The Global Environment Facility and biodiversity conservation: lessons to date and suggestions for future action

Abstract

The last five years in particular have seen increasing attention paid to biodiversity. This culminated at the Earth Summit last June with the completion of Agenda 21 and a major international Convention on Biological Diversity, a document signed by some 165 nations. Concurrent with the Convention negotiations was the development of a global fund for biodiversity conservation and other environmental priorities, the Global Environment Facility (GEF). The GEF is the largest fund to data put forward by the international community to address biodiversity loss, but, so far, it has failed to set adequate priorities for biodiversity conservation. It has also yet to recognize the full range of biodiversity values and uses and, in general, GEF projects have not taken advantage of existing non-governmental capacity for biodiversity conservation. 1993 is a critical year for the GEF, one in which the GEF can become a critical element of global efforts to conserve biodiversity or remain an important initialive that realized only a fraction of its potential.