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The Global Environment Facility: Forging Partnerships and Fostering Knowledge Transfer to
Sustain Transboundary Waters in Europe, Central Asia and Around the World

Dann M. Sklarew1 (GEF IW:LEARN) and Alfred M. Duda (GEF Secretariat)

Introduction

Formed in the aftermath of the 1992 Earth Summit in Rio, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has
since emerged as the world's largest single investor in international environmental management. The GEF
focuses resources from a triad of international Implementing Agencies ­ the United Nations Development
Programme (UNDP), the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) and the World Bank ­ to
catalyse multi-country, multi-sectoral partnerships for global environmental benefit.2 Within its
International Waters (IW) Focal Area, the GEF helps recipient countries to work together and with donor
countries to manage their shared water resources.3

The GEF's International Waters Focal Area
Countries sharing water resources often face complex water-related environmental problems. To be
successful in addressing these transboundary problems, the GEF Operational Strategy, adopted in 1995,
recognized that a series of international waters (IW) projects may be needed over time to:
1. Build capacity and political commitment of countries to work together;
2. Jointly understand and set priorities based on assessments of environmental conditions in
waterbodies;
3. Identify actions to address the highest priority transboundary problems; and
4. Implement agreed regional and national policies, legislative and institutional reforms and attract
the investments needed to address them.
The GEF's US$465 million investment over the past decade has leveraged a total of US$1.05 billion in
support of 57 approved IW projects.4 Another 29 GEF IW projects are in preparation. Funds support
nations sharing transboundary basins or marine ecosystems to ­

