The Grant Schemes

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The FCCB Grant Scheme (hereafter the Grant Scheme or GS) aims to leverage the conservation and deforestation-free development expertise already present in the public and private sectors in PNG to meet the goals of the EU-FCCB. With this strategy, the GS is expected to increase the impact, geographic coverage, and capacity building in the country. The purpose of the present document is to propose suitable options for the establishment of an EU-FCCB Grant Scheme in PNG for CSOs/CBOs and Private Sector (PS) entities to support forestry, climate change, and biodiversity-related initiatives at the national, provincial, and local levels.  Grant Program will:

1. Development of sustainable livelihoods and deforestation-free value chains, including coordinated actions (e.g. through MoUs or similar) with environmentally and socially responsible Private Sector (markets, aggregators, biodiversity payment/carbon brokers). 
2. Build up of village decarbonised, small-environmental footprint energy grids (e.g. through solar, micro/pico hydro), digitisation and banking.
3. Increase in community capacities in self-management and financial sufficiency (e.g. through business development, and grant seeking and management), community legal rights and conflict resolution, environmental and human health, and social inclusion. 
4. Quantified decrease in the negative impact of natural resources leading to increasing trends on fauna and native vegetation occupancy through concrete and effective measures, such as decreased indiscriminate/uncontrolled hunting and burning, including partnerships with and direct involvement of PNG research and education institutions. 
5. Thoroughly consulted and dispute-proofed (e.g. through FPICs) community land use plans, including community-wide, gender and youth-inclusive agreements (e.g. conservation deeds) on declaring additional protected land, preferably > 10 K ha. 
6. Creation of a cross-community exchange and training program to replicate and scale up concrete, effective practices to achieve results A through E. 

GRANT TYPES

The GS will have a mixed strategy of competitive and direct awards to ensure that the following advantages are met: 1) efficiency in the grant process, 2) speed in fund disbursement, 3) flexibility in funding based on specific needs, and 4) less resource-intensive application and evaluation processes. This approach encourages a diverse range of proposals, fostering innovation, ensuring fairness and equality, and allowing for thorough evaluation of proposals. It also enhances public engagement by allowing stakeholders to witness the selection process and understand the criteria used.

With this strategy, the Programme will also avoid the following disadvantages: limited competition, potential bias, transparency concerns, risk of inefficiency, time-consuming processes, resource-intensive preparation and evaluation of proposals, risk of biases, and potential for disappointment among applicants. The Programme will strive to balance the need for a competitive process with the benefits of direct awards, ensuring a fair and effective allocation of funds.

Direct Grants will only be given under the circumstances stipulated by Expertise France. 

1. Where a grant is awarded to a body in a legal or natural monopoly situation, which has been effectively substantiated in the award decision. Legal or natural monopoly is understood as the beneficiary, having an exclusive competence in the field of activity and or the geographical area concerned by the grant under the applicable law. 
2. Interventions with specific characteristics that require the involvement of an entity due to its technical competence, its high degree of specialisation or administrative capacity, provided that the interventions in question, do not fall within the scope of a call for proposals. These cases must be justified in the award decision. 
3. Direct Grants can also be given when a grant value is low. Low-value grants are understood as those up to and including 40,000 Euros. 
4. If a proposed project relates to an intervention similar to a contract previously financed by Expertise France. The period within which new contracts may be concluded. Cannot exceed. Three years from notification of the initial Grant contract. 

The structure of the EU-FCCB Grant Scheme stems from a best practices comparison and a stakeholder consultation process. The best practices comparison contrasted ten different grant programs operating in PNG in the last five years with granting guidelines and regulations of Expertise France. Key recent development partners that have implemented grant programs supporting rural development and environmental conservation have included the Small Grants Programme (SGP) funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and implemented by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), the Support to Rural Entrepreneurship, Investment and Trade in Papua New Guinea (STREIT PNG) funded by the European Union (EU) and implemented by several UN agencies, the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) LEAF and PNG Biodiversity Programs, Australia’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT, including through the Incentive Fund), the Kokoda Initiative, a joint program between the governments of PNG and Australia (65 million USD),  Japan’s International Cooperation Agency (JICA), and most recently the UNEP and FAO through protection and agroforestry corridors in seldom reached areas of the country such as the SHP, Hela, and Western.