The GEF Small Grants Programme currently comprises 85 Country Programmes supported by a Central Programme Management Team based at UNDP/New York. Each Country Programme uses a Country Programme Strategy to orient project identification and development. Each country’s CPS unites the different projects around a strategic goal - more and more the CPS’s are focused on a specific region and/or thematic area (e.g., rural renewable energy).  Each CPS is developed drawing on analyses by the National Steering Committee of global, national and regional priorities manifested in such documents as NBSAPs, NAPs, NIPS, etc. This framework – national priorities grounded in a regional focus – provides the basis for identifying desired Country Programme impacts and outcomes. Individual projects are thus identified and supported if they fulfill the essential criteria of contributing to meeting the CPS’ desired Impacts and Outcomes.

While projects produce impacts at the local level, the ensemble of projects within a Country Programme produce results that are synergistic and lead to impacts that are greater than just the sum of individual project results. When analyzing the impacts of individual projects on the production of global benefits, it is important that they are assessed in the context of Country Programme efforts to produce broader outcomes and objectives in keeping with the global and national priorities found in the NBSAPs, NIPS, NAPs, etc. Individual project impacts by themselves have little impact on the global environment, but, through synergy among projects at the region level, their impacts contribute concretely to global benefits through their effect on the national priorities found in Convention-related strategies and plans.

The SGP Impact Assessment System will combine these tools with other elements of the current M&E practice, such as the ex-post studies and portfolio reviews. The enhanced system itself will be piloted in a select number of Country Programmes to identify potential problems or opportunities for greater effectiveness, before extending the system to all Country Programmes world-wide.

The IAS is backed by and linked to an upgraded database system structured to better capture impacts and results, as well as key indicators and performance assessment generally. The current database has been an important monitoring tool and will continue now to serve impact assessment with the new indicator system. The IAS and upgraded database will not only track quantitative information but also qualitative. 

Enhanced monitoring of and reporting on projects and country programs, with support by a database that systematizes reporting, should facilitate key reporting on impacts and help to demonstrate the link between projects, Country Programmes and the global level. The IAS therefore also comprises an enhanced focus on performance assessment and the use of indicators, to both track progress and report on successes and challenges. This will allow the SGP to be able to ‘tell a story’ about achievements of and contributions made to Impacts that is coherent and consistent, and that meets requirements of the Council.

Each project and set of projects in a particular country programme also achieve other impacts, which can be considered as being more ‘operational’ or management–related; the SGP programme itself will also generate such impacts. These operational results include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Replication of SGP Initiatives/Catalytic Effects/SGP Programme Expansion 
• Resources mobilized, leveraged/Co-financing levels 
• Linkages with other GEF projects and non-GEF projects
• Knowledge Management/Lesson learning and dissemination
• M&E systems and processes, and reporting

These key areas of results are, in fact, fundamental to the SGP programme, as these are vital for its continued growth and success, as well as being important to programme sustainability and ongoing improvement. The IAS will therefore also facilitate and emphasize reporting on these key results, as projects, countries, and the global programme are expected to report to the GEF Council on achievements made in these areas. Therefore, in addition, Country Programme Strategies will be required to list expected results in these areas, in the context of strategies prepared for their achievement, and will be expected to report on them over time.

An Impact Assessment System is currently being developed and will be available for download from this page as soon as it is finalized.