1. Cooperate in assessing sources of degradation, establishing priorities (Transboundary Diagnostic
Analysis, TDA);

2. Determine and adopt policy, legal and institutional reforms (via a Strategic Action Programme,
SAP); and

3. Test feasibility of investments to address conflicts and reverse degradation.

In essence, this comprehensive approach requires a set of relatively straightforward projects that
collectively cover complex situations and activities. This breaks complex challenges up into manageable
pieces and fosters action at three institutional levels: multilateral (i.e., multi-country); inter-ministerial; and
sub-national (i.e., essentially provincial and community) levels. Judicious utilization of funding demands
an internal GEF programme strategy to ensure that all the necessary institutions are involved and resources
are available over timescales consistent with progressively increasing country commitments. In addition, a
"coordinating mechanism" is needed among the GEF Implementing Agencies (IAs) and the GEF
Secretariat (GEFSEC) to ensure that the identification of priorities and appropriate sequencing of
interventions actually occurs.
The GEF Operational Strategy5 and Operational Programs6 in the International Waters Focal Area were
established based on an understanding that fewer resources would be devoted to this Focal Area than to
those of biodiversity and climate change. This understanding was reflected in notional funding allocations
to the initial ten Operational Programs. It might, correspondingly, be reasonable for the expectations of the
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overall results within the International Waters Focal Area to be lower than those from the other focal areas.
Thus, if International Waters activities had been expected by GEF Council to achieve results more rapidly
and thoroughly in relation to economically important cases of serious transboundary ecosystem
degradation, more resources would have to be devoted to specific geographic areas to leverage the political
commitments and to accelerate the enormous sectoral changes required. If comparatively lower funding
was the dominant priority of the Council, only light-touch catalytic interventions could logically be
expected with concomitantly low expectations for reversing environmental degradation.
The GEF's Waterbody-based program (Operational Program 8) incorporates the objectiveof testing
whether the comparative advantages of each of the three Implementing Agencies could achieve a reversal
in degradation trends in a single geographical area.7 In other words, could the assignment of increased
resources to a single geographical area through the collective involvement of the three IAs accelerate the
achievement of measurable environmental improvement as a test case with limited resources? This would
be an important learning activity for the world community, namely, whether complex cases of degradation
could really be reversed within a modest timeframe. In Europe and North America, such reversals have
taken 20-25 years to achieve. It would test whether the GEF could utilize the lessons learned and help
focus donors' development assistance to reducing this time by perhaps 50% in recipient countries. Thus,
OP 8 essentially set an objective for GEF to program sufficient resources in a single geographical area to
implement the GEF Operational Strategy in an accelerated manner.
Testing the Geographically Based Programmatic Approach
Through discussions within the GEF's International Waters Task Force8 (IWTF), the Danube River and
Black Sea region was chosen as a test geographic area. The selection of this region was based on: (a) the
history and maturity of progressive GEF and donor involvement; (b) expressed recipient government
commitments to making necessary reforms and investments in support of waterbody-specific conventions;
and (c) the availability of historical monitoring information to provide a baseline against which to gauge
improvements. In the CEO's address at the GEF Retreat in Baltimore in 1998, he welcomed the
development of programmatic approaches and this provided increased incentives for the IWTF and the IAs
to implement the programmatic approach specified in the Operational Strategy. Moreover, the CEO's
January 1999 policy initiatives message advocating that the GEF focus on results and impacts spurred the
IWTF to move to develop the Danube River and Black Sea basin programmatic approach and to discuss it
with the 17 participating countries during 2000. By the time of the Istanbul Stocktaking meeting on the
programmatic approach in June 2000, the three IAs and the GEFSEC had achieved the development of the
approach within the three-year timeframe specified in OP 8.
Danube/Black Sea Basin Strategic Approach
The seventeen countries in the drainage basin of the Black Sea face a variety of shared environmental
problems that are largely transboundary in nature. Through a series of GEF-assisted projects, these
countries have determined that excessive releases of nutrients from agricultural, municipal and industrial
sources are the highest priority transboundary water problem that they share. Excessive fluxes of nitrogen
and phosphorus in rivers create polluted conditions in the Danube Delta and the Black Sea that have
seriously compromised resources and amenities and biological diversity. Beginning in the GEF Pilot Phase,
the Danube Basin countries and the six countries surrounding the Black Sea decided to work together with
support from the European Union and the GEF on a series of international waters projects. A series of
small projects has supported in progressive fashion increased country commitments to action. The projects
resulted in the countries learning to work together, assigning priorities to transboundary problems and
mutually agreeing on interventions needed to address the highest priority problems through "Strategic
Action Programs" (SAPs).
The Danube Basin SAP and the Black Sea SAP are now ready for implementation by the countries
consistent with GEF Operational Program 8 of the International Waters Focal Area. Incremental cost
financing is needed to resolve the priority transboundary issues. To accelerate implementation of the SAPs,
a geographically based programmatic approach was developed among the IAs, the 17 countries and the
GEFSEC. The approach includes a variety of interventions, including two final regional projects through
UNDP (with the assistance of UNEP in one of them) for Black Sea and Danube basin countries to support
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incremental costs of policy/legal/institutional reforms and a novel "Partnership Investment Fund" with the
World Bank on nutrient reduction (principally nitrogen focused) in the agricultural, municipal and
industrial sectors. The GEF Council approved the first tranche in May 2001. The second tranche of the
Partnership Investment Fund is currently before the GEF Council for its approval at its May 15-17, 2002
meeting.
The Strategic Partnership represents the World Bank's commitment to assist the 15 recipient countries in
the basin in implementing the two SAPs addressing, as the highest transboundary priority, nutrient
reduction. This partnership is designed to mobilize at least $210 Million non-GEF funding for on-the-
ground nutrient reduction investments. The investment produces a leverage of 3:1 through the provision of
$70 Million to the World Bank in three tranches over a 6-year period. The CEO has delegated approval
authority to speed implementation of sub-projects under the Partnership. This would be done by: (a)
incorporating in the dialogue with each of the 15 GEF-recipient countries policies that address nutrient
reduction in the agricultural, municipal and industrial sectors; (b) promoting inclusion of Danube/Black
Sea restoration issues in the ongoing Country Assistance Strategy (CAS) development processes; and (3)
using the convening powers and comparative advantage of the World Bank to mobilize funding and engage
other donors/partners to achieve an overall contribution of $3 from other sources for each $1 contributed
by the GEF for nutrient reduction measures. Replication of demonstration projects would be expected
through country requests to the World Bank and other sources.
This programmatic approach is relatively simple. As suggested by the countries, there would be two final
regional international waters projects to assist the Danube basin and Black Sea countries respectively in
focusing on implementing the reforms and, where necessary, building capacity to enact the reforms
consistent with the basin conventions the countries have signed and the SAPs the countries have adopted.
The two regional projects, led by UNDP but in one case having components under the responsibility of
UNEP, would complement the separate, already approved, Dnipro basin project also being led by UNDP
(third component). The fourth component in this approach is a proposed GEF/World Bank Partnership
Investment Fund for Nutrient Reduction. This translates the multilaterally-agreed priority of nutrient
reduction(especially nitrogen loading reductions) into single country World Bank operations that help to
leverage additional funding and accelerate the implementation of investments for nutrient reductions in the
agricultural, municipal and wetland restoration areas. Various other activities through EU accession
contribute to this approach, which essentially helps address country commitments under the GPA and the
ECE Transboundary Convention. Finally, GEF has programmed a number of other complementary projects
in the Black Sea, Danube and Dnipro basins that can help contribute to this globally significant test. If
successful, the GEF Council may wish to consider expanding this to other areas in the future.
GEF International Waters Projects in Europe and Central Asia

