OzonAction under the Global Environment Facility

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) Ozone Focal Area was developed specifically for the support of Countries with Economies in Transition (CEITs) to achieve ozone depleting substances (ODS) phase out and bring countries into compliance, as the Multilateral Fund does for developing countries under the Montreal Protocol.

As this compliance is the ultimate objective of any Ozone GEF project, and the Ozone Focal Area is the only focal area linked with a time-targeted compliance schedule.

Once the focal area was set up to support the Montreal Protocol compliance target, the next step was the setting up of Country Programmes for the eligible countries. In several cases, UNEP and UNDP have worked together such that the investment work of UNDP was supported by the Institutional Strengthening (IS), capacity building/training and policy work of UNEP's non-investment section. This Project Implementation Review (PIR) covers the non-investment activities of UNEP. UNDP reports separately to the GEF on their complementary investment activities.

This Ozone GEF Portfolio PIR covers one (active) regional project, and 13 training and Institutional Strengthening projects in 8 CEITs (Azerbaijan, Estonia, Kazakhstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan). The projects of the Portfolio are listed in section 1(ii) of this report.

Most projects are single country capacity development and institutional strengthening (IS) or refrigeration and/or customs officers training projects, designed to both enable and facilitate the phase-out of ozone depleting substances. One project (Kazakhstan) is a combined IS and training project. The IS projects were designed to create a focus within countries to better respond to the obligations arising from the Montreal Protocol, and when up and running, to use this "National Ozone Unit" (NOU) to assist in awareness raising, adjusting the legal framework, coordinating ODS investment projects and a wide range of other required tasks, including the training of refrigeration and air conditioning personnel as well as customs officials. The training projects were to build capacity amongst refrigeration technicians and Customs officers. The combined IS and training projects were to meet the long-term objective of promoting and facilitating an early elimination of the use of ODS, and ensure compliance with the trade and licensing provisions of the Montreal Protocol.

The regional project reviewed under this PIR is a 20 country regional project designed to assist CEITs to develop trade and licensing systems to control the movement and prevent illegal trade in ODS, as is required under the Montreal Protocol. Aapproved in May 2004, was a methyl bromide project which is a follow-up of a previous non-investment UNEP project . In this new project, UNEP once more seeks to work with UNDP to effect both non-investment and investment in the countries to bring about total methyl bromide phase out in countries. Reference will be made to this latter project later in this report.

The ongoing projects, ranging in size from US$ 150,000 to US$ 1 million, commenced 4-6 years ago. For the most part, they are very near conclusion in terms of completing the activities laid out in the original project documents.