The Eighth Operational phase of the GEF Small Grants Programme in India aims to take collective action in the most vulnerable and least developed areas through a participatory landscape planning and managed approach.
The global environmental benefits generated by the SGP India Upgraded Country Programme (UCP) will be based on the number of grants awarded and experiences on earlier operational phases of the SGP in India. Aggregated benefits over the longer term will be a function of the synergies created between projects through programmatic approaches, such as the landscape/seascape management approach. GEF support will be catalytic in mobilising action at local levels to innovate new strategies and technologies to improve the management of vulnerable natural resources and ecosystems.
More importantly, the programme will enhance the capacity of stakeholders in different sectors and at different levels (NGOs, CBOs, etc.) to promote participatory resource management and clean energy access. The lessons learned from the community and landscape level initiatives will be analysed by multi-stakeholder groups at landscape and regional levels for potential policy inputs and disseminated to other landscapes and communities where they will be upscaled, mainstreamed and replicated, as well as integrated into other local and national level programs. The project strategy addresses the threats and barriers in the 5 target regions to generate multiple benefits for biodiversity, climate change, land degradation and the wellbeing of local communities.