Table 1 provides a summary of the different GEF projects that have been completed, are underway, or
under preparation in the ECE region. Note the concentration of different small projects in the
Danube/Dnipro/Black Sea basin that reflects this one Council-authorized test of such a programmatic
approach. Across Europe and Central Asia, the GEF is supporting a dozen projects currently under
development or implementation. Their focus spans lakes (e.g., Lake Peipsi and Lake Ohrid), rivers (e.g.,
Danube River and Dnipro River Basin), large marine ecosystems (e.g., Baltic Sea, Black Sea, Caspian Sea
and Mediterranean Sea) and the Arctic Ocean.9
Project development generally begins with conducting a Transboundary Diagnostic Analysis (TDA) of the
waterbody's priority transboundary environmental challenges and their root causes. The TDA effort
contributes to formulation of a Strategic Action Programme (SAP), detailing how countries will cooperate
in undertaking policy/legal/institutional reforms regionally and individually and investments to address
these transboundary priority challenges. Through this process, the GEF IW projects build stakeholder
commitment and coordination among riparian countries, both essential to implementing the SAP. Project
development also often includes one or more demonstration activities involving local, national and/or
international partnerships. Successful demonstrations may be sustained, enlarged or replicated during a
project's implementation phase. The GEF aims for implemented projects to generate sufficient momentum
to eventually become self-sustaining.
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Table 1. GEF International Waters Projects in the ECE Region.
Project Title
GEF
Participating
Imple-

Financing
Countries
menting
Agency
I. Danube/Black Sea Basin Programmatic Approach
Black Sea Environmental Programme
$349,920. Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania,
UNDP,
(BSEP)
Russian Federation, Turkey,
UNEP
Ukraine
Black Sea Strategic Action Programme
$1,798,000. Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania,
UNDP
(BSSAP)
Russian Federation, Turkey,
Ukraine
Building Environmental Citizenship to
$750,000. Hungary and Slovenia
UNDP
Support Transboundary Pollution
Reduction in the Danube: A Pilot Project
in Hungary and Slovenia
Control of Eutrophication, Hazardous
$4,350,000. Bulgaria, Romania, Georgia,
UNDP,
Substances and Related Measures for
Russian Federation, Turkey,
UNEP
Rehabilitating the Black Sea Ecosystem:
The Ukraine
Phase I
Danube Regional Project: Strengthening
$750,000. Bosnia & Herzegovina,
UNDP
the Implementation Capacities for Nutrient
Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech
Reduction and Transboundary
Republic, Hungary, Moldova,
Cooperation in the Danube River Basin
Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Ukraine, Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia
Danube River Basin Environmental
$8,500,000. Austria, Hungary, Slovenia,
UNDP
Management
Czech Republic, Slovakia,
Bulgaria, Romania, Moldova,
Ukraine, Germany
Developing the Danube River Pollution
$4,190,000. Bosnia & Herzegovina,
UNDP
Reduction Programme
Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech
Republic, Hungary, Moldova,
Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia,
Ukraine, Federal Republic of
Yugoslavia
GEF Strategic Partnership for the
$16,000,000. Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania,
UNDP,
Danube/Black Sea Basin
Russian Federation, Turkey,
UNEP
Ukraine
Nutrient Reduction Project - Strategic
$7,500,000. Hungary World
Partnership for Nutrient Reduction in the
Bank
Danube River Basin and the Black Sea
Nutrient Reduction Programme ­ Regional
$349,920. Bulgaria, Georgia, Romania,
UNDP,
Project for the Black Sea
Russian Federation, Turkey,
UNEP,
Ukraine
World
Bank
Black Sea Agricultural Pollution Control
$5,500,000. Romania
World
Project
Bank
Danube Pollution Reduction Programme -
$87,000. Slovenia
World
Financing Pollution Projects by Local
Bank
Financial Intermediaries
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Project Title
GEF
Participating
Imple-

