The Amazon requires a long-term commitment toward environmental conservation, restoration, and sustainable management to ensure the future of the region and its numerous global benefits. Given its variety of countries and inhabitants, and its complexity, the Amazon needs an approach that is both country-specific and regional.
Since its inception in 1991, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has provided support to the Brazilian Amazon region through national and regional projects, as well as emblematic programs such as the Amazon Region Protected Areas program. Since 2015, the GEF has also supported three phases of the regional Amazon Sustainable Landscapes Integrated Program (ASL), which currently involves all eight sovereign countries in the basin.
Over the past decade (through the eighth GEF funding cycle, ending June 2026), the ASL has supported conservation and sustainable development in the Amazon through $314 million in GEF grants and $1.67 billion in expected co-financing. Under an integrated regional approach, the ASL has evolved through three GEF phases with projects in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela. Together, the projects aim to promote a shared vision of the biome and improve integrated and whole-of-society approaches toward long-term impacts on forest conservation and sustainable development.
The initial phase of the ASL (ASL1) engaged Brazil, Colombia, and Peru, providing a GEF grant of $114 million. The second phase (ASL2) was approved in 2019 with four additional countries—Bolivia, Ecuador, Guyana, and Suriname—and a GEF grant of $88 million. A third phase (ASL3) was approved in 2023, providing an additional GEF grant of $102 million. The addition of Venezuela brought together all the eight sovereign countries of the Amazon in the program.
Each phase includes a dedicated regional coordination project, executed directly by the World Bank as the lead agency. The project provides coordination, technical assistance, and knowledge management opportunities to the participant countries and program partners. Recognizing their crucial role as guardians of forests, the program engages Indigenous Peoples and local communities as key stakeholders. In so doing, it promotes their empowerment and livelihoods through the development of social bioeconomy.