The Global Environmnetal Facility (GEF) Instrument requires the GEF to “function under the guidance of, and be accountable to, the Conferences of the Parties (COPs)” of the conventions it serves, and to “act in conformity with the policies, program priorities and eligibility criteria decided by the Conference of the Parties for the purposes of the convention concerned.” The purpose of this Study is to address the core question of whether the RAF is consistent or compatible with the conventions that the GEF serves and, in turn, whether the GEF Council’s implementation of the RAF complies with the GEF Instrument. The Study focuses on the passages of the relevant legal instruments that define the relations between the GEF and the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Chance (UNFCCC), the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) and its Cartagena Biosafety Protocol and, to a lesser extent, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs).
Each of the three convention COPs has issued initial guidance to communicate their instructions regarding the policies, program priorities, and eligibility criteria the GEF shall apply in operating the applicable financial mechanism. The Biodiversity and Climate Change COPs have each issued extensive additional guidance on a range of issues.
None of the COPs has provided the GEF with a prioritization or relative ranking of the many activities that they have described as “priorities.” The practice of the GEF and COPs over the years suggests that the GEF Council’s adoption of the RAF and imposition of it upon the financial mechanismswithout first receiving explicit pre-authorization to do so from the COPs should not be viewed as a per se violation of the Memorandum of Understanding or the GEF Instrument. Nonetheless, while the Council holds the exclusive powerto develop and adopt GEF operational policies and modalities, the impacts of those policies and modalities must fully conform with COP guidance.