Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, GEF CEO and Chairperson:
The Global Environment Facility serves to meet the needs of Parties, as they strive for global environmental commitments, including the 2030 biodiversity targets. We welcome the decision reached in Rome and look forward to continuing to support effective and innovative solutions to the biodiversity crisis through the GEF Trust Fund and the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), which together have allocated resources to more than 140 countries since COP15.
The GEF has gone through a series of reforms in the Secretariat, and in its policies and processes, to better support countries’ capacities. The GEF has been listening carefully to CBD Parties and is committed to continued improvements in order to respond to their expectations and capacities needs. The establishment of the GBFF is a demonstration of the GEF’s timely and efficient responsiveness to the COP. By December 2024, two years after COP15, the GBFF had programmed over $200 million for 40 projects in 41 countries. The GEF family of funds, in the period from June 2022 to December 2024, approved $3.07 billion for projects in support to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. These projects are expected to leverage more than $22 billion in co-financing, including $1.9 billion from the private sector.
The GEF will do its utmost, in its upcoming GEF-9 replenishment and through the GBFF, to mobilize and efficiently allocate new and additional resources to support the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
