Between March and June 2024, STAP undertook an extensive consultation process culminating in its initial thoughts and advice for the GEF-9 replenishment period. The STAP initial perspective on GEF-9 reviews the implication of current global trends and context for future GEF investments, highlights what strategies the GEF could deploy to enhance its contributions to catalyzing transformation in key global systems, and offers STAP’s recommendations for implementing identified strategies. The report notes that given the limited resources available to the GEF compared to the needs and demands, it needs strategic partnerships with other actors to deliver on its ambition to catalyze transformational change in key global systems. Strategy requirements needed to enhance GEF’s contribution to achieving systems transformation include a more rigorous focus on delivering targeted transformations at scale, a need to adopt evidence-based change pathways grounded in strategic partnerships, and a set of ambitious but achievable targets to capture the GEF’s contributions to transformation.
STAP provides seven recommendations on what the GEF can do to achieve the strategy requirements and deliver a higher level of impact in the next replenishment cycle and beyond. These are:
1. Build an overarching GEF-9 theory of change to drive portfolio-wide investment.
2. Invest in innovation and manage associated risk at portfolio and program levels.
3. Support policy coherence at multiple levels.
4. Enable civil society to strengthen the social foundations for transformation.
5. Work to influence market transformation in targeted sectors.
6. Revisit the GEF results framework
7. Foster early and adaptive learning and networked knowledge management
