Photos credit: IISD/ENB | Danny Skilton
The sprint towards 2030 goals will be fueled by integration and collaboration across the multilateral environmental agreements the Global Environment Facility serves. Following are excerpts from a panel discussion during the 71st GEF Council meeting in Uzbekistan, focused on the connections between nature, health, and resilience:
Rolph Payet, Executive Secretary of the Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions, said it was increasingly clear that pollution is inseparable from other environmental challenges that have long been viewed individually, such as biodiversity loss, land degradation, and climate change. “The Basel, Rotterdam, and Stockholm Conventions encapsulate the entire lifecycle of everything we produce, use, and sadly dispose of daily,” he said. “We need to make integration something more impactful – not because we have to tick a box, but because we should aspire to build a brave financing architecture that goes far beyond what we have done before.”
“GEF-9 must mark the moment when we stop treating pollution as a footnote to planetary health,” Payet said, stressing the need for an all-hands approach to challenges like food loaded with pesticides, PFAS-contaminated water, plastics all over the planet and in our bodies, and unmanaged landfills spewing methane gas into the atmosphere. “We need clear mechanisms that mobilize governments and the private sector to take action, innovate, and improve quality of life for everyone.”
Monika Stankiewicz, Executive Secretary of the Minamata Convention on Mercury, said the potency of mercury meant that efforts to reduce and prevent its use in gold mining, industry, and medical care including dentistry had wide-ranging impacts for the environment, as well as for human health. She welcomed efforts to integrate mercury considerations into efforts related to biodiversity, forests, supply chains, industry, and cities in the next GEF funding cycle.
“Next year the convention will have its 10th anniversary, and a strong early GEF-9 investment would send a powerful signal,” Stankiewicz said, noting that action on mercury can complement progress towards biodiversity targets, as small-scale mining often takes place in biodiverse areas. “Cutting mercury and other pollution is not a standalone cost. It is a driver of co-benefits for biodiversity and for the climate,” she said.
Daniele Violetti, Senior Director at the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, said the GEF-9 funding period aligned with a critical moment when countries are working towards a new collective qualified goal on climate finance. “One of the most important expectations for GEF-9 is the ability to deploy scarce grant-based resources strategically and catalytically, so the success of GEF-9 should increasingly focus not only on the finances it provides directly, but on how effectively it mobilizes and complements larger sources of finance across the broader climate finance infrastructure,” he said.
“Countries are increasingly opting for a whole-of-economy approach to implementation, integrating climate objectives across sectors and development priorities,” he said. “GEF-9 programs provide an important opportunity to translate that comparative advantage into more coherent implementation and amplify climate outcomes across the broader environmental agenda.”
Asad Naqvi, Director for Implementation Support at the Convention on Biological Diversity, said the fast-approaching 2030 deadline for the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework – aligned with the end of the GEF-9 period – brought into focus the need to work in a collaborative, integrated way to tackle the root causes of challenges and demonstrate the wide economic and societal benefits from investing in environmental renewal and sustainability.
“All of these challenges that we are trying to solve are interconnected challenges,” he said, stressing the importance of efforts underway to build stronger synergies between environmental conventions and to clearly show how GEF-funded efforts create jobs, boost competitiveness, and build resilience. “I think it's very important to measure how many hectares of land are protected, but it is also important to see what is making so many other hectares of land go into desertification, or become degraded.”
Cathrine Mutambirwa, Program Coordinator for Land Degradation Neutrality and Land Restoration at the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, noted successes from large and cross-cutting GEF investments such as the Great Green Wall Initiative, the Blue and Green Islands Integrated Program, and work across the Zambezi River Basin, and welcomed efforts to build partnerships and work across sectors to address the drivers of drought and damage and open up new investment opportunities related to drylands.
“The GEF has invested significantly in avoiding, reducing, and reversing land degradation through conservation, sustainable land management, and restoration of degraded lands. This is concrete proof that this partnership delivers for people and the planet,” she said. “The work ahead is urgent, but our partnership is strong. UNCCD and its parties look forward to delivering together a GEF-9 that the world's land-users can feel in healthier soils, more resilient harvests, and restored hope.”
The six multilateral environmental conventions the GEF serves are the Agreement on Marine Biological Diversity of Areas Beyond National Jurisdiction, the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Minamata Convention on Mercury, the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants, the UN Convention to Combat Desertification, and the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
All photos credited to IISD/ENB | Danny Skilton
