GEF IW:LEARN 5: Supporting Portfolio Coordination Within and Beyond the International Waters Focal Area, particularly in Small Island Developing States, Through Knowledge Sharing, Information Management, Partnership Building and Programmatic Guidance Servi Towards a more impactful GEF portfolio: facilitating replication of good practice across GEF International Waters projects, including projects across all focal areas in Small Island Developing States, working in collaboration with development partners,  supporting the delivery of training information management, providing programmatic guidance and facilitating partnership building. Note: Disbursement data provided is cumulative and covers disbursement made by the project Agency. The socioeconomic benefits of the project contribute to freshwater security and better utilisation of marine resources, in particular through expansion of the blue economy opportunities. The Blue Economy identifies the oceans as areas for potential sustainable development of both existing and new sectors, ensuring environmentally and socially sustainable commercial activities such as tourism, extractive industries, renewable energy production, fisheries and aquaculture, coastal development and marine transport, as well as local communities and stakeholders relying on healthy and productive oceans and coasts for their sustainable livelihoods and resilience. The project will develop capacities to foster cooperation with the economic sectors, private or public, in particular through implementation of tools such as Marine Spatial Planning. The project envisages support to partnerships with the private sector, which may result in significant socio economic benefits in a long term. With regard to both freshwater and marine ecosystems, the project will also seek to identify the investment opportunities, in particular those that could be integrated in the Strategic Action programmes. This identification of opportunities forms a critical part of the project’s private sector engagement activity, which envisions leveraging such partnerships to deliver socioeconomic benefits by attracting private sector investments in SAP delineated priorities. The ultimate result of these partnerships, leveragd by this project, will be socioeconomic benefits and the national and local levels. The project also includes a unique component addressing knowledge management across all GEF focal area investments in Small Island Developing States. SIDS are a recognized classification of countries based on shared socio-economic development constraints, including small population, limited resources, remoteness, susceptibility to natural disasters, vulnerability to external shocks, and excessive dependence on international trade. The growth and development of SIDS is also often hindered by high transportation and communication costs, disproportionately expensive public administration, and infrastructure due to their small size, and little to no opportunity to create economies of scale. The knowledge generated from past and current GEF SIDS investments are an important resource to inform achievement of national sustainable development goals, including the priorities of the Small Island Developing States Accelerated Modalities of Action (SAMOA Pathway).            Awareness, knowledge and capacities of civil society, government institutions and the private sector will also increase as a consequence of the different communication, knowledge generation and management instruments of the project. The project’s overall knowledge management approaches, tested over many years, will help leverage socioeconomic benefits at national/local levels as the sharing of lessons-learned helps other GEF IW investments in facilitating recovery to the COVID-19 pandemic.