A team from IMO’s Marine Environment Division has won the best Portfolio Solution Award in the 8th International Waters Conference (IWC8) organized by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) in Negombo, Sri Lanka (9-13 May). The award was given for the project with the best strategy for scaling-up investments aimed at addressing global environmental issues facing international waters, including the oceans. International waters is one of the five thematic portfolios of GEF funding, with around 90 related projects being featured at IWC8 and some 300 currently underway worldwide. IMO’s team presented the “Glo-X” partnerships model, based on the GloBallast Partnerships Programme. Glo-X is being used to accelerate legal, policy and institutional reforms in developing countries to implement the international conventions while, at the same time, leveraging private sector partnerships to accelerate R&D and technological innovations through forming global industry alliances and facilitating information exchange. GloBallast’s winning entry was selected from a large number of submissions made by GEF International Waters Projects and the award was based on oral presentations from the final eight nominees. A liveblog is available with some of the discussions of the conference.
