The Executive Committee is responsible for overseeing the operation of the Fund. The Committee comprises seven members from Article 5 and seven from non-Article 5 parties, selected each year by the Protocol meeting. Committee decisions are reached by a two-thirds majority vote representing individual majorities of each group – ensuring that neither donors nor recipients dominate the operations of the Fund. In fact no vote has ever been taken in the entire history of the Committee; it has always found it possible to operate by consensus.

The Chair and Vice-chair of the Committee are taken, one each, from the two different groups and alternate each year between them. The Committee meets three times a year, coordinating its meetings where possible with other meetings of the parties.

The terms of reference of the Committee are set by the meeting of the parties. In summary, they include developing the Fund’s policies and guidelines, such as criteria for project eligibility, and monitoring their implementation; drawing up the three-year plan and budget for the Fund, including the allocation of resources amongst the implementing agencies; approving country programmes and specific projects, or groups of projects; reporting on the Fund’s performance to the meeting of the parties each year; and overseeing the Fund’s administration.

For many years the Executive Committee operated through two standing sub-committees, set up to carry out specific tasks. The Monitoring, Evaluation and Finance Sub-Committee was responsible for reviewing the cycle of business planning and monitoring of approved projects, while the Sub-Committee on Project Review considered and reviewed all projects and activities submitted to the Fund, produced recommendations for the Executive Committee, and followed up any outstanding policy issues thrown up in the process. In practice, however, as countries moved towards multi-year plans aimed at total phase-out, the issues considered by the two sub-committees increasingly overlapped, and tended to be discussed more than once in different forums. At the end of 2003, therefore, the Committee decided to abolish the two sub-committees, and merge all their work into the plenary meetings of the Committee, setting up working groups to deal with specific issues as necessary. This decision will be reviewed at the end of 2004