Global Environmental Facility

Bridging climate and biodiversity

Mission

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a mechanism for international cooperation for the purpose of providing new, and additional, grant and concessional funding to meet the agreed incremental costs of measures to achieve agreed global environmental benefits

GEF Focal Areas

1. Biodiversity

2. Climate Change

3. International Waters

4. Ozone Depletion (only countries in transition)

5. Land Degradation

6. Persistent Organic Pollutants – POPs

What the GEF Offers

• a rich portfolio, with impact on the ground

• an integrated approach to sustainable development,

• financial mechanism for major global environmental conventions

• responsible fiduciary management

• management of several funds,

• an independent evaluation office,

• a scientific and technical advisory panel,

• expanded participation by civil society and the private sector.

GEF links to the Global Environmental Conventions

• GEF is the “financial mechanism” for the

– Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD)

– Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC)

– As well as the Convention on Combating Desertification (UNCCD) and the Stockholm Convention for Persistent Organic Pollutants

• As financial mechanism, the GEF operates under the guidance of the CoPs of the conventions it serves. GEF focal area strategies reflect that convention guidance.

From Nagoya to Cancun I

As financial mechanism of the CBD, the GEF played a very useful part in achieving a successful outcome in Nagoya.

GEF provided assistance to the CBD in the run up to Nagoya to review draft documents and otherwise support efforts at the CBD to align the convention strategy and the financial means to achieve the results.

In Nagoya, the GEF delegation followed closely the principal decisions being negotiated and was frequently requested to provide technical backstopping to negotiators and chairs of contact groups on matters related to the convention’s financial mechanism, including the resource mobilization strategy.

The result is a coherence between the CBD Strategic Plan and the GEF focal area strategies for biodiversity, as well as a realistic resource mobilization strategy for the convention that that provides the way forward to a substantial increase to current levels of official development assistance in support of biodiversity and a request to the financial mechanism to establish a South-South biodiversity cooperation fund

Nagoya shows what can be accomplished with careful preparations directed toward reasonable goals and the value of working constructively with the financial mechanism.

From Nagoya to Cancun II

Hopefully, the positive spirit and success of Nagoya can be replicated in Cancun

Financing is a key element in the success of both conventions and their protocols

However, the starting point really is Copenhagen, as it provides a contrast to Nagoya

preparations and negotiations did not involve the GEF as the UNFCC financial mechanism

Perhaps as a consequence, aspirations and outcomes on financing were unrealistic; the $100 billion, for example, did not consider the absorptive capacity of the recipient countries or the availability of resources to devote to the problem.

From Nagoya to Cancun III

As we look to Cancun, ideally the GEF should be similarly engaged, but we have not been to date.

Nevertheless, the GEF has proactively tried to be responsive to what we understand to be desired elements of a future financial mechanism for the new infusion of climate money (a.k.a. the $100 billion).

Recipients want more direct access to these funds—the GEF is broadening access to its resources for national entities that can meet its fiduciary and other project management standards.

Recipients want a transparent financial mechanism. The GEF is continually evolving to make itself ever more transparent and accessible. The GEF website was updated to provide countries with immediate access to information about all GEF activities concerning their portfolio. The GEF is currently working with the UNFCCC Secretariat to develop a Finance Portal on its website that will provide continually updated GEF financial data online.

Recipients want donors to report how much they are giving; the GEF keeps track of expenditures by focal area.

Donor countries want monitoring, reporting and verification for the fund. The GEF now requires project proponents to establish a baseline and to point to gg inventories in countries’ national communications within project submissions. The GEF has put in place a results-based management system that will track outcomes and outputs of projects and programs funded.

From Nagoya to Cancun IV

In addition, the GEF can show what already is being done in the convention’s financial mechanism, which perhaps will provide realistic ideas and steer discussions toward more practical, realistic goals and a fuller understanding of the value of the existing financial mechanism for the climate convention.

Not only does the GEF have a fully robust climate change focal area portfolio, it seeks to exploit potential synergies in its other focal areas to tackle climate change from multiple angles. In addition, the GEF manages the LDC and SCC trust funds, through which the GEF manages a range of adaptation projects.

The GEF and Climate Change

• More than $3.1 billion to support mitigation and adaptation projects and enabling activities in more than 154 developing countries and economies in transition.

• Leveraged an additional $19.9 billion in cofinancing from GEF partner agencies, governments, commercial banks, businesses, and non-governmental organizations.

• Supported more than 30 climate-friendly technologies for energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable urban transport, and methane reduction. Played catalytic roles for mobilizing investments, enabling recipients, pioneering innovative financial instruments, and promoting market-based mechanisms leading to widespread adoption and dissemination of climate-friendly technologies.

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• GEF investments over time are expected to directly reduce 1.7 billiontonnes of greenhouse gas emissions and to catalyze an additional emission reduction of 4.5 billion tonnes through transformation of markets.

