The National Forum towards Endorsement of the 2nd Small Grants Programme Biennial Review
Global Environment Facility/Small Grants Programme
Tuesday 23 March 2004
Crown Plaza Hotel, Amman
Welcoming remarks by Ms. Christine McNab
Resident Representative of United Nations Development Programme
Your Excellency Dr. Alia Bouran
Your Excellencies
Ladies and Gentlemen
It is an honour and a privilege to be standing here today in my capacity of UNDP Resident Representative and talk about an active UNDP Programme. The Global Environmental Facilities’ Small Grants Program was instituted in Jordan in 1992. Since its inception it has had the main objective of mobilizing the local communities in support of activities concerned with biodiversity, climate change, international waters, ozone depletion, and more recently sustainable land management, and persistent organic pollutants, which are GEF focal areas.
The Small Grants Program in Jordan has been able to reach the communities and promote awareness through the active involvement of the communities themselves in protecting their own environment in order to ameliorate their own living conditions and to give hope to their children of a cleaner environment and a more sustainable future. The program has also had a major impact on building the capacities of local, community-based, non-governmental organizations in disseminating community-level and community-led solutions to global environmental problems.
Since 1992, Jordan’s Small Grants Program has supported 97 projects. In most of these, the ideas stemmed and were developed and implemented by the communities themselves. Only over the last two years, 27 new small grants projects have been initiated, with a total funding of 763,000USD from the GEF alone. It should be noted however, that many of these projects manage to mobilize other resources including in-kind and cash support. The areas of activity of the supported projects include: biodiversity, climate change, land degradation, and international waters. Some of these projects are also multi-focal: encompassing more than one of the GEF focal areas.
However, what is most important about these projects is the sheer geographical diversity of the communities that are mobilized through the Small Grants Program. The involved communities span from Irbid governorate to Aqaba Governorate, and the impacted communities live in urban areas, rural areas, and the Badia region. Moreover, women play a significant role in the Small Grants Program supported projects. Women organizations are the proponents of many Small Grants Program projects, which allows women to work on environmental issues that are of direct relevance to them. At the same time, for many of the women involved, working on the Small Grants Program supported projects empowers them to become more active members of their communities in the field of environment, as well as in other areas.
The Small Grants Program is not only about the environment. We are all closely linked to our surroundings, and the state of our environment directly affects our physical and mental well-being and our perceptions of who we are and where we want to go next.
In this, the Small Grants Program plays a direct role in helping to achieve the Millennium Development Goals for Jordan, directly through ensuring environmental sustainability, which is the aim of the Small Grants Program, but also indirectly through mobilizing women, improving environmental quality, and reducing poverty, and therefore contributing to the achievement of the Millennium Development Goals for Jordan.
Finally, the Small Grants Program supported projects contribute to the achievement of the goals and priority areas of UNDP in Jordan for poverty reduction and enhancing Jordan’s environmental quality.