Financing
Countries
menting
Agency
Transfer of Environmentally Sound
$990,000. Bulgaria, Croatia, Hungary,
UNDP
Technology (TEST) in the Danube River
Romania and Slovakia
Basin
Dnieper (Dnipro) River Basin Strategic
$7,000,000. Belarus, Russian Federation and UNDP
Action Programme
Ukraine
II. Baltic Sea Large Marine Ecosystem
Baltic Sea Regional Project
$5,850,000. Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania,
World
Poland, Russian Federation
Bank
Rural Environmental Protection Project
$3,000,000. Poland
World
(REPP)
Bank
III. Mediterranean Large Marine Ecosystem
Priority Actions for the Further
$6,240,000. Albania, Algeria, Bosnia and
UNEP
Elaboration and Implementation of the
Herzegovina, Croatia, Egypt,
Strategic Action Programme for the
Lebanon, Morocco, Slovenia,
Mediterranean Sea
Syria, Tunisia, and Turkey
IV. Caspian Sea Basin
Addressing Transboundary Environmental
$7,989,124. Azerbaijan, Islamic Republic of UNDP,
Issues in the Caspian Environment
Iran, Kazakhstan, Russian
UNEP,
Programme (CEP)
Federation, and Turkmenistan
World
Bank
Regional Partnership for Prevention of
$ 5,000,000. Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia,
UNDP
Transboundary Degradation of the Kura-
Iran, Turkey
Aras River
V. Aral Sea Basin
Water and Environmental Management in
$12,233,568. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,
World
the Aral Sea Basin
Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and
Bank
Uzbekistan
VI. Lake Basins
Lake Ohrid Conservation Project
$4,100,000. Albania and Macedonia
World
Bank
Development and Implementation of the
$1,000,000. Estonia and Russian Federation UNDP
Lake Peipsi/Chudskoe Basin Management
Programme
VII. Arctic Ocean
Persistent Toxic Substances, Food
$750,000.
UNEP
Security, and Indigenous Peoples of the
Russian North
Support to the National Plan of Action for
$6,191,000. Russian Federation
UNEP,
the Protection of the Arctic Marine
World
Environment from Anthropogenic
Bank
Pollution in the Russian Federation
VII. Other
Integrated Water and Ecosystem
$4,630,000. Albania World
Management Project
Bank
Agricultural Development Project
$8,860,000. Georgia
World
Bank
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Project Title
GEF
Participating
Imple-

Financing
Countries
menting
Agency
Integrated Ecosystem Management in the
$8,000,000. Albania, Macedonia, Greece
UNDP
Transboundary Prespa Park Region
Agricultural Pollution Control Project
5300000. Moldova
World
Bank
Upgrading of Chisinau Waste Water
To be Moldova World
Treatment Plant
determined
Bank
Wetland Restoration and Pollution
$350,000. Bulgaria
World
Reduction
Bank
Agricultural Pollution Control Project
$300,000. Turkey
World
Bank

A variety of GEF-supported issue-specific and capacity building IW projects operate on the global scale
with component activities in Europe and Central Asia. GloBallast, for instance, addresses the issue of inter-
basin transmission of invasive aquatic species in ships' ballast water ­ including through demonstration
activities in the Black Sea area. Examples of GEF capacity building projects with involvement in this
region include the Global International Waters Assessment (GIWA), TRAIN-SEA-COAST and, as
detailed below, the International Waters: Learning Exchange and Resource Network (IW:LEARN).10

The GEF recognizes that any given recipient country may not initially have sufficient local technical
resources or expertise to fully develop or implement an IW project. Further, mature IW projects have
experiences and lessons learned that could help newer projects to proceed more efficiently or effectively
than their predecessors. To facilitate such learning and knowledge sharing among IW projects, the GEF
created IW:LEARN.11

The GEF IWLEARN Project

IW:LEARN aims to build a "global knowledge community" to sustain Earth's transboundary water
resources. Specific services provided to foster this IW community of practice include:

1. Facilitated face-to-face and electronic forums among IW managers and among between stakeholders
to identify and address priority transboundary waters management needs at the local, national, regional
and global scale;

2. Synthesis of "knowledge products" (e.g., articles, guidelines, distance education modules) gleaned
from instructive experiences and lessons learned in order to address to these needs;

