Medium-sized Project proposal
Request for GEF Funding
Financing Plan (US$)GEF Project/Component
Project / 1,000,000
PDF A*
Sub-Total GEF
Co-financing**
IBRD/IDA/IFC / 1,000,000Government
Bilateral
NGOs
Others / 1,340,000
Sub-Total Co-financing: / 2,340,000
Total Project Financing:
Financing for Associated Activity If Any:
* Indicate approval date of PDFA
** Details provided in the Financing Section
35981
Agency’s Project ID: P095674
Country: Global
Project Title: Development Marketplace
GEF Agency: World Bank
Other Executing Agency(ies): None
Duration: 2 years
GEF Focal Area: Biodiversity, Climate Change, International Waters, Land Degradation, and Persistent Organic Pollutants
GEF Operational Program: OP-1, OP-2, OP-3, OP-4, OP- 5, OP-6, OP- 7, OP-8, OP-9, OP-10, OP-11, OP-12, OP-13, OP-14, OP-15
GEF Strategic Priority: BD -1, BD-2, BD-3, BD-4, CC-1, CC-2, CC-3, CC4, CC5, CC6 CC-7, IW-1, IW-2, IW-3, SLM-1, SLM-2, POPs-1
Estimated Starting Date: May 2005
Implementing Agency Fee: US$146,000
This proposal has been prepared in accordance with GEF policies and procedures and meets the standards of the GEF Project Review Criteria for a Medium-sized Project.Steve Gorman
GEF Executive Coordinator, World Bank / For Global DM
Warren Evans
Director, Environment Department
World Bank
Tel: (202) 473-7095, e-mail:
For Southern Cone DM
Jocelyn Albert
Project Contact Person
Tel. and email: 202-473-3458,
PART I - Project Concept
A - Summary
Background:
This GEF MSP package proposes a partnership between the GEF and the Development Marketplace (DM) at two levels. The DM is a World Bank program that holds competitions every 18-24 months, to foster innovative ways to combat poverty. Since its 1997 inception as an internal mechanism to encourage staff to “think outside the box,” the DM has invested more than $25 million in seed money for more than 500 projects in over 60 countries through 4 global competitions and 21 Country Development Marketplace. A Country-level DM differs from the Global DM in that it is tailored to address regional or country-specific issues and present opportunities for very small, locally-based projects to benefit from the DM approach. To date, the DM has awarded over $4.8 million in grant awards to 288 diverse and innovative Country-level DM projects.
The primary purpose of proposing GEF support at both levels is to innovatively expand the award pool for 2005 DM initiatives at both the global and a regional/ country level. The MSP proposal includes:
1. The Global World Bank Development Marketplace- “Innovations for Livelihoods in a Sustainable Environment”, which is the first thematic DM focus entirely on the environment. Its theme reflects the World Bank efforts to promote global, national and local leadership to manage natural resources in a sustainable manner and minimize environmental degradation. The idea behind this approach is to incubate solutions to the most demanding challenges in a particular sector and to use the results to inform and promote knowledge sharing within the World Bank and in the development community at large. The World Bank Development Marketplace program, in co-operation with the Environment sector of the World Bank will hold the Global Marketplace on May 24-25, 2005.
And,
2. The Regional/ Country Southern Cone Development Marketplace- “Youth and Values: Believing in Your Future”, that is designed to help identify, or generate, innovative ideas that contribute to the strengthening of civic values among poor and vulnerable youth. The Southern Cone DM includes an Environment Window that is dedicated to establishing and strengthening environmental values amongst youth by providing young people with the opportunity to influence and actively engage in local and global sustainable development decision-making through programs that address global environmental priorities in Biodiversity, Climate Change, International Waters and Land Degradation. The Country- level Development Market, led by the World Bank Southern Cone Unit, will be held on May 30-31, 2005. Both these initiatives share objectives to:
· Help fund projects that provide local innovative solutions to development problems.
· Expand the pool of funding available for bottom-up innovative projects with global environment benefits applying to DM for funding;
· Assist GEF in meeting its own project objectives by providing a way to reach grassroots social and environmental groups cost-effectively and by finding new ideas with the potential to make a substantial difference in GEF focal areas.
