The Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs had singled out Guyana as a “weak element” among the countries that the Scandinavian country is partnering with to protect forests in the fight against climate change but another government agency viewed Guyana more positively.
In its Synthesising Report covering the period 2007 to 2013 of its real-time evaluation of Norway’s International Climate and Forest Initiative (NICFI), a Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (NORAD) report noted that the institutional responsibilities for NICFI have been somewhat simplified, with only the Ministry of Climate and Environment and NORAD now directly engaged in NICFI. It was stated, however, that wider diplomatic views and considerations from Ministry of Foreign Affairs remain important as NORAD is a directorate under that Ministry.
Interviews in Oslo in December 2013 revealed substantially divergent views between NICFI and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in respect of partner countries, the report said.
“Guyana was singled out by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as a weak element of the portfolio because of slow progress in utilising Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund funds, failure to achieve adequate progress on the ‘enabling activities’ of the bilateral agreement and Norway’s lack of familiarity with the country,” the report said. It added that the NICFI Secretariat views the partnership more positively, as Guyana has made remarkable progress on the technical aspects of the partnership.
NORAD is a directorate under the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs and since 2010, it has been monitoring NICFI, the programme under which Guyana is paid to protect its forest.
Guyana and Norway in 2009 inked a REDD+ partnership under which Oslo will pay for Guyana’s performance on limiting greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation, and for progress made against governance-related indicators. REDD+ is a global initiative that aims to reduce greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. Norway’s payments to Guyana may amount to approximately US$250 million over the period to 2015, depending on Guyana’s performance.
Awry
The NORAD report released recently warned that without stronger Norwegian representation in Guyana, the forests partnership risked going awry. “The Guyana field team found almost universal support among the people it interviewed (government and non-government) for a full-time administrative focal point (not diplomatic representation) to be established in Georgetown. The Brazil field team found support in the embassy in Brasilia for such an office in Guyana, as travel and communications problems make maintaining contact with Guyana from Brasilia extremely difficult, thus raising the risk of the Norway – Guyana partnership going awry,” the report said.
It noted that the NICFI operational capacity in partner countries is questioned and regarded as being too “light touch,” both in terms of staffing levels and in relation to operational experience. There is a perception amongst some other donors that there are insufficient NICFI people on the ground to guarantee that results are achieved and that country strategies are based on sound and up-to-date knowledge of the country situation, it said.
“This deficiency is particularly apparent in Guyana where, despite excellent technical progress, the wider enabling activities and the operating framework are poorly understood and inadequately reported and there is widespread perception that Norway has incomplete knowledge of how its funds are being used. This has the potential to seriously derail the gains that have been made and generate adverse publicity,” it said. It is concluded that the staffing situation in Guyana requires deeper consideration of alternative options.
“We recommend that consideration be given to locating a permanent administrative contact point (not a diplomatic mission) in Georgetown to facilitate contact with the government of Guyana, the national stakeholders and other relevant donors and actors in that country,” the report said.
The report also pointed out that whilst the promise of funding has been an important factor in country engagement, results-based finance has acted as a political motivator rather than an economic incentive.
“Considering the REDD+ partnership finding that many countries sought readiness funds quickly from what was then seen as a finite pot of cash to access before it disappeared, it is likely that in these cases the funding was an ‘incentive’, but arguably these are the countries that are happy to make use of available funds but, lacking solid internal political commitment, are unlikely to make substantial progress in the short term,” the report said.
Specific attention
It also said that for different reasons, there have been limitations to progress in Guyana and in Tanzania. “While there has been good progress in Brazil and valuable if fragile progress in Indonesia, progress in the bilateral partnerships with Guyana and Tanzania is slower than expected. While it might be said that there has been transformational change in Brazil and Indonesia, this has not yet occurred in either Guyana or Tanzania. Yet these two countries represent important models for NICFI, Guyana as a high forest cover/low deforestation country and Tanzania as a dry forest country with a high rural population dependent on the forest/ agriculture interface. We consider that specific attention is needed to both these partners,” the report said.
“Both countries should be visited by a high-level, multi-disciplinary team to discuss the reasons for this and whether and how NICFI support should be continued,” the report said. Such visits would be helpful for defining a revised approach to both countries that is usefully synergetic with the overall NICFI portfolio, it said.
The report said that management of technical activities in Guyana is generally effective but the ‘enabling activity’ indicators in the Joint Concept Note between Guyana and Norway are inadequate for managing and monitoring the implementation of these activities, and access to the project pipeline for the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund appears to be over-tightly controlled.
“Whilst the enabling activity indicators in the Joint Concept Note are reasonably specific, with specified time-periods for implementation, they are still open to overly wide interpretation and allow some divergence from the underlying intentions and spirit in which they were created,” the report said citing the exclusion of representatives from opposition political parties from the Multi-Stakeholder Steering Committee.
The openness of the indicators to interpretation also partly explains the varying results in the verification reports for the enabling activities in 2012 and 2013, though there may also have been genuine progress on the indicators as the two reports relate to different time periods. The problem of interpretation can be partially mitigated by increasing the specificity of the indicators in future iterations of the Joint Concept Note. However, given the inherent difficulty in striking the right balance between specificity and overly prescriptive language, ensuring adherence to the spirit of the partnership should also be addressed at a higher political level, the report said.
“It is also notable that most stakeholders did not know if or how they could propose projects for funding through the Guyana REDD+ Investment Fund. The restriction of access to the project pipeline may be justified by the fact that the amount of funding available is limited, and there are also high administrative costs associated with developing project proposals. However, opening access to the project-pipeline could help to de-politicise the Low Carbon Development Strategy, and avoid the current perception that it is being used to favour the Government’s perceived electoral power bases,” it added.