The Global Environment
Facility - funding projects
to meet the goals of global
environmental conventions

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) provides funding to meet the incremental costs of measures to achieve global environmental benefits. It supports activities in four functional areas: biological diversity, international waters, climate change and ozone layer depletion. It also addresses land degradation, primarily desertification and deforestation as they relate to the four functional areas.

GEF is the interim financial mechanism of the Convention of Biological Diversity (CBD), the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and, as of December 2000, the Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs). GEF also supports the objectives of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD). GEF provides funds on a grant rather than a loan basis. Since its creation in 1991, GEF has funded more than 680 projects in 154 countries, for a total investment of almost US$3 billion. Some 166 nations participate in GEF and form the GEF Assembly.

In 1994, 34 countries pledged US$2 billion for a four-year capitalization of GEF's trust fund. In March 1998, 36 countries committed an additional US$2.75 billion, and a possible subsequent replenishment is under discussion. Apart from committing these large amounts of resources, GEF has been highly successful in leveraging substantial amounts through co-financing.

GEF operates on the basis of collaboration and partnership with three implementing agencies: the World Bank, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP). However, the limitation to three agencies has been increasingly viewed as a bottleneck to the disbursement of funds, and GEF has begun to negotiate limited agreements with other institutions as "near implementing agencies". The GEF Council (made up of representatives of 16 developing countries, 14 developed countries and two countries with economies in transition) has expressed its intention to expand opportunities as executing agencies for institutions with specific expertise in new emerging areas for GEF activities, including FAO. With the recent accession of GEF to the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF), which has been established to support the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF), other opportunities will arise for GEF to work in partnership with international organizations on forest-related activities.
Further information is available on the GEF Web site: www.gefweb.org/.