The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) aims to help countries reach the nature protection targets set by the breakthrough Kunming-Montreal biodiversity deal signed last year.

The fund, which will contribute to the goal of protecting 30% of the world’s land and water ecosystems by 2030, has been set up by the Global Environmental Facility (GEF), a multilateral financial partnership.

Cooking the books: cookstove offsets produce millions of fake emission cuts

Its 185 member countries officially approved the creation of the financial mechanism at the GEF’s meeting in Vancouver, Canada, on Thursday.

At the opening plenary, Canada and the United Kingdom announced initial contributions of C$200m ($147.3m) and £10m ($12.6m) respectively.

Small initial contributions

Ahmed Hussen, Canada’s international development minister, said his government is making “a significant contribution” to this new fund, which “will play a key role in addressing biodiversity loss”.

To light applause, the UK’s nature minister Trudy Harrison told the GEF assembly that the money is “a downpayment” which will “ensure that the fund is open for business as quickly as possible”.

She said that the UK was “deep in its current fiscal cycle” which “limits its ability for financial manoeuvre” but “we look forward to making further payments in future”.

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO of the GEF (left) opens the Assembly meeting alongside Canada’s Steven Guilbeault and Ahmed Hussen. Photo: IISD/ENB | Angeles Estrada

The fund needs at least $200m from three donors or more before December to get up and running, according to GEF rules. Japan, the USA and others have indicated they will support the fund, but haven’t committed any money yet.

After this start-up phase, however, the fund will have to attract much more substantial resources if it wants to fulfill the “game-changing” role its creators touted.

Rich countries obligation

As the main mechanism to deliver the Kunming-Montreal deal, it is expected to ramp up financial support for protecting nature.

Governments agreed last December to mobilize at least $200 billion a year from a variety of sources including public and private finance and philanthropies.

Soy, beef and gold gangsters: Why Bolivia and Venezuela won’t protect the Amazon

The biodiversity fund is set up to draw in money from all of those actors, but initially, the bulk of the capital should come from the public purses of wealthy nations.

At the COP15 biodiversity summit, developed countries agreed to provide at least $20 billion a year by 2025 and $30 billion by 2030.

Michael Degnan from the Campaign for Nature advocacy group told Climate Home News that the target has to be achieved if countries are serious about making biodiversity conservation a priority.

“Launching the fund is a really important first step – but it’s only half of the equation,” he added. “The next step is for donor countries to outline their plans.”

Funding compromise

The make-up of the new biodiversity fund was one of the major sticking points during negotiations last year. Many Latin American and African countries had pushed to create a new financial mechanism separate from the GEF.

The issue came to a head on the final day of the talks when the negotiator from the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) appeared to block the final deal, telling the plenary that they could not support the agreement in its current form because it did not create a new fund for biodiversity. But minutes later the meeting’s chair brought down the gavel, effectively overruling the objection.

EU puts Maroš Šefčovič in charge of climate policy

The final text put the GEF in charge of creating the new fund in 2023 and running it until at least 2030.

Juliette Landry from think-tank IDDRI thinks this was a “rational compromise”. “It would have been hard to create out of nothing a new fund that has a relatively short implementation period”, she added, “but there is still room to improve procedures within the GEF”.

Some developing countries have called for a “simplified process” to access the money during Thursday’s opening session. The representative from the DRC said the fund “must be accessible to all”.

Indigenous communities role

The GEF’s historical top recipients – China, Brazil and Indonesia – are expected to receive the lion’s share of the money, experts told Climate Home News.

But the GEF says a third of the resources will go to least developed countries and small island states, while as much as 20% of the fund should support Indigenous-led initiatives.

“Indigenous communities with their generations of land stewardship and fire management expertise hold the key to preventing catastrophic wildfire and other environmental contingencies,” said Dario Jose Mejia Montalvo, chair of the UN permanent forum on Indigenous Issues. “Yet, despite their unparalleled understanding, they continue to be overfunded and overlooked”.

This is an opportunity to rectify that, he added.

The Indigenous Peoples press conference following the launch of the new biodiversity fund. Photo: IISD/ENB | Angeles Estrada

Midori Paxton, head of biodiversity at the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), hopes the new fund will change the attitude of politicians and business leaders towards financing nature protection.

“It sends a signal that biodiversity loss and deterioration of nature is a critical global issue”, she told Climate Home. “We often hear ‘we are busy with climate, nature can wait’, as if they are totally separate things”.

But the biodiversity and climate crisis are very much interlinked, Paxton added.

The post Nature fund launched but financing questions remain appeared first on Climate Home News.

The fund, to be managed by the Global Environment Facility, was launched at UN climate talks in Marrakech on Wednesday.

