Following are some experiences and lessons from the implementation of SGP in India, feeding into various policy level decisions at district, regional and national levels within the Governments and Institutions

• The SGP is seen as an excellent vehicle to facilitate local initiatives related particularly to the areas of biodiversity Climate change and land development.
• SGP projects while addressing the GEF focal areas has impacted livelihood needs of local communities. This is endorsed through the active participation of the local communities and stakeholders, in sharing costs, taking responsible roles and decisions and creating more institutionalization of the processes.
• SGP adopted a strategy of building projects with the NGOs and CBOs in the areas where they have a demonstrated track record, thus furthering the capacities of the Grantees and providing them the necessary links and creditability.
• SGP created confidence within partners, catalyses and strengthened the capacity and commitments of local communities and groups on awareness for conservation and development actions.
• Networking, sharing experiences within and in between the SGP projects focused more on providing qualitative and quantitative data and the much needed learning's and links that have shown confidence in the approaches replicated in the neighboring and related areas. This has also generated close ties with local governments and other institutions to adopt the technologies and the pro-active ways of working.
• Positive mechanisms and long term vision emerged, both within the Grantees and the local communities, during the evaluations and reviews of the projects (by the NHI) at various levels, to ensure proper documentation and sharing of experiences, dissemination of lessons learnt etc.
• Enhance a more balanced thematic and geographical coverage. In case of geographical coverage, there needs to be a strong involvement of NHI and partners for the regional outreach of the SGP.
• Recently ideas have also emerged that SGP should work closely and focus on pilot projects within the Regional, State, National government priorities, encouraging governments and agricultural and other academic institutions to share costs or creating equal co-financing within the projects. Presently many such initiatives are on the anvil.
• In case of thematic coverage, there is need to initiate an intensified approach towards involving Institutions and Universities, including academic, research and related NGOs and CBOs that work in the field of appropriate technology for rural areas, and towards marine research' institutions, agriculture universities to develop proposals in the area of international waters and POP's. Linkages with institutions and local governments dealing with similar focal areas in projects need to be continuously explored and linked within the program.
• Replication of innovative and viable projects in the GEF thematic areas throughout India. Enhanced partnerships to respond flexibly strengthen varying degrees of capacities to achieve effective results. Hold joint workshops (with partners, governments, NGOs and CBOs) aimed at facilitating better clarity of thought and roles on developing project proposals and capacity building of the project holders, a better geographical spread of projects can certainly be achieved by SGP.
• The programme should include a detailed consideration on the nature of funding: whether it is to focus on experimental projects or it should aim to achieve a maximum impact; whether SGP is to be a testing ground for larger funding or it is to complement other funding.
• The CPS needs to spell out whether 'the SGP aims to work extensively, with a large number of project partners, or intensively with a limited number of partners. It needs to reassess the maximum funding amount for each project and also the pattern of installments paid to the grantees should not be in a uniform pattern of three installments, but shall be approved to cater to the specific needs of the projects.
• Introduce the effects of the Planning Grants, within the SGP. Planning Grants are envisaged as small grants up to a maximum of US $ 2000 (Rs 90 000) that serve as precursors to full SGP projects. When an organization and the communities it works with need to be exposed to experiences outside its own location. When external resource persons (professional! 5and experts from communities) need to be invited to the proposed project location to discuss and share their own experiences or even project persons who feel the need to visit and learn better about the projects. When an organization needs to do participatory rural appraisals, baseline study or surveys in a location they have not already worked in or in an existing project area where a new project is to be taken up. When a new technique or technology is desired to be pilot tested, before it is adopted or needs to be replicated over a greater area etc. When special training I orientation programmes are required to help build capacities in communities and organizations to enable them to take on a full SGP project. It is expected that full SGP projects would result from the Planning Grants in most cases, unless the results are such that a project is not desirable.
• Detailed monitoring mechanism with well-defined impact indicators needs to be strengthened further for effective guidance to the program.
• A databank to meet enquiries of the funded organisations and projects needs to be developed.

Governance of SGP