Memorandum from the World Wide Fund for
Nature
1. BACKGROUND
1.1 The World Wide Fund for Nature (WWF) is
one of the world's leading conservation organisations, with 28
Affiliate and Associate National Organisations around the world
and over 5.2 million regular supporters. WWF aims to conserve
nature and ecological processes by preserving genetic, species,
and ecosystem diversity; by ensuring that the use of renewable
natural resources is sustainable both now and in the long term;
and by promoting actions to reduce pollution and the wasteful
exploitation and consumption of resources and energy.
1.2 WWF has had an operational presence in Russia,
Georgia, Ukraine and Mongolia for the last five to 10 years, working
in partnership with national governments, non-governmental organisations
(NGOs) and European institutions, with offices staffed by nationals
from each country. WWF funds conservation projects, worth some
tens of millions of dollars, ranging from protected areas management
and environmental education to policy on biodiversity and public
awareness initiatives.
1.3 WWF has had contact with the TACIS programme,
in one form or another, for a number of years. At the policy (focus,
priorities, instruments) and programming (project funding) level
WWF has endeavoured to engage the EC—in both environment
policy/priorities dialogue, and as a project partner. Experiences
to date reflect that the orientation, structure, technical and
management capacity of the EC and its TACIS technical partners,
tends to preclude natural interaction between the NGO sector and
the EC TACIS programme.
2. EXPERIENCES
2.1 Our evidence relates specifically to WWF's
experience with TACIS in relation to designated TACIS Environment
funding. WWF's (European Policy Office and International) experience
with TACIS has been limited and this reflects the difficulties
that WWF encountered in establishing dialogue with the EC regarding
the larger TACIS programme and the potential it has to significantly
influence structural changes to the advantage of the environment
and sustainable natural resource use. It should be noted that
having spent considerable time and expertise reviewing and assessing
the wider TACIS programme, WWF abandoned its efforts to engage
with the EC. This was based on the lack of access given to discussion
of programme priorities in the New Independent States and the
apparent lack of transparency vis á vis major bilateral
funding decisions (specifically as they related to environment
issues).
3. TACIS ENVIRONMENT
3.1 Over the past three years WWF has had regular
contact with the officials managing TACIS Environment funds. This
dialogue has been welcome, focusing as it has on regional priorities
for funding in the area of environment.
3.2 However, the traditional orientation of
TACIS—independently developed objectives, large budgets
and tender processes oriented towards private sector agencies—has
frustrated WWF's interest in managing and/or delivering projects.
Further, these "TACIS processes" have prevented the
legitimate participation of smaller NGOs and Community based organisations
(CBOs) to utilise TACIS funds for local actions (of the kind that
global experience tells us can contribute significantly to enabling
processes, enhancing public participation in natural resource
management and sustainable development).
3.3 A clear example of this frustration is WWF's
recent experience with the TACIS Environmental Awareness project
(ECU 2.9 million for Phase 1, and ECU 2.5 million for Phase II)—designed
to raise environmental awareness and capacity in the NIS amongst
the media, NGOs and parliamentarians.
3.4 The TACIS Environmental Awareness project
has been managed for the past eighteen months by a Brussels based
Public Relations firm. WWF (as party to a European consortium)
had tendered to manage this project. Despite being unsuccessful,
WWF was keen to support the project—a position that was
further encouraged by the TACIS Environment EC officials who appointed
a WWF representative to the project Advisory Committee.
3.5 Unfortunately, the continued engagement
of WWF in the project did not progress much beyond the appointment.
Following an initial introduction meeting, the project, managed
by the PR agency, progressed for over a year before a second Advisory
Committee meeting was held. At that meeting it became clear that
issues raised at the initial meeting (related to NGO capacity
building in the NIS; appropriate awareness raising processes and
strategies; the need to establish partners etc.) had not been
addressed by the project. Rather, the project managers had proceeded
to implement the project at the level that they felt most competent,
that is media training and video resource distribution.
