This report is one of the most important outcome of the global/regional component of the GEF projects "Global project on the updating of National Implementation Plans for POPs".
The report has been compiled considering the valuable information provided by a large majority of the countries involved in the projects, as well as by invited countries with relevant experience on the developing, updating or revising of the national implementation plans. Moreover, information provided by other GEF implementing agencies, as well as by non-governmental organizations was also considered.
Besides the introductory and methodology parts, the report is structured in four main chapters with substantive information on the lessons learned and good practices within the developing, updating or revising of the national implementation plans at national level, as follows:
- Lessons learned relating to sustainable capacity, political and stakeholder engagement;
- Lessons learned relating to the technical elements/capacity;
- Lessons learned relating to funding of NIP development, implementation and compliance with the Stockholm Convention;
- Lessons learned relating to further NIP update process.
Additionally, lessons learned as identified by the UNIDO Office for Independent Evaluation developed within the document entitled “Cluster Evaluation of UNIDO projects. Enabling Activities to review and update the National Implementation Plans for the Stockholm Convention on POPs” were also compiled in chapter 7 of this report.
The overall objective of the report is to compile the lessons learned and good practices within the NIP development, update and implementation processes at national level, with the aim of reflecting in the best manner possible those experiences and lessons that will help the global community shape the future activities for Stockholm Convention effective implementation.
Moreover, this report will serve as resource information for the on-going GEF-6 medium size project “Integrated Stockholm Convention toolkit to improve the transmission of information under Articles 07 and 15“.
The development of the report was completed in four steps:
- Development of report outline: aspects on developing, updating or revising of the national implementation plans at national level were considered within the outline and consultations with project countries were conducted;
- Information collection: a questionnaire, addressed to Stockholm Convention National Focal Points and National Implementation Plan development and/or update coordinators and GEF Implementing Agencies, Stockholm Convention regional centres and NGOs, has been developed, both in a Word format and a Google survey format;
- Compilation and evaluation of the information: questionnaire replies information (21 replied) have been compiled and distributed according to the report outline topics, while being evaluated and summarized as to reflect the main lessons learned and good practices within the NIP development, update and implementation processes at national level; the remaining challenges to be addressed were summarized in a separate section; good practices case studies have also been compiled and included.
- Review of the report and consultations: report was circulated to the project countries and face to face debates over the report‘s good practices, lessons learned and remaining challenges took place at the Global Workshop “From NIPs to Implementation” of the UN Environment/GEF Projects “Global project on the updating of National Implementation Plans for POPs” and “Global project on the updating of National Implementation Plans for POPs – add on to umbrella FSP project”, held on 23-24 October 2018, in Montevideo, Uruguay.
The limitation was represented by the moderate response rate (ca 50%) from the countries asked to complete the questionnaire. Some challenges were related to the limited examples of lessons learned and good practices provided by countries and by limited worldwide coverage of such examples as to ensure a proper level of representativeness.
While chapters 3 to 7 summarize the lessons learned and good practices, with specific good practices case studies included, chapter 8 focuses on the remaining challenges to be overcome by the Stockholm Convention Parties in relation to NIP development, update and implementation at national level.
The remaining challenges summarized in chapter 8 are related to the following areas:
- Sustainability in capacity development and in securing created capacity;
- Influencing the policy making to address POPs issues and more widely, sound management of chemicals and related waste;
- Technical capacity;
- Funding of NIP development, implementation and compliance with the Stockholm Convention.
