Presentation given at the USAID Biodiversity and Forestry Seminar Series, MAY 15, 2008.
Presentation by the Evaluation Team: Team Leader Dr. Bruce
Byers, Associates in Rural Development and Evaluation Specialist Jared
Hardner, Hardner & Gullison
USAID staff, partners and the wider biodiversity community: Come hear
and discuss results from this highly participatory, rigorous and
informative evaluation of the Global Conservation Program, USAID’s
flagship centrally funded program.
Global Conservation Program (GCP)
GCP is a Leader with Associates (LWA) implementation mechanism
that began in 1999, and funded six U.S.-based NGOs involved in
biodiversity conservation to conduct site-level work in more than 25
specific landscapes and seascapes worldwide. The GCP partner NGOs are
the African Wildlife Foundation (AWF), Conservation International (CI),
Enterprise Works-VITA (EWV), The Nature Conservancy (TNC), Wildlife
Conservation Society (WCS), and World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The GCP’s
central mandate focuses on achieving landscape level conservation
results in a representative selection of the world’s most biodiverse
areas. The program also focuses on the sharing of lessons learned and
conservation approaches between sites and amongst partners. GCP has a
life-of-program funding level of approximately $72 million.
Objectives of the evaluation
- To document the added value of the centrally-managed, multi-institutional GCP program
- To assess development and adoption of best practices within
biodiversity conservation promoted by the GCP, including cross-partner,
cross-site aspects of such learning
- To document selected site-level conservation results
This evaluation was a programmatic evaluation, not an evaluation of the
performance of particular partners or sites. The evaluation focused on
the cross-site, cross-institutional learning aspect of GCP and on the
adoption of key concepts, particularly landscape planning and
conservation and adaptive management within the GCP family of projects
and as a function of GCP partnerships. USAID is also interested in
understanding the roles and value of centrally funded programs such as
the GCP.
Information link:
The results of a formal evaluation of USAID's Global Conservation Program, phases I and II, were summarized and presented. GCP was a strong influence among international conservation organization in developing landscape-scale conservation strategies, and embracing adaptive management techniques. Field programs improved management capacity and other challenges within their scope of influence, but external challenges (economic conditions, illegal activities) and financial sustainability of programs remain obstacles to success. Full details will be available shortly in a forthcoming report, to be posted on this FrameWeb community and also on the USAID website.