The GEF and Adaptation

More than $300 million financing concrete adaptation action in more than 90 projectscovering over 90 developing countries and economies in transition. These projects are some of the first in the world tackling the actual impacts of climate change across development sectors such as agriculture and food security, water management, disaster risk management, coastal zone management, health, and the sustainable management of ecosystems.

The GEF, Climate Change and Sustainable Forest Management

• Forests harbor a significant fraction of the world’s biodiversity wealth but they also function as carbon sinks, as well as sustaining the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of rural people everywhere. Forests can be conserved and managed for multiple benefits if the different objectives can be pursued synergistically.

• $784 million of GEF resources have funded multi-focal area projects: in other words supporting programs that have multiple benefits, such as mitigating greenhouse gases while tackling ozone depletion or protecting habitat while securing carbon stocks and improving freshwater flows.

• 350 GEF projects and programs, providing the multiple environmental and social benefits of sustainable forest management (SFM) and reducing emissions from deforestation and degradation and production forest-related landscapes (REDD+). $1.6 billion has leveraged $4.8 billion in cofinancing for forest conservation and management.

• A new $250 million SFM account to incentivize $1 billion in support of forests for the period 2010 – 2014.

The GEF, Climate Change andSustainable Forest Management

Congo Basin Forest ProgramBy combining GEF funds of more than $50 million from different focal areas for 13 coordinated projects, the GEF has been helping 6 Central African countries conserve unique forest biodiversity while at the same time creating income for local populations and reducing greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation. This program is part of the GEF’s Tropical Forest Account, which fostered investments in high tropical forest cover regions like Amazonia, the Congo Basin and Papua New Guinea/Borneo.

The GEF, Climate Change andSustainable Forest Management

The Amazon Regional Protected Area’s Climate BenefitsThe Amazon Basin can be considered one of the few key thermostats of the planet, helping to regulate temperature, rainfall and other weather patterns thousands of miles away. The GEF-funded Amazon Region Protected Area (ARPA) program has helped turn an area of the Amazon the size of Poland into legally protected forestland. Protected areas established under the ARPA project between 2003 and 2007 could prevent 272,000 km2 of deforestation through 2050, representing more than 1/3 of the world’s annual CO2 emissions. During the first phase of the program, ARPA placed more than 31 million hectares into new protected areas, exceeding the original goal of 18 million hectares. An additional 25 areas are being studied for future protected area creation. The second phase of ARPA, which is intended to build upon these achievements, has recently been approved and is under implementation.

The GEF, Climate Change andBlue Forests

• Out of all the biological carbon captured in the world, over half (55%) is captured by marine living organisms – not on land – hence it is called blue carbon. Much of this carbon is stored in the ocean’s vegetated habitats, which are also areas rich in marine biodiversity.

• By preventing the further loss and degradation of these ecosystems and catalyzing their recovery, we can contribute to offsetting 3–7% of current fossil fuel emissions in two decades – over half of that projected for reducing rainforest deforestation.

• The rate of loss of these marine ecosystems is much higher than any other ecosystem on the planet – in some instances up to four times that of rainforests. Currently, on average, between 2–7% of our blue carbon sinks are lost annually, a seven-fold increase compared to only half a century ago. If more action is not taken to sustain these vital ecosystems, most may be lost within two decades.

The GEF, Climate Change andBlue Forests

• Ecosystem-based adaptation strategies can reduce the vulnerability of human coastal communities to climate change. Halting the decline of ocean and coastal ecosystems also generates economic revenue, food security and improves livelihoods in the coastal zones.

• Over 45 percent of the GEF international waters projects have benefits for climate change, many of these relating to adaptive management measures.

The GEF, Climate Change and Ozone Depletion

• An HCFC project in the Russian Federation will phase-out, in time to meet a 2015 Montreal Protocol target, 600 tons of HCFCs through the transfer of technology for more energy efficient designs in the foam and refrigeration manufacturing sectors. The greenhouse gas emission reductions resulting from the phase-out will be approximately 15.6 million tonnesof CO2. Additional non-HCFC greenhouse gas emission reductions, to be achieved through the reduced electricity consumption in the commercial and industrial refrigeration sectors, will be approximately 10 million tonnes of CO2 over 5 years.

What More Can the GEF Offer?

Clearly the GEF, with its capacity to exploit synergies between its focal areas, can bring much as much to Cancun as it did to Nagoya. But the GEF is not the only answer to the financing needs surrounding the climate challenge. The GEF is not going to program $100 billion annually.

It is important to be realistic about the GEF’s capacity to program resources to avoid exaggerating expectations.

It is reasonable to expect the GEF to manage, to find worthy projects and programs to fund at the level of $10 billion in new resources annually.

Strengthening Relations between the GEF and the Conventions it Serves

• Irrespective of what happens in Cancun, the GEF will continue efforts to enhance its cooperation with the conventions it serves.

Thank you for your attention