Making sure sufficient international financing for biodiversity remains challenging.

US$ 4.43 billion has been pledged by 30 donor countries for the Global Environment Facility (GEF) during the Fourth Meeting for the Sixth Replenishment of GEF Trust Fund, held in Geneva, Switzerland, 16-17 April. This funding is meant to support 140 developing countries' efforts over the next four years to tackle a broad range of threats to the global environment. The GEF is the main global mechanism to support developing countries to take action to fulfill their commitments under the world's major multilateral environmental agreements (MEAs), including the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). 

Braulio Ferreira de Souza Dias, CBD Executive Secretary, welcomed these efforts. However, he stated that the commitments of donor governments had failed to fulfil the target set at the Eleventh meeting of the Conference of the Parties (COP 11) in Hyderabad, India, to double the international financial flows by 2015 relative to the 2006-2010 average. "This limited effort of multilateral funding, which represents a 30% increase over the baseline of 2006-2010, puts undue pressure on bilateral funding, domestic funding and private funding to compensate for this shortcoming to meet the estimated funding gap if we hope to achieve the agreed Aichi Targets by 2020,” he said.

<link http: www.cbd.int doc press pr-2014-02-22-gef-en.pdf _blank>CBD press release dated 22 April 2014