procedures. Concerning implementation of Results-Based Management, while questions revealed concerns with the timeline and development of relevant indicators, there was virtually unanimous acclaim for the fun and exciting indicators Jeopardy Game which riveted attention as the audience ‘played along’ with contestants competing to identify IW project examples of process, stress reduction and environmental status indicators; the take-home CD included in each participant’s registration packet was gratefully received for future reference!
Scientific and technical innovation focused discussion sessions also suffered from lack of time, and while participants found the sessions they were able to attend highly valuable, many expressed regret in having to choose among the six parallel sessions on Strategic Action Programme (SAP) implementation and adaptive management, groundwater integration, pollution reduction through agricultural and livestock nutrient reduction and constructed wetlands, sustaining marine fisheries and conserving marine resources, and assessing and valuing ecosystems. The SAP session discussed the importance of building upon existing policies and cooperation mechanism as key to ownership. One recommendation from the nutrient session on agricultural pollution reduction called for process innovation in how agricultural and livestock waste management is done (in an integrated fashion with policy strengthening, familiar and cost effective technologies, strong M&E, dissemination and replication), instead of seeking innovative technologies. The wetlands session called for material that would enable promoting constructed wetlands nationally as well as locally, including costs of constructing wetlands, social participation, technical applicability, economic benefits, etc.
Although considered by the organizers to be the modalities most ‘at risk’ of realizing beneficial results, the GEF IW community embraced the opportunity for participants to define the agenda in almost a dozen peer-assist ‘clinics’ and a similar number of participant-designed workshop sessions. These were ranked by participants among the most valuable sessions and lively and substantive learning exchanges were documented. Peer assist clinic topics and experts were defined in advance via participant surveys, in order to be directly relevant to project needs and offered the conference space for customized and user-driven training sessions. The climate change inter-project peer-to-peer clinic earned the highest rating and attracted by far the largest number of participants.
Highlights of the evening film festival included the Globallast BBC documentary “Invaders from the Sea” and the GEF IW:LEARN-produced LME video, “Turning the Tide”, many copies of which (including a Chinese translation) were distributed, and have already been reported useful in diverse applications to highlight the perilous status of many Large Marine Ecosystems and the role of the GEF in catalyzing country driven actions to restore and protect the oceans and their coasts.
As a result of the fourth portfolio conference, participants
described numerous changes to personal and project-level action strategies.
Oft-reported benefits of the IWC were increased communication with new peers,
formation of expert groups with new contacts, and using liaison and knowledge
sharing methodologies to improve project management. It was generally noted that the level of
energy and engagement of participants was sustained throughout the conference
to an unusually high degree, and participants welcomed being able to take an
active role in the participative sessions.
Conclusions and Recommendations
The leadership of the GEF IW community convened in Cape Town with a clear purpose: to learn from practical experience gained over a decade of GEF investment, to examine ways to creatively apply this knowledge to overcome the specific and diverse bottlenecks and challenges that projects, countries and their partners are facing, to generate together and internalize collective learning - and ultimately to transform their accumulated knowledge into political will and actions.
The survey results show that these conference objectives were met for a significant majority of participants, while marking a dramatic departure from the traditional ‘expert’ and powerpoint-driven plenary format. For the first time, the agenda was built from the bottom up, honoring expertise and experience of the GEF IW project participants to drive the process of learning from one another, and to leverage the collective capacity of the GEF IW portfolio. The organizers took a calculated risk – and participants together succeeded - in testing a suite of experiential learning techniques. The structured mix of formal and informal sessions encouraged participants, who ‘rolled up their sleeves’ and cited frank and meaningful interactions. Many participants, including several ministers, were sufficiently impressed with the results of the IWC to report plans to introduce peer-to-peer learning techniques they experienced at the IWC to improve the learning culture in their projects and ministries. While emphasizing the need for sensitivity to cultural differences, evaluation data indicates buy-in for participatory peer learning approaches, with a strong mandate to accomplish even more in two years at the Fifth GEF Biennial IW Conference. Detailed advice for future improvements stressed the need for more substantive background and preparation in order to focus discussions and take learning interactions to a greater level of depth, and to schedule fewer sessions to enable more time for discussions.
Key recommendations to GEF & Implementing Agencies include:
- delays in GEF CEO endorsement of approved projects remains a problem
- risk of losing hard-won national political support due to failure to address practical needs in developing countries (such as vehicles, communications, etc.)
- by requesting reduced budgets and leaving the outcomes in place, the risks of project failure are increased
- 'soft’ interventions are also important, often cheaper and contribute to decentralization, participation, equity, and institutional reform
- need for examination of TDA/SAP specifically for groundwater
- TDA/SAP process for freshwater projects should include all components of the water cycle and those hydrologic subsystems that potentially could be impacted adversely by the project
- Capacity building may not be new, but remains critical, in particular for regional institutions
- Stakeholder engagement should be part of project design, and funded throughout projects
- Economic valuation of ecosystems should be included in project design, both in the formulation of proposals and as a component of project interventions
- Measures must be put in place for sustaining commitments to support regional institutions
- Climate adaptation should be raised to at least the same level of importance as mitigation
- Inter-project Learning Exchanges proposals received: several already underway, including one leveraging the power of networking, communities of practice and information management.
- Participants requested a virtual Innovation Marketplace: http://www.iwlearn.net/abt_iwlearn/pns/dialog/iwc4_marketplace
- Support for participation of GEF nutrient management project pioneers in N2007 conference and the establishment of a nutrient reduction community of practice: http://www.iwlearn.net/nutrientreduction
- Interest was also expressed for a constructed wetlands community of practice.
- To address requests for a ‘satellite’ to iwlearn.net to share information and practical experience on adaptation to Climate Variability and Change, IW:LEARN is cooperating with UNDP’s Adaptation Learning Mechanism which is under development
- Strengthening political commitment to regional cooperation on groundwater management: November 2007 Roundtable on Groundwater management in Southeastern Europe, Africa Governance Process Learning MSP approved by GEF with a component on groundwater and climate.
