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It’s not every day you witness a shift, from passive listening to active design thinking, from questions to confidence. That’s exactly what happened during the GEF Expanded Constituency Workshop (ECW) for Central Africa, held in Malabo, Equatorial Guinea, in April 2025. ECWs are regional platforms that bring together GEF focal points, civil society, agencies, and other partners to share experiences, build capacity, and strengthen country engagement with GEF policies and programming.

As a Global Environment Facility Country Officer, Seo-Jeong Yoon helps government officials across Asia and the Pacific plan and advance GEF-supported projects to address environmental degradation and protection. In an interview, she reflected on how the COVID-19 pandemic has affected her work across 14 time zones and how growing up in rural South Korea shaped her views about land stewardship. What do you enjoy most about your job?

As the GEF’s Country Relations Officer for Sub-Saharan Africa, Susan Matindi Waithaka is the primary point of contact for government officials and civil society organizations from 48 countries working with the Global Environment Facility to tackle tough challenges. In an interview, she shared how her love of geography and teaching led her to a career focused on building relationships in support of collaborative solutions for the environment. What does your job entail?

Paola Ridolfi is Manager of the Global Environment Facility’s Policy, Partnerships, and Operations unit. In an interview, she reflected on how her team is helping countries and communities stay focused on environmental priorities during the COVID crisis and shared how her love of studying caves has informed how she approaches new challenges. What do you like about your job?

Three out of four participants in the Global Environment Facility’s recent Country Support Program events have attested that the activities strengthened their ability to plan and deliver new environmental projects, affirming how these meetings have helped share knowledge and tools to tackle environmental challenges.

Like many other Pacific Island countries, Fiji is one of the most coveted tourist destinations in the world. At the same time, it is a microcosm of some significant development and environmental challenges. A natural resource-dependent country with limited land area, Fiji experiences intense competing pressures for agriculture, tourism, transport, water, and other needs.

Uruguay is a country whose economy was built on cattle grazing. It has rolling hills, a temperate climate, sprawling beaches, and no difficult-to-access areas, like jungles, dense forests, or mountainous regions. But while in some countries cattle farming is a driver of deforestation, in Uruguay it presents a different climate challenge – the increased release of the greenhouse gas methane.