1.1 Project Summary
One of the biggest environmental issues Palestine faces is the lack of governance within environmental sectors and the lack of capacity of civil society and NGO?s to take a leading role within governance. Without the increased capacity of civil society and NGO?s in environmental governance national and level policy changes will be impossible. There will also be a focus on the generating, accessing and use of information in order to guide the governance and policy analysis as well as monitoring and evaluation systems to regulate the effectiveness of such progress and identify areas in which further training will be needed. Due to the complexity of environmental issues in Palestine this project will focus on one environmental problem to begin with, with the intent of ensuring the model becomes applicable to a wider range of issues. The example chosen is quarrying in the West Bank and the environmental issues that arise from this activity.

Stone quarrying is an environmentally destructive sector; mining involves huge deforestation, destruction/damage to biodiversity within the area, disturbance to wildlife, air pollution and surface or ground water pollution. Water leakage from the stone cutting could result in both contamination of ground water and surface water and the water causeways that form in the soil could lead to soil erosion resulting in the loss of soil stability. Some quarries do have techniques for wastewater to be treated, it is estimated that up to 70% of wastewater is treatable and reusable for quarrying. However there are areas which simply leave the wastewater in nearby pools to dry, for drying purposes the water has usually been mixed with a chemical treatment whereby coagulants are added to aide the process of solids settling. The composition of the water and sludge involves high levels of CaCO3 which has huge environmental impacts, in large quantities this composition causes soil pores to clog which reduces rainfall infiltration thus lowering the quality of the soil.

There will be two main project locations; Ash Shuyukh in Hebron governorate, Beit Fajjar in Bethlehem governorate. Using the issue of quarries as a focal area, the project will be able to establish the three chosen Capacity Results Outcomes (1, 2 and 3) and measure the success before applying the model to further issues. The project rationale comes from the need to exert more modes of governance over the Palestinian environment in order to produce changes in actions on the ground, this can only be done with the use of dissemination of information, capacity building with local stakeholders and NGO?s and influencing national and subnational policy and legislation. All committees will be formed to ensure the involvement of all local actors. Furthermore this project relates to the GEF/SGP Country Programme Strategy Operational Phase 5 in that it addresses objective 10. The need to enhance and strengthen capacities of CSO?s to engage in consultative processes, apply knowledge management to ensure information flows and implement conventional guidelines which could influence policy and legislation development in a future objective. This objective directly relates to the three chosen Capacity Results Outcomes which are 1, 2 and 3. By focusing on Capacity Result Outcome 1: Capacities for Engagement, CSO?s capacity to be involved in national or sub-national dialogue and policy analysis will be increased whilst contributing to ARIJ?s capacity to engage in effective dialogue with CSO?s and other stakeholders thus strengthening the expected outcome. Capacity Result Outcome 2 relates to the generating, assessing and use of information and knowledge which is key to the successful implementation of Capacity Result Outcome 1. Without adequate dissemination of knowledge effective dialogue and engagement will be unsuccessful. Finally Capacity Result Outcome 3: Capacities for Strategy, Policy and Legislation Development, does not directly relate to objective 10 but can support and utilise it. Influencing legislation is a process that requires influencing activities to occur such as awareness raising workshops and media campaigns so that civil mobilisation can occur. Whilst influencing policy itself does not directly link into objective 10 public awareness campaigns does which is a by-product of Capacity Result Outcome 3.