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GEF Council meeting
Context:
The 67th Global Environment Facility (GEF) Council Meeting is set to convene from June 17 to June 21, 2024, in Washington, D.C., USA.
More on News:
- In a four-day meeting, the GEF will consider projects that protect biodiversity, counter climate change and pollution, and support land and ocean health.
- The 67th meeting of the Global Environment Facility Council gathered at the mid-point of its current replenishment (GEF-8).
- GEF-8 funding cycle running from July 2022 to June 2026.
- In June 2022, 29 donor governments pledged $5.33 billion to GEF in support of international efforts to meet nature and climate targets.
Global Environment Facility (GEF):
- Established on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit as an independently operating financial organisation.
- Provides grants for projects related to biodiversity, Sustainable Forest Management, climate change, land degradation, the ozone layer, persistent organic pollutants, etc.
- The GEF Serves as Financial Mechanism for the following Conventions:
- Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)
- United Nations Framework Convention on CC (UNFCCC)
- UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD)
- Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants
- Minamata Convention on Mercury
GEF Trust Fund:
- Established to help tackle the planet’s most pressing environmental problems.
- Funds are available to developing countries and countries with economies in transition to meet the objectives of the international environmental conventions and agreements.
Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF)
- Established in 2001 to support the LDC work programme under the UNFCCC.
- Funding helps recipient countries address their short, medium and long-term resilience needs and reduce climate change vulnerability in priority sectors and ecosystems.
- The GEF operates it.
- The LDCF, along with the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), is mandated to serve the Paris Agreement.
Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF)
- Established to support the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (GBF) adopted at the 15th Conference of the Parties (COP15) of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) in 2022.
- The GBFF aims to halt and reverse biodiversity loss by 2030 and is guided by the Framework’s four global goals and 23 targets for 2030.
More on the 67th GEF Council meeting:
- An amount of $736.4 million will be allocated towards environmental protection at the Global Environment Facility (GEF) council meeting.
- The Council will consider funding for projects and programs focused on land health, chemicals, and sustainable cities, including:
- USD 495.6 million for 25 projects and programs through the GEF Trust Fund.
- USD 37.8 million for the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF’s) first three projects in Brazil (two) and Mexico (one).
- USD 203 million for 14 climate adaptation initiatives through the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF)—the largest work program in its history.
- The Council will consider funding for projects and programs focused on land health, chemicals, and sustainable cities, including:
- The proposed GEF Trust Fund financing package includes 25 initiatives and programs for:
- land restoration through the Great Green Wall Initiative, along with the LDCF;
- industrial chemicals in Brazil and Bolivia;
- sustainable cities globally; and
- a “coral bond” to be issued by the World Bank that builds on the “rhino bond” issued in 2022.
- Supporting the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Minamata Convention on Mercury.
- The GBFF will fund:
- Mex30x30, a project to conserve Mexican biodiversity through communities and their protected areas;
- the Caatinga Protected Areas Program in Brazil; and
- Biodiversity Conservation in Indigenous Lands in Brazil
- The LDCF will support 12 national projects and two multi-country programs addressing urgent climate change adaptation priorities in 17 least-developed countries.
- The LDCF work program will support projects related to climate resilience and adaptation in Angola, Cambodia, Chad, the Comoros, the Gambia, Guinea, Lao PDR, Sao Tome and Principe, Sierra Leone, Somalia, and Tanzania.
- Many of these projects also contribute to global biodiversity targets set under the Convention on Biological Diversity’s Biodiversity Plan.
- These include the work on 28 million hectares of land and marine areas in the Sahel region and Yemen. Improved management and conservation of wetlands in Yemen’s Socotra archipelago and Aden wetlands.
- Initiative to conserve terrestrial and marine biodiversity in vulnerable sites in Somalia.
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GEF Council:
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