is to address global environmental concerns rather than poverty alleviation, more than 60 percent of SGP grants target poor communities in participating countries.147 The 2008 joint evaluation of the SGP148 found that it is targeting the poor but not specifically the poorest and most marginal groups. The evaluation positively concluded that the majority of SGP small grants are aiming to mainstream global environmental objectives with poverty eradication. Another promising case is the Poverty-Environment Initiative (PEI), launched jointly with the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), which is explicitly informed by the existence of the nexus between poverty and environment. Favourable outcomes of initial PEI projects in Rwanda and Tanzania in 2005 led to a significant scaling up of the programme in 2007. Eighteen countries got involved, including several in Asia and Pacific and two each in Central Asia and Latin America and the Caribbean, with further expansion being envisaged. A recent mid-term review of the expanded PEI notes that the initiative has yet to yield significant impact in terms of actual policy-making that integrates environment with poverty. This is mainly because most of the countries are still in the early stage of its implementation; moreover, there are still some shortcomings – e.g., staff support provided on the poverty front is much less than that on the environment front. Nonetheless, the initiative is judged to be promising.149 Both SGP and PEI constitute, however, only a small part of UNDP’s environment portfolio in most country programmes and are often not fully integrated into the country programme.
Activities aimed at expanding access to environmental and energy services for the poor are, however, an important part of UNDP’s environment and sustainable development portfolio, representing approximately one quarter of total expenditures in this area. The 2008 evaluation of UNDP’s work in environment and energy150 noted that although over half of UNDP’s energy-related projects and financing have dealt with expanding energy access to the poor, it did not find convincing evidence of such access in the countries visited. Among the effective initiatives where introduction and promotion of alternative rural energy sources are combined with poverty reductions aims are Namibia for solar energy, and Burkina Faso and Senegal for use of ‘multi-functional platforms’ where high-efficiency power generators are managed collectively to achieve both economic and social aims at the local level. A number of technical challenges are noted for all three initiatives, however, including how to ensure that the poorest community members do in fact benefit from them in the long term. For example, the evaluation of the Barrier Removal to Namibian Renewable Energy Programme151 noted that the financial schemes have benefited mostly the richer communities, at the expense of poorer, rural (and off-grid) communities who were the intended market segments in Phase II. Moreover, the lessons learned from this shortcoming have not been captured so that they are avoided in the future. By far the larger part of the portfolio fails to integrate successfully poverty concerns with the environmental ones. There are several reasons for this failure. The first reason has to do with
147. <sgp.undp.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=112&Itemid=182> (accessed 25 June 2012) 148. GEF and UNDP, ‘Joint Evaluation of GEF Small Grants Programme’, Washington D.C., 2008.
149. PEM Consult, ‘Mid-Term Review of UNDP-UNEP Poverty-Environment Nexus Initiative (PEI) Scale-Up’, 2011.
150. UNDP Evaluation Office, ‘Evaluation of Role and Contribution of UNDP in Environment and Energy’, New York, 2008.
151. Deenapanray, Prakash (Sanju), MME/UNDP/GEF, ‘Barrier Removal to Namibian Renewable Energy Programme (NAMREP) Phase II: Terminal evaluation report’, 12 January 2011.
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