Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, GEF CEO and Chairperson:
Harmony is what you get when people act together. Many voices and many hands produce results that multiply their initial efforts many times over.
The Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework and the Sustainable Development Goals are also about harmony. Mutually supportive, they are the basis to bring us to a future of life in harmony with nature where no one is left behind.
The work of the Global Environment Facility and its partners to support biodiversity are at the heart of achieving sustainable development and the goals of the historic biodiversity framework.
Since the GEF became the financial mechanism of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), through its trust fund, it has mobilized more than $7.75 billion to conserve biodiversity and use it sustainably. This investment has leveraged $55.5 billion in additional funds, supporting more than 2,200 projects in 160 countries.
Working with a growing community that includes our network of implementing agencies, the GEF has supported the improved management of more than 2,500 million hectares of terrestrial and marine protected areas around the world and has also helped countries sustainably use and manage biodiversity across more than 543 million hectares of productive landscapes and seascapes. It has been central to the implementation of the Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols to the CBD.
GEF-8, and the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund are the most recent ways that the GEF partnership supports the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework around the world.
The Integrated Programs focus in GEF-8 on landscape/seascape management supports multiple tools and strategies to respond to the drivers of biodiversity loss within large landscape and seascape mosaics.
The GEF also continues to support capacity building for implementation of the Cartagena and Nagoya Protocols.
With its support for the UN Development Programme’s Biodiversity Finance Initiative (BIOFIN) and the development of National Biodiversity Strategies and Action Plans (NBSAPs), the GEF is at the center of efforts at all levels to close the biodiversity finance gap.
The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund, created in record time in response to the request from COP15, has already programmed hundreds of millions of dollars, including to Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States, while providing important support to Indigenous Peoples and local communities in its projects. All of these advance the implementation of the targets of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
These successes are because of the harmony of our ecosystems, the harmony of people working together: governments at all levels, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and stakeholders from all parts of society.
On this International Day for Biodiversity, I call upon us all to continue to raise our voices, to work together today and into the future, to live in harmony with the variety of life on this planet.
