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Last week, CEO and Chair of the Global Environmental Facility, Carlos Manuel Rodriguez, visited Indonesia to attend the fourth meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Minamata Convention on Mercury and took the opportunity to visit two local initiatives supported by the GEF Small Grant Program (SGP). This is the first official site visit for the CEO and Chairman, who has led the multilateral fund since September 2020 and was unable to travel to GEF-supported project sites in the early stages of the pandemic.
During the field trip, Rodriguez visited the Rumah Belajar Batu Keker Learning Center and Suka Danta Organic Farm on Nusa Penida, an island southeast of Bali, where local communities are working with SGP to restore landscapes, build organic gardens, and promote composting, waste management, recycling, and biogas systems. The Learning Center is powered by solar energy and is a space to raise awareness about environmental issues, build local capacity in agro-ecological practices, and preserve traditional knowledge and culture.
“Society can do many things that can create change at the global level. "Therefore, we hope to continue expanding the knowledge gained from traditional practices," he said, stressing the importance of considering climate change when expanding the SGP project through other initiatives.
During his visit to Nusa Penida, the CEO and Chairman met with local government officials and various civil society organizations and emphasized the importance of their efforts to build sustainable livelihoods and address the challenges of food insecurity and energy access.
Since 1992, SGP has provided financial and technical support to civil society and community-based initiatives that address global environmental problems while improving local livelihoods in Indonesia. SGP Indonesia has supported 502 projects and worked with 200 civil society organizations and local community groups.
SGP Indonesia National Coordinator Catharina Dwihastarini added that activities to support sustainable production and improve livelihoods cannot be achieved without leadership at the local level and support from local and national partners.
“What we see today is a great example of systems change starting from a small 800 square meter farm – where food is produced naturally, without waste or traces of chemicals. "The next step is to replicate this approach on other islands and other places, until it reaches 800 hectares, 80,000 hectares, and so on,"
– Carlos Manuel Rodriguez
The SGP's Sixth Operational Phase in Indonesia (2017-2022) applies a community-based landscape approach to improve and maintain the socio-ecological resilience of priority landscapes and seascapes in Indonesia. This work builds on the GEF's focus area strategy as well as UNDP's Local Action service offering that supports local actors in three critical solution pathways: empowerment, resilience and investment. To date, 95 community-based projects have been completed in this phase, 130,698 hectares of land are in sustainable production and 71,827 hectares of coastal landscapes are managed as community conservation areas.
This year marks the 30th anniversary of SGP, a corporate program of the Global Environment Facility, implemented by the United Nations Development Program since 1992. Currently active in 128 countries, SGP has supported more than 26,000 projects led by local civil society and community-based organizations, including women, indigenous peoples, youth, and people with disabilities, to design and lead action that addresses global environmental problems.
