The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has provided more than $777 million dollars in grants for nearly 150 environmental projects to promote the conservation and sustainable management of forest ecosystems. The topic of forest conservation is on the agenda of this week’s World Forestry Congress in Quebec City, Canada.
“In an effort to address the most pressing environmental concerns of our time, such as biodiversity loss and climate change, the GEF is striving to protect the integrity of our forest ecosystems,” said Len Good, CEO and Chairman of the Global Environment Facility. “GEF grants of more than $777 million have leveraged more than $2 billion in partner co-financing for projects and programs that promote the conservation and sustainable use of forests.”
Forests are among the most threatened of the Earth’s ecosystems. In the 1990s, more than 90 million hectares of forest were lost at a rate of nearly 25,000 hectares a day. The GEF supports innovative biodiversity conservation activities in local forests and on a broader national scale in developing countries. GEF also promotes the “mainstreaming” of biodiversity and forest conservation into the broader development agenda so that environmental considerations will be taken into account in everyday management decisions in natural resource use sectors.
Here are a few examples of the GEF projects that support national efforts to protect forest ecosystems:
- In China, the Sustainable Forest Development Project aims to develop and apply innovative and effective approaches to managing the country’s last remaining natural forest areas and to conserving globally significant forest and mountain biodiversity. Co-financing generated by the project will be used to establish tree plantations that relieve pressures on natural forest resources. Lessons learned from the project will provide models for wider application under China’s Natural Forest Protection Program.
- In Costa Rica, the “Ecomarkets” project supports the government’s progressive forestry laws by giving forest owners in buffer zones and interconnected biological corridors market-based incentives to protect forest-related ecosystem services. A healthy forest ecosystem provides many ecological services that have great economic value, including nutrient cycling, flood and storm protection, hydrological services, climate regulation, and soil maintenance.
- In Brazil, home to the world’s largest intact tracts of tropical rainforest, GEF is supporting a government commitment to expand protection to at least 10 percent of the Amazon region, encompassing a mosaic of areas totaling 25 million hectares. The Amazon Region Protected Areas Program, a 10-year effort of an unprecedented scale, will help develop long-term sustainable management tools and mechanisms to strengthen Brazil’s national protected areas system in the Amazon region.
The World Forestry Congress is being held September 21-28 in Quebec City, Canada; for more information on the event, visit
www.wfc2003.org. For more information on the GEF, visit
www.gef.org.
About the GEF
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is an international financial organization with 175 member countries that acts as a major catalyst for improving the global environment. GEF grants support projects in developing countries in the areas of biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, the ozone layer, and persistent organic pollutants.
Since its creation in 1991, the GEF has allocated $4.5 billion in grants to support more than 1,200 projects in 140 developing nations and countries with economies in transition. In addition, GEF has committed more than US $115 million in small grants to NGOs and community groups in developing countries, directly involving them in addressing global environmental problems.
