Desertification / Land
Institutional Arrangements	Within this institutional arrangement, UNEP has successfully performed its functions in accordance with the provisions in the memorandum of understanding that it signed with the Convention to Combat Desertification secretariat. Firstly, it effectively coordinated and monitored the progress of the implementation of the project and commissioned subcontracts and subprojects with the appropriate members of the consortium in line with their proposed contributions and the consortium-wide agreed inputs. Secondly, it recruited appropriate consultants for specific tasks to support the implementation of the project, coordinated, together with the members of the consortium, discussion on the outputs and reports of the reports of the working groups and prepared and submitted periodic subproject expenditure accounts for each subproject, showing the amount budgeted for the year and the amounts unutilized. The institutional arrangement adopted by the project was one of the ley factors that had a positive impact on the performance of the project. The evaluator believes that this decentralized bottom-up institutional arrangement, complemented by the electronic means of communication and the unity of purpose among all the members of the consortium has contributed to the successful implementation of this global project.	Survey and Evaluation of Existing Networks to Support the Implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa, Phase I, December 2001, para. 86-87.
Monitoring	All working groups have accomplished their assignments as per the terms and conditions of their respective memoranda of understanding, resulting in a unified, detailed and comprehensive project report. The only exception was in the case of DESCONAP that failed to implement its assigned activities for the Central Asian region. In this case, the consortium became aware of the situation in time to reassign the responsibilities of DESCONAP to UNSO, which delivered the required output from the Central Asian region so that it could be included in the report of the consortium. The efficient means of communication and dialogue, the flexibility in decision-making provided by the institutional arrangement and unity of purpose among members enabled the consortium to monitor the project's progress and take remedial measures in time.	Survey and Evaluation of Existing Networks to Support the Implementation of the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification in Those Countries experiencing Serious Drought and/or Desertification, Particularly in Africa, Phase I, December 2001, para. 85.