Photo credit: Nicole/Adobe Stock
In less than one year, the GEF’s Global Biodiversity Framework Fund has moved from launch to full-speed operation, with four projects already reviewed, approved, and funded, and dozens more in the pipeline. GBFF In Focus is a series showcasing how the new biodiversity fund is changing the game for how countries can invest in nature, starting with four projects in Brazil, Gabon, and Mexico. These projects moved from concept approval to implementation in just six months, and stand out for their inclusive, integrated approach to building a more nature-positive future.
Gabon is one of the world’s most forested countries, with nearly 90 percent of its total area covered by rainforests. These forests absorb significant carbon dioxide yearly and are home to animals including leopards, giant pangolins, mandrills, chimpanzees, and western lowland gorillas, as well as 95,000 forest elephants: the vast majority of Africa’s population of this critically endangered species.
Ensuring that these forests and the biodiversity within them continue to thrive, in a way that also provides sustenance and livelihoods for local communities, is a national priority that the Global Environment Facility is working to support, with new funding from its Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF).
One of the GBFF’s very first projects is focused on managing challenges for smallholder farmers and their families, whose negative interactions with wildlife near conservation areas have been an increasing concern in recent years. These have included crop raids and attacks by elephants, monkeys, and other animals as well as protests and revenge killings of animals in some cases.
The core objective of the project Addressing Outstanding Barriers and Leveraging Durable Financial Mechanisms to Achieve Target 3 in Gabon is to improve the management of protected and conserved areas in the country by supporting the creation of a national strategy to curb human-wildlife conflict, along with local initiatives.
It was among the first four projects funded by the GBFF, which was launched at the GEF Assembly in 2023 to help countries meet the goals of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework, including confronting the drivers of species loss and putting the world on a nature-positive track.
The GBFF support will specifically help Gabon in fulfilling its commitment to Goal 3 of the framework: bringing 30 percent of the world’s land, seas, and inland waters under sustainable management by 2030.
The efforts will build on an ongoing project – the GEF-funded Enduring Earth: Accelerating Sustainable Finance Solutions to Achieve Durable Conservation – that is working to create long-term funding mechanisms for protected and conserved areas, helping ensure predictable funding. The GBFF initiative, which will be implemented by WWF-US and executed by The Nature Conservancy, will promote more peaceful coexistence between humans and wild animals, to reduce the risk that human-wildlife conflict could hamper national efforts to protect biodiversity.
Crop incursions by animals are common in communities that lie in or near Gabon’s existing national parks. This means that any steps to expand these, or to create new ones, could potentially increase their frequency and stoke the resentment of inhabitants.
In a bid to ease public frustration, the GBFF project will support the creation of a comprehensive and evidence-based national human-wildlife conflict strategy, overseen by a national commission advised by key stakeholders.
Since success depends critically upon winning public buy-in, work will go into creating a campaign to raise awareness about the economic and environmental value of Gabon’s biodiversity, and the steps the government plans to curb crop raids and other incursions.
While this broader strategy is under development, more site-specific work will begin in existing protected areas and lands safeguarded by other effective area-based conservation measures. Project staff will work closely with communities affected by conflicts in those areas to identify causes and to develop solutions.
While these will be tailored to each community, they may include such measures as hotspot mapping; barrier construction; the provision of material and equipment; the deployment of alert systems; the creation of rapid intervention and response teams; microinsurance or other financial vehicles to support communities at risk of conflicts; and site-specific monitoring and adaptive management.
Importantly, all decisions will be made in close cooperation with the Indigenous Peoples and local communities most affected by incursions. Such a collaborative approach will give those with the most to lose the resources to protect their properties – along with a greater understanding of the critical importance of preserving wildlife in the precious forest spaces surrounding them.
