Background

Collective action by civil society and governments is required to achieve and maintain the resilience of socio-ecological landscape systems in rural and urban areas in Egypt. As such, the support of the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) is sought to enable community organizations in Egypt to take collective action for adaptive landscape management for socio-ecological resilience, through design, implementation and evaluation of grant projects for global environmental benefits and sustainable development.

The SGP Programme intends to invest in strategic projects to catalyze and connect local projects to each other and to other large-scale initiatives to bring about sustainable impacts over a broader area over the long run. While the SGP cannot bring about landscape changes by itself, it is geared to advance tactical projects in given geographic areas, which will synergize with various levels of local action to bring about measurable progress in landscape resilience. The project will be implemented in strategic landscapes in the Delta, Fayoum and Upper Egypt governorates. Low-emission technologies will also be demonstrated and/or tested and implemented in the urban centres of Greater Cairo and Fayoum City.

Accomplishments

• Finalized a Gender Assessment and Action Plan for the programme.
  
• Finalized the 6 Landscape Strategy for Building Social, Economic, and Ecological Resilience Landscapes Strategies.
• The National Steering Committee (NSC) approved funding a strategic project with total grant of 150,000 USD to support the involvement of civil society organizations and SGP participation in the Convention on Biodiversity (CBD) COP14, taking place at Sharm El Sheikh, 13-29 November, 2019.
• The programme opened the first call for proposals and received 186 projects distributed among the 4 landscapes. The NSC will select 30-35 projects to be funded as a 1^st phase.

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