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Numéro du projet : ASI/B76201/IB/1999/0158 |
Direction : D | |
Pays/région : Asie régionale |
Intitulé : Tropical Forestry Small Grants Programme | |
Ligne budgétaire : B76201 |
Resp. géog. : | |
Numéro direction : 1999/0158 |
Resp. tech. : | |
No SEM/ALA : |
Resp. fin. : |
A. Objectif de l'action envisagée :
The TFBL SGP shall complement existing financing instruments to the benefit of poor and underprivileged forest user groups, such as indigenous people and traditional forest dwellers who do not have ready acces to development cooperation funding by pursuing the following key objectives :
(i) Act as a catalyst to promote and demonstrate community-based management and resource use that benefit tropical forests;
(ii) Draw lessons from local level experience and support the spread of successful community level strategies and innovations among all stakeholders;
(iii) Build local capacity at grassroots level through partnership and networks of local stakeholders for action to tackle problems that are contributing to forest destruction and degradation.
B. Description :
The TFBL SGP will focus on a few pilot countries with a well-developed and active NGO movement, positive political-legal framework conditions, a proven demand and adequate absorptive capacity for TFBL small grant projects and previous experience of the operational partner UNDP .
For the Asian region as a whole , the SGP would consider, but not particularly be limited to the following countries : Cambodia, , Indonesia , Lao PDR, Malaysia, Pakistan, Philippines, Sri Lanka, Thailand and Vietnam .
The following will be the focal themes for actions to be supported under the TFBL SGP:
(i) Conservation of forests which are recognised as being of high ecological value as well as restoration of degraded forest areas, which are considered to be of importance due to their local impacts such as the protection of hydrographic basins, the prevention of soil erosion, and the preservation of biological diversity ;
(ii) Sustainable forest management and utilisation to provide economic, social and environmental benefits and including inter alia forest certification and environmentally sound harvesting of both timber and non-wood forest products and forest regeneration;
(iii) Economic viability of sustainable forest management through technical improvements of downstream activities related to the forest sector such as small and medium scale processing and marketing of timber and non-wood forest products and development of alternatives to agricultural practices based on forest clearing ;
(iv) Applied research as well as knowledge and information generation concerning forest services and products, capacity building and education in the field of forest and ecosystem management.
C. Justification :
The idea of creating a SGP as part of the EC funded operations to promote tropical forests was first discussed in November 1997 with several important European environmental NGO's who have close contacts with grassroots organisations in third countries and who proposed the EC to set up a scheme similar to the IUCN-administrated Dutch SGP. In March 1998, it was decided to execute a preparatory study, which has examined existing examples of this type of intervention, both operated by the EC (ACP-countries) and other donors. The study has come to the conclusion that this TFBL SGP must be geographically focused on a region which has recieved less TFBL funds in the past and that its execution should be delegated to a suitable international development agency, with UNDP being the best choice on the basis of its proven performance in similar activities.
The preparatory study also found that the existing demand for small grant forestry projects exceeds the financial capacity and thematic scope of the already existent SGPs such as the UNDP-managed GEF scheme. A TFBL SGP operating in the forest sector will occupy a unique and valuable niche within all international environment and development efforts. There is no comparable mechanism for raising environmental awareness and building capacity across such a broad spectrum of constituents within the recipient countries.
The SGP concept is the subject of a specific positive comment to the 1999 budget.
D. Modalités d'exécution :
The functional principle of this Small Grants Fund is that, to avoid central processing through lenghty procedures of large amounts of individual project proposals of a rather small size, there is made a relatively large block commitment, which is meant to be divided up into smaller financing allocations to individual projects and is managed according to specific procedures by a specialized operational agency.
In order to guarantee a smooth implementation, the administration of the TFBL SGP will be delegated by agreement to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). UNDP is a fully qualified and experienced international aid agency, which manages the Small Grants Programme of the Global Environmental Facility (GEF) and already administrates 29 EC funded projects with a total financial volume of almost 115 M€ in Community contributions. The legal and administrative framework for the functional ties between the EC and UNDP is given by a Standard Cooperation Agreement between UNDP the EC.
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