The World Bank Group's Partnership with the Global Environment Facility

Abstract

This global program review (GPR) principal purposes are: (a) to help improve the relevance and effectiveness of the Bank Group’s partnership with the global environment facility (GEF), and (b) to draw lessons for the Bank Group’s partnership with the GEF and other large global partnership programs. Since the millennium declaration in 2000, the Bank Group has become involved in a growing number of large partnership programs that pool donor resources to finance country level investments to help countries achieve specific millennium development goals (MDGs), that have inclusive governance structures, and that subscribe to the 2005 Paris declaration on aid effectiveness. In addition to being one of the founding partners of the GEF, the World Bank plays three major roles in the GEF: (a) as the trustee of the GEF and related trust funds; (b) as one of the original three implementing agencies of GEF-financed projects; and (c) as host of the GEF Secretariat - providing a range of administrative support services, such as human resources, communications, and legal services. The review examines the Bank Group’s experience with the GEF’s allocation of resources among countries and focal areas, and with the GEF’s approaches to incremental cost analysis, co-financing, and leveraging. It also assesses how the World Bank has fulfilled its corporate roles as an implementing agency, assesses factors that facilitate or hamper the fulfillment of these roles, and reviews how potential conflicts of interest have been managed among the multiple roles that the World Bank plays in the GEF. Chapter one presents introduction, purpose, and methodology. Chapter two describes the origin and evolution of the GEF from 1991 to the present, focusing on those aspects that have the most relevance to the World Bank as implementing agency. Chapters three through eight is organized around the eight principal evaluation questions of this review. Chapter nine is a conclusion that presents the major lessons of this review for the Bank Group - GEF partnership and by extension for the Bank Group’s involvement in other large partnership programs.