It is a small but targeted tranche of new cash, aimed at improving transparency and accuracy of national carbon accounts.

Naoko Ishii, chief executive of the GEF, said: “One key factor to the success of the Paris Agreement last year is its country-led approach. To make this approach work, it is absolutely crucial to build the confidence.”

Costa Rica, Kenya and South Africa are first to benefit from the initiative, which was a negotiated outcome of last year’s historic Paris climate summit.

More than 20 countries submitted proposals, Ishii said, showing a strong demand for the tools to monitor the effect of climate policies.

#Marrakech mail: sign up here for your daily #COP22 update

Ingrid-Gabriela Hoven, a top official in the German government, said it laid the foundations for action.

“Transparency is the cornerstone of the Paris Agreement. It is the precondition for effective implementation,” she said. “How can governments reorient their policies if they don’t know what is happening in their own countries?”

A priority for the EU and US, discussions on a transparency framework for all countries inched forward in the past fortnight. Negotiators agreed on a timetable and the inputs needed to make decisions, leaving the political questions to a later meeting.

Meanwhile, wider climate finance continues to be a contentious topic.

Rich countries have promised to mobilise US$100 billion by 2020 for low carbon development and protection from the impacts of global warming in poorer parts of the world.

Report: Republicans plan multi-billion dollar climate budget raid

A “roadmap” produced by the UK and Australia suggests that public funds alone will not meet the target, but leveraged private sector cash could fill the gap.

Critics say that approach favours carbon cutting projects, which can offer a financial return, over adaptations like dykes and drought-resistant seeds that are less commercially appealing.

With global temperatures set to rise 3C from pre-industrial levels under current climate policies, developing countries called for a quadrupling of adaptation finance. That was rebuffed by donor countries and left out of the latest draft decision seen by Climate Home.

Late on Wednesday, German Environment Minister Barbara Hendricks pledged €50m (US$53m) to the UN Adaptation Fund, although Jan Kowalzig, a finance expert with Oxfam, said the overall total from developed countries was still well below what is needed.

“According to OECD projections, by 2020 just a fifth of the promised $100-billion-a-year by 2020 will be public finance for adaptation. This is far below needs,” he said.

“There has been no substantive discussion on long term finance except a workshop held on 8 November and a ministerial dialogue held today,” said Anwar Hossain Manju, Bangladesh environment minister.

“We appreciate the unveiling of a new roadmap from developed countries… but based on our past experience we cannot be confident that the roadmap will generate the expected level of funds and delivered on time.”

“There’s a lack of clarity for adaptation finance,” said Tuvalu prime minister Enele Sosene Sopoaga in a press briefing. “We expect countries to honour their commitments. we need funding to help our people to adapt.”

Report: Rich nations on course to miss 2020 climate finance goal

Bangladeshi researcher and climate talks veteran Saleemul Huq defended the donors, highlighting blockages that prevent the money reaching its target. “To be fair to the developed countries, they have put money into the various funds, but it is not flowing,” he said.

The flagship Green Climate Fund (GCF) has allocated less than 10% of its $10bn start-up capital. More established mechanisms like the Least Developed Countries Fund and Adaptation Fund have shovel-ready projects but their cash flow is drying up.

Donald Trump’s victory in the US election, on a Republican platform pledging to axe donations to the GCF, is a further blow.

Huq welcomed the new capacity building initiative, which he said could “make a big difference”, but advised governments not to hold their breath for more adaptation finance.

“The focus for the vulnerable countries has to be: get your act together at home, because the rest of the world isn’t going to come to your rescue,” he said.

The post Climate cash promises lack clarity, warn poor nations at UN talks appeared first on Climate Home News.

GENEVA, April 16, 2014—30 donor countries today pledged US$ 4.43 billion for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to support developing countries’ efforts over the next four years to prevent degradation of the global environment.

“Today’s decision is a powerful signal from the global community about the importance of urgently reversing the negative environmental trends in order to ensure a sustainable future for everybody“, said Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson of the GEF. “I am extremely encouraged by the broad coalition that has come together behind the belief in GEF’s ability to play a critical role in helping achieve this transformation.”

The funding will support projects in more than 140 countries to tackle a broad range of threats to the global environment, including climate change, deforestation, land degradation, extinction of species, toxic chemicals and waste, and threats to oceans and freshwater resources. The GEF is the main global mechanism to support developing countries’ to take action to fulfill their commitments under the world’s major multilateral environmental agreements. In GEF-6, donors agreed to new financing in support of the Minamata convention on Mercury that was signed in 2013, bringing to five the total number global environmental conventions that the GEF serves.