3. Dissemination of these knowledge products via both on-line and off-line electronic media as well as
through face-to-face workshops and outreach activities;

4. Development of on-line and standalone electronic "resource centres" to provide wide access to these
knowledge products and related knowledge resources (e.g., IW project profiles, tools, best practices,
community news, events, etc.) via both electronic and traditional media (e.g., paper, radio, etc.);

5. Collaboration with IW projects to test and evaluate emerging Information and Communications
Technologies (ICTs) and processes to advance transboundary water management;

6. Needs-based technical assistance to IW projects to apply such ICTs to increase effectiveness of
transboundary communication and coordination both within and between projects;

7. Workshops for IW personnel to develop and replicate all the above products, services and tools to
meet their own transboundary waters management needs; and
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8. Establishment of regional support facilities to assist personnel in the development of these products
and services to foster additional regional and thematic knowledge communities for the benefit of IW
projects in their region.

IW:LEARN has supported forums and dialogs among over 200 participants of IW projects and their civil
society counterparts at the global scale, as well as regionally in the Latin America and Caribbean (LAC),
East Asia and European and regions, and locally in Southwestern Africa. It's knowledge products have
been synthesized into a distance Masters degree pilot program in international development with focus on
international waters ­ with 5 graduates and numerous applicants for the next cohort. Two on-line resource
centres have been deployed by IW:LEARN and its partners: the "International Waters Resource Centre"
(http://www.iwlearn.net), displayed in Figure 1, as well as a local transboundary "Distance Learning and
Information Sharing Tool" (DLIST) along the Benguela Current coastal zone in Namibia and South Africa
(http://www.dlist.org).

Through ICT workshops, IW:LEARN has trained and recruited over 40 IW information systems specialists
and public information officer into its ongoing Implementation Team (the "I-team"). The I-team functions
via the Internet as a peer-to-peer focus group and technical assistance community among GEF and other
IW projects. I-team members also assist their projects and partners to utilize emerging ICTs, such as instant
messaging and Internet-based telephony, where appropriate, to advance their respective transboundary
water management objectives. The I-team will also contribute to the development of regional IW:LEARN
support facilities in LAC, Africa, the Middle East and elsewhere.

With sufficient regional interest and involvement, specific GEF IW:LEARN activities ­ distance learning,
knowledge sharing, and technical capacity building ­ could be applied to benefit transboundary waters
management across Europe and Central Asia. So doing will also create a regional instance of GEF
IW:LEARN's global knowledge community to sustain Earth's transboundary water resources. This process
was launched with a seven person meeting of regional GEF projects and partners at the Second
International Conference on Sustainable Management of Transboundary Waters in Europe (in
Miedzyzdroje, Poland on April 22, 2002). The authors look forward to working with these projects and the
European IW community as a whole to realize these goals.

The authors wish to thank the GEF International Waters projects, their cooperating agencies and
organizations that collectively contributed to this synthesis of knowledge on the GEF's International
Waters portfolio in Europe and Central Asia.
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Figure 1. Homepage of the GEF IW:LEARN-sponsored "International Waters Resource Centre"
(http://www.iwlearn.net), simply designed to provide access to IW resources over limited-bandwidth
Internet connections and via off-line CD-ROM. This prototype will be connected to a "cloud" of other
regional and thematic resource centres worldwide.


1 Corresponding author: 4211 North Fairfax Drive, Arlington, VA 22203-1623 USA.
[1] (703) 522-2190/2191 (phone/fax). dann@iwlearn.org.

2 Global Environment Facility (GEF) Secretariat website: http://www.gefweb.org.

3 GEF. 2001. International Waters Programme Study. Washington, DC. http://www.iwlearn.net/iwps.pdf.

4 GEF. 2001. A Decade of Managing Transboundary Waters. Washington, DC.

5 GEF. 1996. Operational Strategy. Washington, DC.

6 GEF. 1997. GEF Operational Programs. Washington, DC.

7 GEF Operational Programs, Paragraph 8.5e.
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8 IWTF consists of representatives from the GEFSEC and each IA.

9 Hypertext profiles and documents for IW projects in Europe and Central Asia:
http://www.iwlearn.net/projects/europe/europe.htm.

10 Hypertext profiles for global thematic and capacity building IW projects:
http://www.iwlearn.net/projects/global/global.htm.

11 IW:LEARN website: http://www.iwlearn.org.

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