Environmental finance
Global Environment Facility (GEF)
Definition
The Global Environment Facility is a multilateral financial mechanism established in October 1991 and restructured after the 1992 Rio Earth Summit to fund projects in developing countries that protect the global environment and promote environmentally sustainable development. It serves as a financial mechanism for several multilateral environmental agreements — including the UNFCCC, CBD, UNCCD, Stockholm and Minamata conventions — and manages the Least Developed Countries Fund and Special Climate Change Fund.
References
mandate and structure
Overview
What it means
The GEF's distinctive role is paying the incremental cost of actions that deliver global benefits — protecting biodiversity, stabilising the climate, restoring land, phasing out ozone-depleting and persistent pollutants — beyond what a country would finance for its own development alone. Funding is allocated in four-year replenishment cycles and delivered through partner agencies.
How it is used
Developing countries access GEF grants via accredited agencies for projects and enabling activities such as national reports and NDC support; its allocation formulas and co-financing requirements shape the wider climate- and biodiversity-finance architecture.
Why it matters
As the designated financial mechanism of the Rio conventions, the GEF is the principal standing channel through which treaty obligations on global environmental benefits are resourced. **Note:** 1221 merges into this entry as the abbreviated form of the same institution.