What we did, and for whom

What Marine did. She led the application of UNDP’s social and environmental standards across the whole climate portfolio funded by the GEF and the GCF. She was the safeguards focal point for 22 Green Climate Fund projects, from design to reporting: she worked directly with the Fund, integrated its comments into the files and brought them into line with its requirements before approval. She drafted institutional guidance applied by other teams, and led oversight missions to check on site that the measures announced existed.

The context. A national park in Central Africa was moving to a new management contract, held by an international conservation NGO together with the national protected areas authority, and financed by a development bank, a bilateral agency and a dedicated fund. The site carried a documented and contested legacy: forced evictions, human rights violations in law enforcement, breaches of free, prior and informed consent, gender-based violence, boundary conflicts, specific impacts on Indigenous communities. No funder could finance what came next without serious due diligence, and no serious due diligence could be done without talking to the communities concerned.

What we did. Stakeholder mapping in three stages: identification, connectivity, values and priorities. Systematic analysis of the project against four sets of standards, applying the most demanding norm at every divergence. Risk assessment explicitly separating the inherited legacy from the risks attached to the new management arrangement. Gap analysis across law enforcement procedures, grievance mechanisms, consent protocols and the protection of women and children. Then a gap-closure environmental and social action plan, presented back to the local team in a workshop.

Two methodological choices. We limited the international consultant’s work to the provincial capital and gave all village visits to the national consultant: in a context of rising tension, the presence of a foreigner narrowed the space for speech rather than opening it. And the conclusions were returned to everyone consulted: by email for international actors, by telephone for civil society organizations, in person in the villages, with a second round of visits at the end of the assignment.

The context. The Congolese REDD+ process called for civil society participation without the conditions for it being in place: contested representation, no shared vision, poor information flow between Kinshasa and the provinces. Formal participation, in other words, with no real capacity to weigh.

What we did. The work covered the network’s governance, its representation, its information channels and its ability to carry a common position in the national process. It produced a published analysis of lessons learned over 2009-2015, co-edited by UNDP and Rainforest Foundation Norway.

The context. An international NGO working on forest peoples’ rights was completing a three-year program funded by a bilateral agency and delivered by six partners across eight provinces. It had to decide what came next, with resources spread across too many sites and an open question: what role could it hold in this country?

What we did. A full documentary review. Interviews with the teams at headquarters and in Kinshasa, with the partners and three non-partner organizations. Community interviews in the field, in separate groups: women, young people, men, Indigenous peoples. Interviews with peers and with critics alike: bilateral funders, competing international NGOs, financial institutions, the national REDD+ coordination. Then political economy analysis, stakeholder mapping, and recommendations.

The result. A deliberate reorientation: work in fewer places and far more directly with communities, define the country mission as that of a human rights organization, narrow to three areas of focus, reduce funding to national networks in favor of grassroots organizations, and lower overall financial risk.