From Left: Bruno Oberle, Swiss State Secretary of the Environment, Naoko Ishii, CEO & Chairperson of the GEF, and Joachim von Amsberg, Vice President for Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships in the World Bank Group

“The Global Environment Facility has gained the confidence of development partners for its strong track record in protecting the global environment and for its sound management of development partner funds,” said Joachim von Amsberg, Vice President for Concessional Finance and Global Partnerships in the World Bank Group, which serves as Trustee for the GEF. “The environmental challenges the global community faces are significant, and funding for the GEF-6 program will help put us on a path toward our shared goal of sustainable development.”

Donors emphasized GEF’s role in supporting innovative and integrated solutions for the global environment. Among a number of innovations contained in GEF-6 is a new Integrated Approaches Pilot aimed at addressing environmental challenges by focusing on some of the underlying drivers of environmental degradation through special focus on for example food security in Africa, sustainable city development and on taking deforestation out of global commodity supply chains—all issues that can only be effectively addressed if broad coalitions of stakeholders across countries and sectors can be brought together around a common action agenda.

Mexico’s Secretary of Finance and Public Credit, Luis Videgaray, who will host an Assembly of the GEF’s 183 members in Cancun, Mexico, in May said, “Only by integrating environmental considerations into decision making by governments, private businesses and households can we hope to make a difference in the global environment. The GEF-6 effort gets under way at a critical time, and is a vital platform to help mobilize all stakeholders to play their part.”

Plenary session during the 4th meeting of the Sixth Replenishment of the Global Environment Facility

The GEF-6 program envisions devoting an increased share of resources to lower-income recipient countries. GEF will also further its engagement with the private sector, its work in gender mainstreaming, collaboration with civil society organizations, and increased focus on results and on leveraging other sources of funding for the benefit of the global environment by seeking higher levels of co-financing of its projects.

Underpinning efforts, the GEF is developing a longer-term strategy, GEF2020, which aims to enhance the GEF’s impact by focusing its interventions more on the underlying drivers of environmental degradation.

Doris Leuthard, head of the Swiss Federal Department of the Environment, Transport, Energy and Communications that hosted the meeting in Geneva said “We have better scientific evidence that human activity can lead to tipping points with a risk of irreversible and abrupt environmental change. By focusing on the drivers of environmental change and by seeking multiple benefits, the GEF is taking the right approach to turn around the worrying trends in the global environment“.

About the Global Environment Facility

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) unites 183 countries in partnership with international organizations, civil society organizations (CSOs), and the private sector to address global environmental issues while supporting national sustainable development initiatives. The GEF provides funding for projects related to biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants.

Since 1991, the GEF has achieved a strong track record providing $12.5 billion in grants and leveraging $58 billion in co-financing for over 3,690 projects in over 165 countries. Through its Small Grants Programme (SGP), the GEF has also made more than 16,000 small grants directly to civil society and community based organizations, totaling $653 million.

Contact: Christian Hofer, Senior Communications Officer, GEF, chofer@thegef.org

Related Documents and Translations:

• Press Release in French
• Press Release in Spanish
• Press Release in Japanese
• Press Release in Chinese
• Press Release in Arabic
• Press Release in Russian
• Quotes from GEF developing partners at the conclusion of the 6th GEF Replenishment negotiations

The post Record Funding for the Global Environment Facility appeared first on Climate Home News.

Contributions will be channelled through the Least Developed Countries Fund and the Special Climate Change Fund (LDCF/SCCF), which are managed by the Global Environment Facility (GEF).

According to the GEF this takes total international commitments for investment in climate change adaptation programs in some of the world’s most vulnerable regions to more than $1 billion.

The news came on the same day the LDCF and SCCF approved $44.83 million in grant funding for Cameroon, Haiti, Namibia and the Andes region.

“The donors are stepping up to the adaptation challenge, and this is absolutely critical given the state of our climate, and we are truly grateful for the support of these nations as well as their vote of confidence in the LDCF and SCCF,” said Bonizella Biagini, Head of the GEF Climate Change Adaptation Program.

Haitians cross a flooded street in Léogâne, 30 km southeast of Port-au-Prince during intense rains in 2010 (Pic: UN Photos)

The LDCF and SCCF are targeted at adaptation financing for the poorest countries in the world and for climate-vulnerable countries including small island states.

“We now experience major economic costs due to unsustainable practices, and we can no longer exclude catastrophic tipping points,” said GEF CEO Naoko Ishii.

“Evidence around the globe calls for concerted action on mitigation, but also on adaptation and preparedness.

