An additional $500 million in funding pledges for biodiversity and environmental action has been announced at COP17 in Armenia, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) has reported.
Global Biodiversity Framework Fund
Some $60 million was pledged to the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) by national and sub-national governments during the ‘finance day’ at COP 17, with Germany, Iceland, Monaco, the province of Québec and the city of Berlin among the new contributors.
With the move, Berlin has become the first city to pledge to the GBFF, while Germany also said it will contribute a further €50 million to the GBFF before the end of 2026
Global Environment Facility Trust Fund
Elsewhere, Spain and Uzbekistan announced a contribution of €50 million and $4.5 million, respectively, to the ninth replenishment of the Global Environment Facility Trust Fund (GEF-9), while the UK reaffirmed its contribution of £330 million.
These commitments bring the GEF-9 replenishment close to $4.4 billion for the July 2026 to June 2030 period, with 70% of this investment set to contribute to Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) objectives.
‘A powerful signal’
“Today’s pledges send a powerful signal: our partnership is ready to move from ambition to action for nature,” commented Diego Mesa Puyo, GEF CEO and chairperson.
“This vote of confidence in the GEF will enable us to integrate environmental action with development priorities, catalyse larger pools of capital and private investment, and deliver results faster and at scale.”
The GBFF has programmed $362.1 million over three years for 82 projects across 87 countries, while between July 2022 and June 2026, the GEF has approved $4.64 billion for 649 projects supporting implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework across 144 countries.
‘Multilateral cooperation’
“COP17 is demonstrating what multilateral cooperation can achieve,” added Hambardzum Matevosyan, Armenia‘s minister of environment and president of COP17.
“I welcome the financial pledges made by governments to the GEF in support of the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. As the COP17 presidency, we have initiated preliminary internal discussions on a possible contribution to join these efforts with the view of transforming commitments towards practical implementation.” Read more here.