3.6 To all representatives on the Advisory Committee
this outcome—the result of ECU 2.9 million in expenditure—was
unsatisfactory. All the more frustrating was the fact that the
processes and mechanisms driving TACIS, and the capacity constraints
that TACIS Environment officials face (i.e., their limited ability
to monitor the outputs and outcomes achieved) had allowed the
situation to arise.
3.7 Frustrations were strengthened when the
Advisory Committee became aware that the negotiation of a Phase
II (with the same contractor) was already well underway, and,
that a parallel funding line for the establishment of new RECs
(Regional Environment Centres) in the NIS was also well developed.
Our concerns were two-fold:
— Despite the fact that the Awareness
project had received no external assessment, the EC TACIS office
was proposing a Phase II. It was clear that in part the decision
to proceed was one of the expediency—that is, it avoided
the complexity and lost time of another tender round (issues of
real concern to the Advisory Group, but not issues that should
override focus and quality of delivery)—but it also appeared
completely to ignore any possibility of evaluating the needs addressed
by, quality of, and outcomes achieved in Phase I. Once again the
TACIS funding mechanism was driving programming.
— The decision to open new RECs had
been taken without any obvious consultation with those organisations
operating in the NIS (i.e., those who can identify need and appropriateness),
or with experience in working with the existing RECs. As a result,
when the decision was announced to the Advisory Committee, there
was a clear split in NGO and development agency perceptions of
the value and performance of RECs, and those perceptions and assumptions
of the TACIS Officials. Once again, expediency—the need
to allocate large amounts of funding through limited delivery
channels—was driving a funding decision, where consideration
of the issues and experiences associated with the existing RECs
would lead NGOs such as WWF to rethink the REC model, and develop
a more appropriate programme.
4. SUMMARY
4.1 All of the above is presented to illustrate
the frustrations that WWF has experienced with TACIS. Namely:
— The programming limitations that
result from a system that requires the distribution of large funding
packages through single delivery agents—it is easier for
the EC to give funds to one European consultancy than to distribute
funds to a consortium of NGOs (and their partners) operating at
the local level.
— Consultation processes are not transparent,
and, as such, fail effectively to capture the perspectives and
experiences of NGOs and CBOs who have been working at the local
and national level for some years. As a further example, the development
of the EC position paper outlining the orientation of the next
five years of TACIS Environment funding has been developed by
a European consultant, and without NGO consultation and input
(at least not WWF's).
— Funding for the environment within
TACIS continues to be driven by political, rather than resource,
considerations. For example, the RECs once again reflect the allocation
of funds along formal bilateral lines, rather than through dialogue
with civil society. It should be noted that the process surrounding
the announcement and establishment of the new RECs has been greeted
with extreme cynicism by NIS NGOs and their European partners.
4.2 WWF's recommendations arising from the above
are—
— To establish within TACIS flexible
funding mechanisms that allow for the allocation of small (that
is, realistic) funds to be distribute directly to NGOs and partner
agencies working in the NIS. The TACIS Environment funding is
in WWF's experience the most flexible of TACIS funds, and yet
it is clear from the above that its effectiveness (and legitimacy
as a capacity building tool) are limited by size and process.
— WWF calls not only for a refinement
and reorientation of the TACIS Environment funds, but also for
the allocation of TACIS funds to activities that respond to the
needs and opportunities represented by civil, rather than government,
stakeholders at the local and national level. Driving forces that
need to be addressed in the NIS include economic factors (the
use and exploitation of natural resources); legislative forces
(policies and legislations); and human factors (awareness and
capacity to participate). All of these issues require a blending
and interaction of social, environmental, economic and political
issues—that is, the dynamic and processes that NGO's and
community based organisations are well placed to address, but
to whom TACIS funds are currently inaccessible.
— To establish clear consultation processes
that facilitate NGO participation in EC decision making processes
that are determining where and for what TACIS Environment funds
will be allocated.
— To require monitoring and evaluation
of TACIS Environment projects by outside agencies such as NGOs,
thereby promoting greater accountability for funds expenditure
that is intended to impact civil society.
Bronwen Golder
WWF International
11 June 1998
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