In the huge plenary hall of the Palais des Congrès on Friday morning, the delegates arrived a little late. Snow, maybe. Each minister has three minutes to summarize his philosophy for the agreement to be signed in a few days in Montreal as part of the 15e UN conference on biodiversity (COP15).
When her turn to speak comes, Ève Bazaiba, Deputy Prime Minister of the Democratic Republic of Congo, reiterates her call for the creation of “a global fund for the true protection of biodiversity, which is new, additional, innovative and complementary to the Global Environment Facility. Basically, she wants something new.
The issue of funding is central to the COP15 negotiations. A coalition led by Brazil is calling for $100 billion a year in a new multilateral fund. A request rejected by rich countries, including Canada. The amount requested is problematic, but also the idea of a new system, because such a system already exists.
Founded in 1991 and based in Washington, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) works closely with several UN agencies. It is an intermediary: it collects money from various donors, such as States, and redistributes it to actors carrying out environmental projects. One of its areas of intervention concerns biodiversity.
Over its three decades of existence, the GEF has distributed more than US$22 billion in grants. It has funded more than 5,000 nationwide projects and 27,000 community initiatives in developing countries.
We have a golden opportunity to reform a mechanism that is already working, and make it even more efficient, accessible and better resourced.
Some examples of projects? Establishing “effective management” of protected areas in Egypt. Assist Pacific Island countries to prepare their National Biodiversity Reports. Accelerating sustainable agriculture in Cameroon. Implement the Nagoya Protocol on Genetic Information Benefit Sharing in East Timor. Support the management and expansion of marine protected areas in Libya.
In practice, the GEF is known to be difficult to access. Its heavy bureaucracy makes it very difficult for small local players to obtain funding for projects.
“In my opinion, the GEF has been criticized in a rather unfair way,” observes Jennifer Morris, CEO of the Nature Conservancy, a large American conservation organization, in response to a question from the To have to at a press conference on Friday morning. The funder simply needs to “evolve,” she says, to facilitate access to funding for local and indigenous communities.
“We don’t want to spend five years designing a new mechanism,” adds Patricia Zurita, CEO of BirdLife International. Rather, we must use the current mechanism, deposit more money in it, from multiple sources, and ensure that this money is accessible to local communities, indigenous peoples and environmental organizations in southern countries, while respecting the human rights. »
Is the creation of a new global biodiversity fund absolutely necessary to reach an agreement in Montreal? Agencies including the Nature Conservancy and BirdLife are working behind the scenes to advance the idea of a “new instrument” of funding within the GEF. This would avoid the cumbersome process of starting a new institution, and would build on the experience of the fund that already exists.
On Thursday, Colombia offered the assembled parties such a hybrid model. According to information obtained by The dutythe vast majority of countries welcomed it positively, with the exception of Brazil, the Democratic Republic of Congo and possibly Indonesia, which insist on the creation of a new fund.
Marco Lambertini, Director General of WWF International, recalls that a solution that remains within the fold of the GEF does not in any way contradict a significant increase in funding for biodiversity. “We have a golden opportunity to reform a mechanism that is already working, and to make it even more efficient, accessible, and endowed with more resources,” he said.