What does SGP do?

Established in 1992, the year of the Rio Earth Summit, SGP embodies the very essence of sustainable development. SGP channels financial and technical support directly to NGOs and CBOs for activities that conserve and restore the environment while enhancing people's well-being and livelihoods.

SGP supports activities in support of the GEF priorities - biodiversity conservation, abatement of climate change , protection of international waters, prevention of land degradation and elimination of persistent organic pollutants.

Since its inception, SGP has confronted very real challenges in working with communities to reconcile global environmental priorities with local community needs - challenges that have been met in different ways across the globe depending on particular economic, cultural, political and environmental conditions. In the process, SGP became "The people's GEF".

The principle objectives of the Small Grants Programme are to:

Develop community-level strategies and implement technologies that could reduce threats to the global environment if they are replicated over time.

Gather lessons from community-level experience and initiate the sharing of successful community-level strategies and innovations among CBOs and NGOs, host governments, development aid agencies, GEF and others working on a regional or global scale.

Build partnerships and networks of stakeholders to support and strengthen community, NGO and national capacities to address global environmental problems and promote sustainable development.

Ensure that conservation and sustainable development strategies and projects that protect the global environment are understood and practiced by communities and other key stakeholders.