UNDP announces $500 million to tackle biodiversity loss, climate change

The GEF (Global Environment Facility) has announced a US$1.4 billion fund to rapidly tackle environmental crises around the world, including biodiversity loss and climate change. The program aims to directly benefit 14 million people globally, over half of whom will be women disproportionately impacted by planetary crises.

In the UNDP-GEF Partnership, more than US$500 million will be deployed across 88 countries, in particular Least Developed Countries and Small Island Developing States. As lead agency for the fund’s Blue and Green Islands Integrated Program, UNDP with support from United Nations agencies and development partners, will help countries to use the resources to address intense environmental and socio-economic shocks faced by people on frontlines of nature loss and the climate crisis. UNDP will also help to operationalize GEF’s Small Grants Programme, a key channel for supporting local communities, indigenous people and youth on environmental stewardship.

The new funding will be channeled to align strongly with the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework targets for nature, scaling up efforts to finance from the public and private sector and tackle biodiversity loss and climate change mitigation as a priority. Resources will also be deployed to protect forest conservation, fight chemical and plastic pollution, and restore ecosystems, catalyzing sustainable blue and green pathways towards the Sustainable Development Goals.

www.undp.org