Global Environment Facility

🌿 Today is the International Day for Biological Diversity — and the theme could not be more fitting for everything the GEF Small Grants Program represents: Acting locally for global impact. The scale of the biodiversity crisis is staggering. One million species threatened. A 69% average decline in monitored wildlife populations since 1970. Numbers that can make the challenge feel impossibly large. But over three decades of SGP work tell a different story: communities that live alongside nature know best how to protect it. In Colombia's Guaviare region, farmers who once lost livestock to jaguars became wildlife guardians and nature guides — turning a perceived threat into the engine of a nature-based economy. In Kenya's Mau Forest, Ogiek healers and GEF SGP projects are simultaneously restoring degraded medicinal plant habitats and preserving the intergenerational knowledge encoded within them — because forest health and human health turn out to be the same question. In Kazakhstan's Karaganda region, farmer and master falconer Tleukabyl Yessembekuly has spent 35 years restoring his steppe homeland. With SGP support, his association planted 230 hectares of grasses and alfalfa, restored natural springs, and ensured a local school now teaches the ancient art of falconry. "Caring for the land is not just work," he said. "It is a calling." These are not isolated stories. A 2024 GEF Independent Evaluation Office review of 190 projects confirmed what SGP practitioners have long known: community-led approaches generate better environmental results, more durable outcomes, and stronger co-benefits than top-down programming. The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework sets an ambitious target to change the trajectory of biodiversity loss within a decade. Its 23 targets will be met — or missed — in places like the Guaviare, the Mau Forest, and the Kazakh steppe. Read the full feature story: https://lnkd.in/e6H_eyMY #BiodiversityDay #IDB2026 #ActingLocallyForGlobalImpact #GEF #SmallGrantsProgram #Biodiversity #CommunityLed #KunmingMontreal

As #GEF9 moves forward, global leaders are emphasizing the need for integrated action across nature, land, and biodiversity. As Simon Stiell, Executive Secretary of the UNFCCC, Yasmine Fouad, Executive Secretary of the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity UN Biodiversity highlight, the world’s environmental challenges are deeply connected—and the response must be as well. Through the Global Environment Facility (GEF), countries are scaling action that supports resilient communities, healthier ecosystems, food and water security, and global environmental commitments. With #GEF9, the focus remains on accelerating solutions that are accessible, catalytic, and capable of delivering impact at scale. #GEF9Replenishment #GEFAssembly2026 #SustainableDevelopment

Later this month, representatives of the Global Environment Facility’s 186 participant countries will gather in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, for meetings of the GEF, LDCF/SCCF, and GBFF Councils ahead of the Eighth GEF Assembly. Council members are set to consider more than $200 million in support across the family of funds and endorse programming directions and policy recommendations for the July 2026 to June 2030 period. The meetings will immediately precede the Eighth GEF Assembly, opening June 4, which will bring together governments, policymakers, civil society, Indigenous Peoples, and the private sector around the final sprint to 2030 environmental goals. During the Assembly, the GEF’s member countries will take note of the report of the ninth replenishment of the trust fund. Participants in Uzbekistan will also showcase successful projects and innovations across regions and sectors. This will include a Civil Society Forum on June 3, co-organized with the GEF CSO Network and Indigenous Peoples Advisory Group. The forum’s deliberations are set to feed into the Assembly sessions, including proposals on ways to boost civil society engagement and support and ensure that investments in the environment yield positive results that endure. https://lnkd.in/eS9RExdE UN Biodiversity UN Convention to Combat Desertification UN Climate Change The Basel, Rotterdam and Stockholm Conventions Minamata Convention on Mercury United Nations Division for Ocean Affairs and the Law of The Sea (UNDOALOS) #GEFAssembly2026 #GEFCouncil71

As #GEF9 moves forward, partners and leaders are already looking to what’s next. As Patricia Zurita, Executive Director of Conservation International highlights, growing pressure on natural systems means incremental approaches are no longer enough. What makes the Global Environment Facility (GEF) especially important is not only the financing it provides, but its ability to bring together countries, communities, policy, and capital to drive action on the ground. With #GEF9, the focus is clear: scale what works, strengthen collaboration, support Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and ensure funding reaches where it can deliver lasting impact. #GEF9Replenishment #GEFAssembly2026 #SustainableDevelopment

With #GEF9 moving forward, partners and leaders are already looking ahead. As Astrid Schomaker, Executive Secretary of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) UN Biodiversity highlights, the commitments made so far reflect global resolve to implement the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework #KMGBF — the world’s blueprint to halt and reverse biodiversity loss. This momentum comes at a critical moment, as countries prepare for the first global stocktake of collective progress under the framework. Working alongside the Global Environment Facility (GEF), its agencies, and parties to the Convention, the focus remains on ensuring effective implementation and delivering impact for nature and people. #GEF9Replenishment #SustainableDevelopment

🌍 Ahead of the Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand, Uzbekistan, representatives of the Global Environment Facility’s 186 participant countries will gather for a series of Council meetings. The meetings will consider more than $200 million in support across the GEF family of funds and endorse programming directions and policy recommendations for the July 2026 to June 2030 period. The Council meetings will immediately precede the Eighth GEF Assembly, where the sprint to 2030 will be in focus. https://lnkd.in/eS9RExdE #GEFAssembly2026 #GEFcouncil71

The world lost 4.3 million hectares of tropical primary rainforest in 2025 alone — an area the size of Denmark. The rate of loss remains 46% above where it was a decade ago. These are not abstract statistics. They are a measure of what humanity stands to lose permanently: carbon stores, biodiversity, rainfall systems, and the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people. This week at #UNFF21 in New York, the GEF made that case. In his formal statement to the UNFF21 plenary, GEF Interim CEO Claude Gascon warned that the Amazon risks irreversible dieback if forest cover falls below 75% — and that parts of the eastern Amazon have already crossed that threshold. His message was unambiguous: you cannot plant your way out of losing a primary forest. Prevention is not simply cheaper than the cure — in the case of ancient ecosystems, the cure may not exist at all. At our side event on the collaboration of financial mechanisms for primary forest conservation, that same urgency drove a frank conversation about what it will take to match finance to the scale of the crisis. The conclusion was clear: the mechanisms working on forests must move from parallel action to genuine operational coordination, with country systems at the center. The GEF has invested nearly $6 billion in forest conservation since 1991. Under GEF-8, $1.8 billion in GEF grants has leveraged approximately $15 billion in co-financing across 243 projects in 108 countries. Our flagship Amazon, Congo, and Critical Forest Biomes Integrated Program alone mobilizes $293 million in GEF grants across 27 countries and five tropical biomes. #UNFF21 #Forests2030 #PrimaryForests #ForestFinance #GEF #Biodiversity #NatureFinance #GEF9 #UNSPF

The GEF Assembly is just weeks away — this week in New York, on the sidelines of #UNFF21, GEF Interim CEO Claude Gascon met with Aziz Abdukhakimov, Advisor to the President of the Republic of Uzbekistan on Environment and Chairman of the National Committee on Ecology and Climate Change of Uzbekistan, to review key issues ahead of this landmark event. The Eighth GEF Assembly in Samarkand will welcome ministers, heads of international organizations, and representatives of civil society from all 186 GEF member countries on 30 May. The countdown is on. 🌍 https://lnkd.in/epAy5_6A #GEFAssembly2026 #Samarkand #Uzbekistan #UNFF21 #GEF #GlobalEnvironment