“The adaptation program of the GEF, financed under LDCF and SCCF, addresses these challenges through concrete adaptation actions that contribute to poverty alleviation, build resistance in all development sectors including food security, and build capacity for disaster risk management and prevention.”

Climate change adaptation programs aim to help regions deal with the impacts associated with global warming, including water scarcity, rising sea levels, floods, and weather extremes.

Previously the bulk of climate finance has been targeted at mitigation efforts, such as clean energy projects, but in recent years adaptation has become more urgent.

Increasing finance flows is likely to be a major topic at this November’s UN climate summit in Warsaw.

The presence of senior finance figures would please poorer nations reliant on aid.

In their closing statement ay the UN talks in Bonn two weeks ago, the group of Least Developed Countries (LDCs) called on nations contributing climate finance to provide details on the size of those pledges before the end of this year.

Governments have committed to provide $100bn a year of climate finance by 2020 via the Green Climate Fund.

The post Least Developed Countries climate adaptation fund gets $200m boost appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Global Environment Facility’s role as an operating entity of the financial mechanism of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) has involved – and will continue to involve – robust financial support for climate change adaptation and mitigation projects and programs throughout the developing world and in countries with economies in transition.

As UNFCCC parties work toward the next Conference of Parties this fall in Warsaw, and toward the ambitious goal of a global climate agreement in 2015, the GEF has been supporting national communications, nationally appropriate mitigation actions, and biennial update reports (BURs) – all of which comprise key building blocks to ensuring that countries can accurately track their progress in meeting their climate change commitments.

As an international institution with 183 member nations, the GEF raises funds from donor nations to provide grants – supplemented many times over by co-finance from recipient countries, non-governmental organizations, other international organizations, and the private sector – for a wide range of climate change mitigation and adaptation efforts implemented by the GEF’s Partner Agencies.

GEF projects in 2013 include investment in new waste facilities in the Philippines to replace open air dumps (Pic: GEF)

Most recently, the GEF has reported to the UNFCCC on four significant deliverables reflecting GEF activity in Climate change.

The four are: an update on GEF-sponsored national communications and biennial update reports; the financial report of the GEF on climate change investments; GEF support for technology transfer under the Convention; and GEF support to capacity-building under the Convention.

The GEF recognizes the importance of national communications and biennial update reports, for these provide the baseline of knowledge that enables us to know whether our projects and programs are having a positive impact in reducing greenhouse gas emissions.

Since 2011, GEF has provided direct support to countries for the preparation of national communications and biennial update reports; previously it did so through its agencies, the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP), United Nations Development Programme (UNDP), and World Bank.

The GEF has already compiled and synthesized most of the Initial National Communications from developing countries, and the work continues through a process that includes the organization of workshops, collaboration with bilateral and multilateral support programs, the dissemination of information through participation in regional workshops, and expert group meetings.

Thanks to these early investments by the GEF, particularly through the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) and the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), developing countries are now gaining their first experience in how to address the impacts of climate change, and are already actively working to increase the resilience of some of the world’s poorest and most vulnerable communities.

GEF workshops in Tanzania in 2012 were aimed at building climate change & biodiversity capacity among African policymakers (Pic: GEF)

The GEF plays a catalytic role in mobilizing investments, enabling recipients, pioneering innovative financial instruments, and promoting market-based mechanisms leading to widespread adoption and dissemination of climate-friendly technologies.

In our report to the UNFCCC, we noted that GEF has supported more than 50 climate-resilient technologies for energy efficiency, renewable energy, sustainable urban transport, and methane reduction.

GEF climate change investments are expected to directly reduce 2 billion tons of carbon dioxide equivalent and catalyze reduction of an additional 7 billion tons through transformation of markets.

The GEF is pursuing climate change mitigation in three ways: (i) promotion of innovation and technology transfer, (ii) demonstration of systemic impacts of mitigation options, and (iii) supporting the creation of enabling environments for broad-based mainstreaming of mitigation in development.

The GEF has financed more than US$746.7 million in concrete adaptation action via more than 176 projects, of which 103 are implementation projects for National Adaptation Plans of Action (NAPA). This investment has generated co-financing of $2.09 billion.

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.

INTERVIEW: Global Environment Facility CEO Naoko Ishii

The GEF Adaptation Program will continue to rely on the following guiding principles: (i) responsiveness to COP guidance, (ii) responsiveness to the needs of vulnerable developing countries, (iii) responsiveness to independent evaluations, and (iv) complementarity and coherence with other climate change fund, while implementing thematic priorities.

Adaptation projects are often based in some of the least developed countries in the GEF portfolio, requiring active support for capacity-building so that recipient governments have the technical and administrative capacity to make the most of the GEF grant funding they receive.