Implementation to date:
The Global Development Marketplace closed its call for proposals at the end of January 2005, and has a total of 2,638 applications. This number represents a tremendous response, given that the 2003 Global DM received 2700 proposals for 9 sectors. The proposals have been divided into 6 sub-sectors including biodiversity conservation, innovative application of clean technologies, protecting environmental health (air and water pollution, water supply and sanitation, POPs), sustainable use of natural resources (land, agriculture, water, forest), renewable energy and energy efficiency and environmental education and awareness. Currently the assessment of these proposals is under way.
The DM and ENV teams are also approaching other funders to solicit their financial contributions to the DM 2005 award pool. These funders include: MacArthur Foundation (confirmed), the International Finance Corporation (to be confirmed), among others.
The call for proposals for the Southern Cone Development Marketplace, under the Country- Level DM framework, will be launched on February 1, 2005 and stay open until March 15, 2005. Distinct to the Global Development Marketplace, this Country-level DM primary focus is on young people in the Southern Cone and includes an Environment Window that is dedicated to strengthen global environmental responsibility and engagement in youth. The Environment window is managed out of the World Bank regional office in Buenos Aires, and will provide 20 GEF funded grants, that would not exceed $US 10,000, to recipients in three out of the four countries involved in the overall Country- DM. These countries are: Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. In addition, the Environment window will also provide grants for at least 6 additional projects to recipients in these countries from other donors.
The Southern Cone DM – (Environment Window) also counts on the collaboration of other funding and technical assistance agencies like the International Finance Corporation (amount to be confirmed), the YPF Foundation (amount to be confirmed) and others which are supporting NGO environmental initiatives in the Southern Cone.
Total Financing Plan/ GEF Allocation
Global DM / Southern Cone DM* -(Environment Window) / TotalGEF / US$ 800,000 / US$ 200,000 / US$ 1,000,000
Co-Financing:
1. The World Bank / US$ 700,000 / US$ 50,000 / US$ 750,000
2. MacArthur / US$ 500,000 / US$ 500,000
3. IFC / US$ 250,000 (TBC) / (amount TBC) / US$ 250,000 (TBC)
4. Others / US$ 550,000 (TBC) / Beneficiaries: US$ 50,000, Sweden: US$ 30,000, various others: US$ 210,000 / US$ 840,000
Co-Financing Subtotal / US$ 2,000,000 / US$ 340,000 / US $2,340,000
Total / US$ 2,800,000 / US$ 540,000 / US $3,340,000
* The Southern Cone Development Marketplace has co-financing for Awards outside Environment focused projects (see implementation section below) that will total US$ 540,000. With the Environment Window totals, the overall budget for the DM will equal $US 1,080,000.
B - Country ownership
1. Country Eligibility
Country ratification of the relevant convention will be an eligibility criterion for all DM applications and GEF focal point endorsement will be a condition of disbursement of GEF funds.
All three Southern Cone countries of implementation have ratified the conventions pertinent to Biodiversity and Climate Change. All three countries have signed the conventions for Land Degradation and adhere to the relevant treaties on International Waters.
2. Country Drivenness
DM projects are proposed by individual social entrepreneurs, Civil Society Organizations (CSOs), NGOs, academics, and others based on their own ideas for how to achieve development and conservation results. Thus, projects are not explicitly aligned to national priorities and programs because they are bottom-up projects proposed by those on the ground closest to the problem(s) being addressed.
Nonetheless, to ensure that projects are not contradictory to national priorities, DM subjects each potential project to a review by World Bank Country Office staff (as designated by the country director) to (1) validate the legitimacy of the executing team, (2) comment on the implementing group’s implementation record, and (3) identify any potential conflict with relevant World Bank strategies and programs (whether stated government priorities, PRSP, CAS, lending operations, etc.). DM jurors are not required to reject those rare projects that conflict with country strategies, but jurors are instructed of the poor success rate of past projects where such a conflict has existed. In the very rare cases where direct synergies have not been identified, the Development Marketplace acts as a catalyst for linking successful winning projects back into World Bank knowledge management and strategies.
C – Program and Policy Conformity
1. Program Designation and Conformity
· Climate Change: DM2005 will address Renewable energy and energy efficiency at the community level as well as projects with innovative application of clean technologies in small enterprises. Mitigating climate change through productive uses of renewable energy (e.g., water pumping, lighting for schools and clinics, power for agro-industries, etc.)
