Protecting the irreplaceable

In the remote corners of the Amazon, the Congo Basin, West Africa, Mesoamerica, and the forests of Southeast Asia, there are ecosystems that cannot be replaced. Tropical primary forests, ancient, intact, teeming with life, sustain an extraordinary share of the planet's biodiversity, regulate rainfall across and beyond entire continents, and store carbon accumulated over millennia. They are also home to hundreds of millions of people, including Indigenous Peoples and local communities whose cultures, livelihoods, and identities are rooted in the forest.

These precious ecosystems are disappearing. Despite a growing architecture of global commitments, from the Glasgow Leaders' Declaration on Forests and Land Use to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF), tropical primary forests continue to be lost and degraded at alarming rates, driven by agricultural expansion, infrastructure development, and weak governance. The world is far from being on track to meet its 2030 forest goals.

This week in New York, governments, international organizations, and civil society are gathering at the 21st session of the UN Forum on Forests (UNFF21) to grapple with this reality under the theme of accelerating implementation of the UN Strategic Plan for Forests 2017–2030 (UNSPF). The Global Environment Facility is at the table supporting the Forum as part of the Collaborative Partnership on Forests (CPF). The message is clear: sustainable forest protection is possible, but it requires sustained, adequate, and integrated finance.

Since its establishment in 1991, the GEF has invested nearly $6 billion in forest conservation and sustainable management across 172 countries. Behind this is 30 years of learning, adapting, and deepening partnerships to protect the forests upon which the world depends.

Each successive GEF replenishment has built on the lessons of the last. Under GEF-8, the funding period from 2022–2026, forests received $1.8 billion in support, the most ambitious forest investment in the GEF's history. These grants were leveraged into approximately $15 billion in co-financing, supporting 243 projects across 108 countries.

At the heart of GEF-8's forest portfolio is the Amazon, Congo, and Other Critical Forest Biomes Integrated Program. This $293 million initiative spans 27 countries across five of the world's most ecologically vital tropical biomes: the Amazon, the Congo Basin, Southeast Asia and the Pacific, the Guinean Forests of West Africa, and Mesoamerica.

The Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Program has evolved over three phases and more than a decade of engagement, now encompassing all eight sovereign countries of the Amazon basin with a cumulative GEF investment of $314 million. The program addresses the interconnected drivers of deforestation — agricultural expansion, governance, land tenure, and inadequate finance — in a coordinated framework.

In the Congo Basin, home to the world's second largest tropical rainforest and an estimated 65 to 80 million people, the GEF has sustained two phases of investment under the Congo Basin Forest Integrated Program, mobilizing over $178 million in funding. For the communities whose survival depends on these forests, GEF investments mean strengthened land rights, improved resource management, and real income from sustainable forest-based activities.

One of the GEF's most distinctive contributions is its work as a bridge across global frameworks. As the financial mechanism for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UNFCCC, and the UNCCD, the GEF translates the KMGBF's Targets, the Paris Agreement's land-use commitments, the Land Degradation Neutrality targets, and the Global Forest Goals of the UNSPF into integrated, country-level investments.

“A tropical primary forest simultaneously stores the carbon that shapes our climate, protects biodiversity, stabilizes the soils, and watersheds that anchor sustainable land use," said Claude Gascon, GEF Interim CEO and Chairperson. The GEF was created to operate across all these issues. It serves as the financial mechanism for the Convention on Biological Diversity, the UNFCCC, and the UNCCD, among others. Our forest investments represent an integrated mandate for commitments to the three UN bodies on biodiversity, climate change, and land degradation simultaneously.

Across its forest investments, the GEF is committed to inclusive, rights-based approaches. Indigenous Peoples and local communities are both beneficiaries and partners. In many cases, they are the primary agents of forest protection. GEF programming incorporates free, prior, and informed consent, supports community land tenure, and channels resources to communities whose traditional knowledge and stewardship are irreplaceable assets in the fight to protect forests. Under the forthcoming GEF-9 programming, 20 percent of funds will go to Indigenous Peoples and local communities.

With fewer than five years remaining towards the 2030 milestone of the UN Strategic Plan for Forests, the GEF's message at UNFF21 is that it will support accelerated implementation of the UNSPF. The forthcoming GEF-9 replenishment cycle — which will define its forest investments from 2026 to 2030 — represents a critical opportunity to scale up ambition, sharpen focus on primary forest conservation, and mobilize the co-financing needed to close the still-enormous gap between global commitments and on-the-ground needs.

Protecting remaining tropical primary forests is the single most impactful investment the international community can make for biodiversity, climate, and the hundreds of millions of people who depend on them. The GEF will continue, as it has over the last three decades to build the systems, the partnerships, and the institutional capacity to achieve the Global Forest Goals.