Because of the GEF’s unique, multifocal mission and partnership-based structure, there are opportunities to leverage co-benefits in environment and development.  Through a more cohesive approach, the GEF intends to pursue a more integrated climate change agenda, including initiatives that will seek to address adaptation and mitigation simultaneously.

The GEF finances climate change initiatives that complement efforts of other climate financing mechanisms. GEF will continue to seek synergies as the global climate finance architecture evolves.

Preparations are well under way for the UNFCCC COP19 in Warsaw this coming November, and the international community is on track toward a historic agreement in 2015. The GEF is proud to be one of the engines on that train – powered by green energy, of course – pushing toward that outcome.

The Global Environment Facility is one of RTCC’s supporting partners. Bob Dixon is the GEF’s Climate Change Team Leader.

The post GEF pushes climate finance support for developing nations appeared first on Climate Home News.

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) now has projects in Asia, Latin America and Africa to address what is an increasingly severe problem in developing countries.

Persistent organic pollutants, organic compounds that are resistant to environmental degradation, are commonly released from burning plastic or other industrial processes. 90% of human exposure is through food, mainly meat.

The World Health Organisation warns that low-level exposure can lead to the suppression of the immune system, lung conditions and cancer.

“We’re ingesting these chemicals, they’re making us sick and killing us,” said Bob Dixon, head of climate change and chemicals at the GEF. “It’s an urgent problem – we need to get after it today”

The bank has produced a film (below) to highlight projects in the Philippines, Mexico, China, Kenya and Tanzania.

The impact of burning waste can be seen in the film when GEF Environmental Specialist Evelyn Swain visits a rubbish tip in Santos City, Philippines.

“We know what chemicals were in the smoke, but sometimes nothing can prepare you for the horrific reality on the ground,” she says.

“As we drove through areas of rancid smoke for the first time, we could make out darker areas. And it wasn’t until we got closer than I realised those shadows were people.”

Families live in the shadow of the site. Small children already show the effects of the smoke, coughing and scratching cuts and sores.

There is no segregation of materials when trucks arrive at the dump.

Waste-pickers sift through the rubbish, collecting recyclables such as plastic bottles, which can be resold.

Fires constantly smoulder among the detritus, covering the workers with a dense shroud of toxic smoke.

The unlined landfill is outside Santos City in the Philippines – it is picked over by families risking their health to find valuables in the heaps of trash

“We see a lot of plastics in this temporary disposal facility. We know there are dioxins and furans as part of the composition of the plastic,” City Administrator Teody Dumagan says.

“We encourage them [wastepickers] to look for other livelihoods, and I think there is a need to close this to protect the health of the community.”

The GEF, World Bank and Environmental Management Bureau are working with six local governments in the Philippines to improve the management of open dumps.

The unlined landfills will soon be closed and rebuilt using environmentally sound methods.

The goal is to reduce the release of dioxins and furans, with an additional benefit of cutting the substantial levels of greenhouse gases that burning rubbish emits.

“The water, air, eneregy and soil – everything is connected,” says GEF chief executive Dr. Naoko Ishii. “We need everybody’s role in this. No single person can solve this problem.

“The challenge is so enormous and we just need to step up our effort. It’s not a problem of future generations – it’s a problem for this generation.”

The post Global Environment Facility launches new drive to ‘detox’ planet appeared first on Climate Home News.

Ghulam Malikyar, Deputy Director General, National Environment Protection Agency, warned that desertification and deforestation were already having profound effects on the country.

“Climate change is not just an environmental issue in Afghanistan, it will also contribute to instability,” he said.

“The loss of ecosystem productivity forces people from rural areas to urban areas, and we have the problem then of sheltering them. This is the main issue we are suffering now.

“We are losing our land productivity and land degradation is another issue. We have limited glaciers which are the major water resource in my country, and they are melting now.”

Afghanistan has suffered more than three decades of varying degrees of conflict, dramatically reducing its resilience to decreasing rainfalls and other climatic changes.

In October 2012 the government launched a USD $6 million initiative largely funded by the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to build resilience amongst vulnerable communities.

The focus is primarily on building adaptive capacity, given the country’s tiny carbon footprint.

Approximately 80% of the population rely on the land for their livelihoods, a large proportion at subsistence level.

The country experienced a severe drought in 1998-2006 and more recently in 2008-09 which led to significant losses of crops such as wheat, rice, maize and potato.

Climate change is predicted to cause an increase in mean annual temperatures in Afghanistan, together with a decrease in mean annual rainfall and an increase in the intensity of rainfalls.

The post Afghanistan faces twin threats of war and climate change appeared first on Climate Home News.