GEF’s support to countries is critical in promoting and implementing environmentally sound practices for medical waste treatment during health crises. It not only promotes global environmental benefits through best management practices, but also builds capacities in countries to minimize the impact of infectious waste on people. Synergies between health care and environmental sustainability are demonstrated through GEF-financed interventions, leading to overall reduction in harm to human health and the environment.

Blog co-author: Gabriel Sidman, Evaluation Officer at the GEF Independent Evaluation Office (GEF IEO)

Introduction

Not in a hundred years has the world been hit by a pandemic this deadly. This means that most of us –whether project designer, implementer or evaluator—have no previous experience on how to cope with a crisis of this scale, nor anticipated it when assessing and preparing against risks to project outcomes. Even worse, how do project managers handle not just one but two shocks during project implementation?

Blog co-author: Geeta Batra, Chief Evaluation Officer at the GEF Independent Evaluation Office (GEF IEO)

In her 2020 Earth Day blog the GEF CEO Naoko Ishii emphasized that the COVID-19 crisis is fundamentally an environmental crisis. I couldn’t agree more. Sure, at the face of it, this is first a health crisis, a pandemic with tragic consequences to people who get infected, especially those who perish or who see loved ones perish. Economies of families, communities, companies, states and countries are stressed, even destroyed. It’...