| Project Detail |
Proposed Development Objective(s)
Development Objective(s) (From PAD)
to strengthen innovation and coordination of circular economy solutions to plastic pollution flowing into South Asian
Seas
Key Results
• Circular plastic economy innovations developed and tested for application in participating South
Asia countries;
• A South Asia-wide regional public private partnership platform to support participating
countries transition to a circular plastic economy designed and operational;
• Funds leveraged for circular plastic economy investments.
D. Project Description
14. The Plastic free Rivers and Seas for South Asia (PLEASE) project consists of three components totaling
US$40 million from IDA that will be implemented over a period of five years. A summary of activities is provided
below.
15. Component 1. Supporting Competitive Block Grant Investments to Reduce Plastic Waste: The objective
of this component is to develop, administer and support a platform that would identify, verify and invest in
circular plastic economy solutions, support the exchange of knowledge and awareness raising. To this end, the
component would establish a Regional Competitive Block Grant (RBG) scheme. The component would be
supported through two sub-components: Sub-component 1.1: Investing in Circular Solutions to Reduce Plastic
Waste: A Regional Competitive Block Grant (RBG) scheme for South Asia provides investment support to select
organizations to accelerate their transition to a more circular plastic economy; Sub-component 1.2: Promoting
Knowledge Exchange and Public Awareness: The project would exchange knowledge among recipients of Project
investments, between RBG recipients and participating South Asian Countries, and between grantees and
potential investors with a project supported interactive website to showcase RBG recipients. This would enable
exchange of knowledge, learning from others, and potentially obtaining acceleration funding from different
sources in addition to annual face to face convenings of recipients to foster dialogue, discussion, and technology
transfer. The project would also support regional and national public awareness campaigns in support of plastic
free rivers and seas and to ensure that innovations are more broadly known.
16. Component 2. Leveraging Public and Private Sector Engagement and Solutions: The objective of this
component to provide support to improve national and regional strategies, policies and industry standards to mitigate plastic pollution and a regular convening activity of public and private sector decision-makers to discuss
and agree on mainstreaming circular plastic economy solutions and approaches. As a result, two subcomponents would be supported: Sub-component 2.1: Enabling Policies, Standards, and Analytics willsupport
a policy research function within SACEP that is focused on helping to respond to key priorities closely associated
with agenda for public private engagement, including modelling, and analytic capability for lifecycle analysis of
plastic across select industry value chains; Sub-component 2.2: Enabling Regional Public and Private
Engagement brings public and private sector representatives together at least once per year to review and
discuss strategies, policies and standards that can accelerate South Asian Countries toward a more circular and
reduced use of plastics in the economy.
17. Component 3: Strengthening Regional Integration Institutions: The objective of this component is to
strengthen regional organizations’ capacity to support their member-states to better deliver on solutions to
mitigate plastic pollution that flows into rivers and seas across South Asia and transition to a more circular plastic
economy and project management. The component supports two sub-components: Sub-component 3.1:
Building SACEP’s Institutional Capacity: This sub-component provides support for building SACEP’s institutional
capacity and will support SACEP’s proposed new headquarters (a center of excellence for the region with state
of the art eco-friendly and energy efficient, carbon neutral design and state of the art auditorium) and provision
of technical support and capacity building for regional organizations, line ministries and governments to
uniformly collect, analyze and interpret pollution data to better inform policy and decision-making support for
investment planning, design and implementation and design of structures for sustainability. Sub-component 3.2:
Project Management: The objective of this sub-component is to ensure successful implementation of the
activities carried out under the Project. The project will finance establishing and operating the Project
Implementation Unit (PIU) led by a highly competent Director and well-regarded regional and/or global thought
leader on circular plastic economy issues and include dedicated technical and support staff across all functions.
In addition, the subcomponent will also finance consultancies required for the preparation and supervision of
specific activities, monitoring and evaluation, trainings, exposure visits, studies for knowledge generation, and
incremental operating costs. |