· Biodiversity: DM2005 will focus on Biodiversity conservation and Sustainable use of Natural Resources (land, agriculture, water, forests). Mainstreaming biodiversity conservation in production landscapes and sectors. Experience from these demonstration projects can help informed development of market incentive measures and other metrics of market-based approaches to sustainability in threatened biodiversity areas. Helping catalyze sustainability of protected areas by funding initiatives targeting community or indigenous groups, removing barriers to public-private partnerships, and ensuring preservation of livelihoods in areas adjacent to protected biodiversity areas in order to reduce conflict over land use.
· Multifocal Area: DM2005 will focus on the global benefits from environmental education and awareness.
· POPs: DM2005 will address global benefits from protecting environmental health (air and water pollution)
· Land Degradation: DM2005 will focus on global benefits from projects that address sustainable land management. This will also include land and water projects.
· International Waters: DM2005 will address water resource management and if appropriate, may also include sanitation projects.
The aim of this proposed MSP project is to expand the pool of funding available for bottom-up innovative projects with global environmental benefits applying to DM for funding. This can assist GEF in meeting its program objectives by providing a way to reach grassroots social innovators cost-effectively and by finding new ideas with potential to make a substantial difference in the efforts to achieve global environmental benefits. In addition to providing seed funding for these pilot projects, DM works with each grantee to ensure that success stories and lessons learned are linked back to World Bank operations as well as other donor agencies in an effort to cross-fertilize promising ideas in other countries.
2. Project Design
The primary objective of the DM program is to help the development community at large to meet the Millennium Development Goals by generating new approaches to poverty reduction from a variety of stakeholders outside the usual sources in the development agencies. The secondary objective is to attract more funds for development, allowing the concept of “venture development” —providing seed money for development projects that would otherwise be too risky for traditional Bank operations and other investors —to flourish while highlighting innovative ways to reduce poverty and promote conservation. The tertiary objective is to complement and expand the Bank’s emphasis on partnerships, effectively creating space for funding partnerships that in turn allow for a greater number of implementation partnerships to take place on the ground. In past competitions, the DM supported similarly successful projects including the Millenium Gelfuel – a renewable energy initiative that now has fully-operational commercial plants in Zimbabwe, South Africa, and Malawi with interest for replication from over 20 countries. Another example is the Mongolian Flyfishing for Conservation Project that which one a DM award at the last Development Marketplace Competition and in which GEF has recently invested $1,000,000. (See Annex 2 for more details on replication and scaling-up)
At the program level, the proposed GEF contribution would add up to US$ 800,000 to the overall global award pool, and help fund another 5 - 10 grants dedicated to the GEF focal areas, plus $200,000 to the Southern Cone DM award pool for an additional 20 grants dedicated to the GEF focal areas. At the project level, exact outcomes will vary based on the projects selected by the final jury. DM typically funds projects to test an innovative idea in pilot stage; if past results are a predictor, about 40 percent of these projects will prove worthy of investment in scaling up and replicating. This will have a potentially large benefit in terms of (a) environmental sustainability and protection, (b) demonstration effect for other funders and projects on how to address difficult global environmental challenges, (c) mainstreaming of good ideas to protect the global environment, and (d) building on DM as an effective vehicle for knowledge sharing and dissemination on biodiversity conservation, sustainable land management, POPs, natural resource management and climate change.
Component 1: Global DM
This year, together with the Environment sector of the World Bank, the DM team will hold the next Global Marketplace on May 24-25, 2005. The theme of DM2005, Innovations for Livelihoods in a Sustainable Environment, seeks to support and incubate ideas and innovations that demonstrate local leadership in promoting environmentally sound economic development. The Bank is accepting proposals testing new approaches to renewable energy, sustainable agriculture, air and water pollution, sanitation and water supply, clean technologies for SMEs, biodiversity conservation, and environmental education and awareness-- all through grassroots-oriented initiatives. Development Marketplace seeks co-funding for a very high-quality pool of projects that generate global environmental benefits related to biodiversity conservation, sustainable land management, POPS, and climate change mitigation. At present, the Bank expects to have approximately $2 million available in grant funding through DM’s base award pool and the partnership with MacArthur Foundation, the IFC, and other sources. These funding sources – taken as a whole – would constitute the source of co-financing for the proposed GEF MSP.
The primary purpose of the DM is to help fund projects that provide local innovative solutions to development problems that have the potential to expand from a local level to address the problem on a global scale. The aim of this proposed MSP project is to expand the pool of funding available for bottom-up innovative projects with global environmental benefits applying to DM for funding.