The Auction Floor conference
Friday the 13th was a lucky day for many NGO’s around the world, when Europe Aid announced a novel idea for financing environmental initiatives, by bringing together nearly 100 approved but unfunded projects and a range of donors such as local authorities, EU member-states as well as private sector foundations.
According to Europe Aid Director, Koos Richelle, out of over 1,000 projects submitted under a call for proposals “Environment and sustainable management of natural resources, including energy” in December 2007, only fifty proposals could be funded from the €60 Million budget. This meant some imaginative thinking had to be done and the Auction Floor is a new concept for the European Commission, and if successful could be used more widely. Richelle outlined their idea, “We had some very good projects that, unfortunately we couldn’t fund. We could have put them all in the waste basket or send them back, but we thought that these projects were so relevant that we wanted to see if some other donor would like to take them on.
It’s a new idea, very innovative and we’re curious to see how this works out.” According to him the current system is frustrating, for Europe Aid who put in a lot of time evaluating proposals and for the project staff, who see their work being accepted and not getting funded. “All of these projects have passed all the quality thresholds, we would be happy to finance them ourselves, that we can guarantee, that the people can be trusted”.
The projects are in five categories; Biodiversity, Climate change, Desertification, Forestry and Sustainable energy and range from Mozambique to Mongolia and Peru to the Philippines. Examples include an initiative to develop co-management of the Gilé National Reserve in Mozambique and the development of communities on its periphery. This reserve has been badly affected by conflict since 1980 and is the only unpopulated protected area in the country. Another project is looking to sustainable management of the Amazon rain forest in Ecuador, which includes legalising 30,000 indigenous people’s rights to the land.
Piers Langdon, Executive Officer of Sunarma, is looking for funding for a sustainable forestry programme in Ethiopia. He explained why he was there “We submitted a proposal and got in the top 100, but weren’t funded, so we were offered the opportunity to come here. It’s the first event of its kind, but I suspect that we will make contacts and develop it from there. I haven’t bought any bags to collect money with me!”
Daniel Gbondo flew in from Sierra Leone to promote his scheme to restore areas seriously affected by diamond mining, the cause of so much conflict in the region. Reflecting on how it felt to get approval but no funding, he is upbeat, “Certainly it is hard, but at the same time it’s a recognition of the hard work we put in to the project and its usefulness to the local population and I’m hoping to get some funding for it. I expect this auction floor to be a huge success”. However, putting so many projects together does add an edge of competition, especially as they have all got approval of Europe Aid. Daniel isn’t worried, “I don’t think it is a competition, it’s a showcase to show people the good things going on around the world, it gives donors the opportunity to meet the guys carrying out the projects and asking them what they’re doing and anyway, life is competitive!”
There were some present who were concerned, Neil Maddison, Head of Conservation Programs at Bristol Zoo, was worried, “If you look round the room there are many projects here, but the big question is, what is going to differentiate each project to every donor? There are some bloody good projects here. It’s a bit of a bun fight. What I want to know is why are you going to pick me, rather than, say, the guy from Ecuador that I’m standing beside? What motivates a donor to pick one project over another? Is it youth and energy, age and experience? Does it come down to you went to school together, or where you went on holiday? That’s what we would like to know, that would help us. I’d love to find out.”
By the end of the session, it was obvious that few donors were present. Europe Aid admitted that only 200 were invited and many organisations were disappointed that hardly any were around and none of the major funders. Some were fuming that they had traveled so far for so little contact. One looked around and wondered, with a shudder, what the event’s carbon footprint was. Adrian Hawthorn, from Tearfund, thought that donors may have stayed away because they percieved the EU had cherry picked the best projects leaving donors with “second best”. He suggested, that in future Europe Aid should announce the 100 approved projects, then approach donors and get them to commit funds, at least in principle. Then you could hold an auction and the EC could make their funding proposals with donors and projects.
It may be hard to measure the outcome of this event, certainly Richelle is looking for projects to be funded, but the networking and relationship building between donors and projects is also important, but hard to quantify. Roberto Ridolfi, Head of Unit at Europe Aid finds this auction to be exciting, “We are, all of us working in development passionate about what we do, otherwise it wouldn’t work in the current financial climate”. Ridolfi said there were twenty to thirty serious donors present but said they were being discrete, preferring negotiations with potential projects in private.
Many NGO’s present thought the donors were discrete to the point of near invisibility. It’s hard to hold an auction with no buyers in the building.
Published in New Europe newspaper 16 March 2009
