General

The Global Environment Facility was established in October 1991 as a pilot program in the World Bank to assist in the protection of the global environment. In 1994, at the Rio Earth Summit, the GEF was restructured and moved out of the World Bank system to become a permanent, separate institution. As part of the restructuring, the GEF was entrusted to become the financial mechanism for both the UN Convention on Biological Diversity and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change. The GEF subsequently was also selected to serve as financial mechanism for three more international conventions: The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (2001), the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (2003) and the Minamata Convention on Mercury (2013). The GEF strives to achieve global environmental benefits by supporting developing countries in their efforts. After various changes agreed upon during last two replenishment negotiations the work is focused around five thematic focal areas: biodiversity; climate change mitigation; chemicals and waste; international waters; and land degradation. Furthermore, an integrated approach pilot was established during the sixth replenishment negotiations to support activities in recipient countries that can help them meet commitments to more than one global convention or thematic area by tackling underlying drivers of environmental degradation. This synergetic approach will continue in GEF-7 through Impact Programs focused on food systems, forests and cities. The GEF is a network organization. It is composed of independent secretariat and evaluation office, the World Bank acts as a trustee channelling project support to implementing entities such as to the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP). Finland has supported the GEF from the very beginning. The support to the seventh replenishment of the GEF (1.7.2018-30.6.2022) is about 31 million euros. This budget decision covers the remaining part of the total contribution, 4,97 million euros.

General

Ethnic customary land systems are vital for community people for livelihood, social justice and environment. Now these land management systems are in danger by centralized control and foreign direct investments with mismanagement and as ignored by laws and policies. This project documents literally and visually ethnic people's traditional land use and natural resource management systems. We build up communities' collective voice, confidence and space to speak out the truth also to international audience abo ut their rights which government has recognised by the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) but which violated by land grab, evictions and globalised natural resource extraction. The 2018 amended Vacant, fallow and virgin land management law threaten ethnic people's right to own, manage and decide on their lands. Under it government insists ethnic people to apply registration for lands under their cultivation but can deny the registration, and all remaining preserved fores t lands could fall under virgin land category. People can thus lose their farmlands and ethnic, religious, cultural lands. By such registration, ownership of customary ethnic lands can be transferred to others. Research on customary land use system, on law s on land and environment and on related human rights will help political stakeholders to recognize ethnic people's customary land use system. Findings and documentary video will be disseminated via media and social media. Project produces and submits to t he CESCR a report on rights to food, livelihood, health, shelter and culture and how imposed land registration causes loss of land, livelihood and violates human rights. Report is supported by land and human rights training, research, advocacy, videos and conference to advocate domestic and international decision makers. It helps communities to protect and assert their human rights and their rights to own, control, manage and decide on their land and to save their bioculturally diverse environment. A joint policy recommendation on ethnic areas will be produced, more awareness and understanding among diverse ethnic and civil society groups, through briefings, media and social media spread out on how customary land use protects human rights and livelihood and community advocacy message for 2020 election. Project is implemented by Pa-O Youth Organization (PYO) with Burma Environment Working Group (BEWG) network, www.paoyouth.org + www.bewg.org.

General

Chepangs and Tamangs live in the hills and mountains of central Nepal facing many types of hazard that affect both lives and livelihood.They are regarded as the most marginalized and resource poor groups in Nepal.Their tiny land holdings provide no more th an 3 to 6 months of food security.The forest and overall landscape is degrading because of the human pressure in forest land.The already formed Community Forest User Groups are not functioning well because of their limited capacity.Due to lack of knowledge of efficient and sustainable agricultural practices and land-tenure rights the communities practicing the traditional slash and burn cultivation have reduced the cultivation cycle from 3-5 years to one year.This had led to serious soil erosion problems th at cause regular landslides that destroy agricultural fields and threaten the lives of people and animals.The main objective of this project is to uplift the livelihoods and food security of the Chepang and Tamang communities through agro-forestry developm ent and improved community-based natural resource management.This is achieved by developing sound biodiversity management and sustainable livelihood activities in order to maintain rebuild and revitalize socio-ecological production landscape.Capacity build ing of CFUGs will be done to strenghten their operational capacity and women's self-help groups will be formed to promote women's empowerment and livelihood.The project will build capacities of local civil society organizations and duty-brearers and promot e positive interaction between local government and Chepang and Tamang communities.The project implemented by NAFAN and supported by the Swallows supports Finland's development objectives by increasing food security and promoting sustainable use of natural resources local democracy and participation of women in decision making. The project will strengthen local organization's capacity in community capacity building and establishing linkages between communities and local government. The project is expected t o benefit directly around 2200 right-holders and 100 duty-bearers. In addition to this approx. 3000 people are expected to benefit indirectly.

General

The project overall objective is ?Sustainable management and use of Tanzanian forests?. The project will contribute to this by increasing the availability of information on forests by working with three institutions of which two are research institutes (SU A TAFORI) and one is Tanzania Forest Service. In the long run this will improve the living conditions for the people of the country through strengthened national economy and quality of life. The project aims at supporting forest and land use policy in line with the National Forest Policy 2001. Forest land management forest-based industries and products and ecosystem conservation and management with institutions and human resources are included in NFP. The aim is sustainable supply of forest products and ser vices by maintaining sufficient forest area under effective management employment and foreign exchange earnings through sustainable forest-based industrial development and trade and ecosystem stability through conservation of forest biodiversity water catc hments and soil fertility.The results and activities of the INFORES-Tanzania project:1) Strengthened capacity of direct beneficiary organizations on NAFORMA maintenance and data dissemination and improved capacity on multisource forest data processing and GIS.2) Improved capacity of forest inventory and management oriented research in SUA and TAFORI.

General

The on-going debate on governance and benefit sharing in the forest sector and the push for the recognition of participatory forest management options represents potential for communities to receive benefits from forest conservation effort. Equitable benef it sharing in PFM is considered one of the most important issues for community cohesion conflicts solving/managing and in enhancing community voice and good governance.Well managed benefit sharing models provide positive incentives to support forest conser vation-plus presents enormous potential benefits for forest communities. It also presents unprecedented potentials for raising incomes securing land rights and social development. On the other hand as a consequence of the increasing pressures on and value of forest lands connected with the creation and commercialization of products and services they are expected to generate also potential social and environmental cost with related unprecedented risks of conflict between stakeholder groups and interests if b enefits and costs sharing as well as governance issues are not properly and well addressed from the very beginning. This project aims to establish pilot projects on benefit sharing accompanied by the necessary governance issues in 3 forest blocks in Mount Kenya region. The project will establish a learning platform in a number of areas including analysing benefit/cost sharing aspect and governance issues. Key questions to be answered include 1) Who will benefit from PFM 2) Mode of payment 3) What are the ex pected costs and possible risks from PFM 4). What are the core aspects to be considered in formulating proper benefit sharing mechanism and adopting good governance principles.The overall goal of the proposed project: ?To enhance governance and institution al capacity of community forest associations (CFA) in managing the affairs of the forest including equitable benefit sharing.