Global Environment Facility

Established in 1991, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a global partnership that helps tackle the planet’s most pressing environmental problems. GEF brings together 183 countries, international institutions, nongovernment organizations, and the private sector to help developing countries address environmental problems. GEF administers seven trust funds. ADB participates in four of these trust funds, specifically:

1. The GEF Trust Fund supports activities within the GEF focal areas.
2. The Least Developed Countries Fund addresses the special needs of the 51 least developed countries that are especially vulnerable to the adverse impacts of climate change.
3. The Special Climate Change Fund supports adaptation and technology transfer in all developing countries that are party to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change.
4. The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund serves as a new source of funding to support and scale up financing for the implementation of the Kunming–Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. It aims to help countries achieve the Global Biodiversity Framework goals and targets with a strategic focus on strengthening national-level biodiversity management, planning, policy, governance, and finance approaches. It is expected to start funding nature loss and restoration projects by the end of 2024.

Highlights

Sovereign Cofinancing. In 2023, GEF supported Tuvalu in increasing access to renewable energy through a grant cofinancing of $3 million.

Knowledge. In May 2023, at the panel session on financing sustainable forest management at the 18th United Nations Forum on Forests, ADB highlighted the importance of investment in forests in addressing the climate–food–nature nexus. They discussed the need to leverage accounting tools to quantify the value of ecosystem services, stressed the importance of payments for ecosystem services to incentivize behavior change among farmers, and shared ADB’s innovative natural capital financing facilities for translating ecosystem services into sustainable financing for ecosystems, including forests. The panel was attended by key practice leaders from international organizations, including GEF.