Experience Note: Lessons-learned Reporting on Demonstration Site Selection and Design: IWCAM

The overall project sought to include demonstration projects in order to deliver actual achievements in mitigation and resolution of threats and root causes. The agencies developing the project needed to be politically sensitive to the possibility of not all countries running projects and manage the process of criteria-setting in order to ensure that consensus was reached before any demo projects were identified. The project chose demonstration projects using a methodology which included the following steps: hotspot/sensitive area selection process, agreement on IWCAM GEF Operational Program (OP) 9 eligible issues, adoption of selection criteria for project submissions, submission of concept papers, development of full demonstration project Submissions, and adoption of the submissions by the IWCAM Steering Committee. A partnership conference was organised, to involve potential partners and donors in the elaboration of the demo submissions. This approach allowed for objective evaluation at the country-level of the priority areas for attention and also allowed for some diplomacy and negotiation, which is needed when consensus-building is a desirable outcome. The project experiences in selecting and preparing the nine demonstration projects are applicable to similar SIDS projects under similar conditions. Vincent Sweeney