Project Partners

UNDP/GEF

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), established in 1991, helps developing countries fund projects that protect the global environment.

Since 1991, GEF has provided grants for more than 1,300 projects in 140 countries. The GEF ‘International Waters (IW)’ focal area targets trans-boundary water systems.

Examples of issues addressed include water pollution, groundwater, protection of fisheries habitats and balancing competing water uses.

GEF projects help countries to learn to work together on key transboundary concerns, set priorities for joint action and to implement those actions. It plays a catalytic role in helping nations make the full use of policy, legal and institutional reforms and investments necessary to address their complex concerns.

The IW focal area has as one of its priorities the protection and utilization of shared transboundary groundwater ecosystems and ecosystems dependent on groundwater (e.g. oases). It also emphasizes transboundary water issues in Africa.

The GEF is currently implementing several transboundary aquifer projects through its IW focal area. These include the ‘OAS/World Bank/GEF Guarani Aquifer Project’, ‘UNEP/OSS/GEF Iullemeden Aquifer Project’ and ‘UNEP/OSS/GEF Northwest Sahara Aquifer Project’.

The related ‘SADC/World Bank/GEF Groundwater Management in Drought Prone Areas Project’ was recently approved. The UNDP/GEF project for ‘Developing Renewable Groundwater Resources in Arid Lands in The Eastern Desert of Egypt’, working to develop alternative techniques for optimal management of groundwater, is also now under implementation.

The GEF is in the process of developing a strategy for its overall interventions in the groundwater field. This will involve the development of a ‘Groundwater Vision’ on the one hand as well as considerations on how to include groundwater components in existing GEF-supported international water initiatives in river basins, lakes and large marine ecosystems.

The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is the ‘Implementing Agency’ for the project, responsible for overall project delivery and for reporting directly to GEF. Each NSAS country currently has its own UNDP office.