Samar island - the third largest island in the Philippine archipelago—contains some of the Philippines’ largest extant, unfragmented tracts of lowland rainforest. Although these forests are widely recognized to be an important repository of biodiversity, civil disorder problems in Samar have, until recently, hampered conservation management. Civil order has now been restored, providing a historic window of opportunity to expand the conservation estate.

The Orinoco River Delta is a rich storehouse of wetland biodiversity. Although its natural integrity is largely intact, the Delta is increasingly threatened by hunting, fishing, and forest harvesting activities, and is potentially at risk from agricultural expansion, pollution, and development-induced hydrological perturbation.

This project will support the conservation of critical marine biodiversity values at Hon Mun island and its surrounding waters, located off Nha Trang in Khanh Hoa Province, south-central Vietnam. This will be achieved through the development of a zoned, multiple-use marine protected area (MPA) that protects globally important examples of Vietnam’s best remaining coral reef, mangrove and seagrass ecosystems.

Although baseline activities are on-going in both the Lebanese Republic and the Palestinian Authority to update existing building codes and improve end-use energy efficiency, these activities do not address barriers hindering the inclusion of energy codes in the available building codes or construction of energy efficient buildings. The project will add on the existing activities and will provide the stakeholders with needed support to establish cost-effective energy codes in buildings.

This project is designed to stimulate the development and utilization of fuel cell buses by supporting a significant operational test of fuel cell buses in the greater São Paulo Metropolitan Area. It will assist the Brazilian Government and the Empresa Metropolitana de Transportes Urbanos de São Paulo S/A in obtaining and operating 8 fuel cell buses in order to provide feedback to the technology developers and to gain meaningful experience in the operation and management of buses powered by fuel cell drive trains.

The project’s objectives are to: (a) improve the quality of life for the citizens of Beijing by alleviating the city’s acute air and water pollution problems; and (b) significantly reduce China’s GHG emissions. It has three components: energy conversion and efficiency; wastewater treatment; and environment capacity-building. GEF assistance is requested to remove the barriers to successful implementation of the project’s two major energy components.

The key development objective of the Learning and Innovation Loan is to support the Government in implementing its strategy for increasing access to electricity in rural and peri-urban and in promoting the adoption of Renewable Energy Technologies (RET). The project’s global environment objective is to remove barriers to application, implementation and dissemination of RET. Removal of barriers will make it attractive for the private sector to start investing in decentralized rural electrification schemes, and operate these on a fully commercial basis.

The main purpose of this project is to decrease harmful emissions of greenhouse gasses in ways that deliver economically competitive heat supplies to a major portion of Szombathely and competitively priced electricity to the grid. Additional project objectives are to strengthen rural employment and incomes through increased beneficial usage of wood; and to demonstrate the technical feasibility of wood-firing for district heating coupled with electric production using gas motors.

This project aims at developing and implementing a bioenergy technology package to reduce GHG emissions by up to 177 tons of C over the next 25 years, and to promote a sustainable and participatory approach to meeting rural energy needs. The project will be implemented mainly in two panchayats (a cluster of about 24 villages), of Tumkur district in Karnataka. The project goals will be achieved through (i). Demonstrating the technical feasibility and financial viability of bioenergy technologies on a significant scale, (ii).

The project will assist India in undertaking the enabling activities to prepare initial national communication to the Conference of Parties in accordance with UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and to build capacity to fulfil its commitments to the Convention on a continuing basis.