How the GEF is helping the world meet its biodiversity goals

As the world reaches the halfway mark on the journey to achieve global biodiversity targets, the first global review of collective progress under the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) is being considered at the Convention on Biological Diversity’s subsidiary body meetings - SBSTTA-28 and SBI-7. 

Taking place in Nairobi, Kenya over the last week of July and the first weeks of August, the gatherings connect delegates who will look at where the world now stands with respect to the ambitious targets. The review provides hope: significant action is underway to protect, restore, and sustainably use nature. But the pace and scale of implementation must accelerate for the goals to be met.

The Global Environment Facility is the world’s family of funds for the environment. As the financial mechanism for six multilateral conventions, the GEF supports countries’ efforts to tackle the root causes of environmental degradation — advancing global goals for nature, climate, and pollution. The GEF has invested more than $5.2 billion to conserve biodiversity and use it sustainably. This investment has leveraged over $13.4 billion in additional funds, supporting 1,500 projects in more than 158 countries.

This support has improved management of more than 2.5 billion hectares of terrestrial and marine protected areas around the world, an area larger than the size of Latin America. It has also helped countries sustainably use and manage biodiversity across more than 543 million hectares of productive landscapes and seascapes. More catalytic and leveraged support is forthcoming from programming in GEF-9, the period from July 2026 until June 2030, aligned with the push to meet biodiversity goals and targets first agreed in Montreal in 2022.

Protecting and restoring ecosystems at scale

The GEF has mobilized resources for implementation of all the 23 targets of KMGBF, with a focus on supporting large-scale conservation and restoration work. From the Amazon to the Congo Basin, from Papua New Guinea's highland forests to coral reefs in the Coral Triangle, GEF-supported projects have created 170 million hectares of new protected areas and improved the managed effectiveness of another 170 million hectares of existing protected areas over July 2022 to June 2025 alone. A further 25.5 million hectares are now under active ecosystem restoration.

These results are currently being amplified by the GEF-8's eleven Integrated Programs, collectively accounting for $1.64 billion in GEF financing. The Critical Forest Biomes Integrated Program, which encompasses the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and forests from Mesoamerica to Indo-Malaya, will bring over 97 million hectares of Amazon protected areas under improved management. The GEF's Small Grants Program extends this reach further, channeling direct funding to civil society and community groups on the front lines of biodiversity action.

In Papua New Guinea, a project supported by GEF’s Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) is working with Indigenous communities to strengthen customary governance over some of the world's most biodiverse forests. These projects illustrate the geographic reach and the diversity of approaches that define the GEF's contribution to the conservation targets of the KMGBF targets.

Getting finance to where It's needed most

The GEF Trust Fund remains the backbone of this effort: with $1.92 billion allocated to the GEF-8 biodiversity focal area and more coming in GEF-9, the trust fund delivers at scale across protected areas, ecosystem restoration, sustainable landscapes, and the national planning and reporting systems countries need to implement the GBFF. All of this is driven by the priorities identified by countries themselves. 

Critically, this also goes beyond biodiversity-specific funding: 72 percent of all GEF-8 Trust Fund programming across focal areas contributes to biodiversity objectives, surpassing the 60 percent target set by the GEF Council. Blended finance tools are leveraging every GEF dollar at a 16.6:1 ratio in co-financing — more than double the portfolio average.

The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund provides resources beyond the GEF Trust Fund. The GBFF was established in response to guidance from the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity, including addressing the challenges of speed and accessibility. Many countries — especially Small Island Developing States and Least Developed Countries — need fast, flexible finance to kickstart implementation. Since launching in August 2023, the GBFF has programmed more than $362 million across 87 countries through five competitive selection rounds, with a median project size of close to $4 million. All three GBFF portfolio targets have been met or exceeded: close to 39 percent of resources benefit SIDS and LDCs, almost 32 percent directly support actions by Indigenous Peoples and local communities for biodiversity and over 30 percent has been programmed with the participation of international financial institutions.

Supporting national plans and the road to CBD COP17

Countries cannot deliver on the KMGBF without updated national strategies and the capacity to track and report progress.

The GEF-8 Umbrella Program for National Biodiversity Strategy and Action Plan (NBSAP) Updates and Seventh National Reports — a $78.5 million investment covering 139 countries, implemented by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) — is the primary vehicle for this work, providing $450,000 per country for NBSAP revision, national reporting, and monitoring system alignment. The pace of delivery is picking up: where implementation was slow to start in some countries, a joint acceleration plan adopted in September 2025 by UNEP, UNDP, the CBD Secretariat, and the GEF Secretariat is driving momentum. The national reports arriving in Nairobi this month are direct evidence of that. In parallel, with GEF support, the BIOFIN program is helping countries develop coherent national biodiversity finance plans to ensure NBSAPs are underpinned by credible budget lines.

The Nairobi meetings are a critical juncture: the review's conclusions will shape what countries ask of each other — and of the international financing system — as they head toward the next meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (COP17) in Yerevan. The GEF’s $3.9 billion replenishment, including 70 percent to be aligned with biodiversity objectives, arrives as the answer to that moment — as a reformed and re-engineered financing partner.

A one-step approach, adapted from the GBFF's procedures, and estimated to save three to four months in the early project cycle, will be mainstreamed across all GEF-administered funds. Country platforms will strengthen whole-of-government coordination and crowd in private investment. A 25 percent target for GEF-9 programming to mobilize private finance at scale signals a fundamental shift in how the institution approaches leverage. These are not marginal adjustments — they are the bases for the institutional architecture of the sprint to 2030.