ABSTRACT
The complexities and diffi culties of implementation of global thinking in local contexts also pose similar challenges to evaluating the global programs or projects that work at the local level. This chapter takes the Global Environment Facility (GEF) Small Grants Programme (SGP) as a case and discusses the management challenges of the programme in translating global policies to local actions, coordinating numerous small-scale activities to achieve coherent global objectives, and reconciling global and local interests. Further, this poses similar challenges to evaluate the programme comprehensively: aggregating numerous local actions for global results, assessing the relationships between global and local benefi ts and identifying the complex web of forces and factors of results. More fundamentally, SGP is a
unique programme of GEF in that it is a corporate programme, is not time bound or limited to GEF replenishment cycles and is different from other projects funded by GEF, which set clear timelines, targets and indicators. The GEF global evaluation framework, which is geared towards projects, does not necessarily refl ect the high complexities and variations a programme such as SGP faces and manages.
