The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) was established in response to the decision CBD/COP/DEC/15/15 of the Conference of the Parties (COP) to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD), which requested the Global Environment Facility (GEF) to establish a special trust fund to support the implementation of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (KMGBF) that was produced in 2022. The Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF) was ratified and launched at the Seventh Assembly of the GEF on 24 August 2023. The programming directions of the GBFF are informed by the GEF mandate to provide new and additional grant and concessional funding to meet the agreed incremental costs of measures to achieve global environmental benefits. Since its inception in June 2023, the GEF has allocated $211 million to GBFF project activities, with an additional $163 million announced in COP16 in Cali, Colombia, in October 2024 to support the same KMGBF goals.
The GBFF focuses on eight thematic Action Areas, including i) biodiversity conservation, restoration, land/sea use planning; ii) policy alignment; iii) resource mobilization; iv) support for Indigenous peoples and local communities; v) sustainable use of biodiversity, vi) biodiversity mainstreaming, vii) invasive alien species management; and viii) capacity building. The programming directions of the GBFF are informed by the GEF mandate to provide new and additional grant and concessional funding to meet the agreed incremental costs of measures to achieve global environmental benefits. The Fund is intended to complement the existing support and scale up financing to ensure the timely implementation of KMGBF. Therefore, GBFF aims to leverage additional resources, including official development assistance, philanthropies, and the private sector.
This formative evaluation will assess the strategy, operations, processes, and organizational design of the GBFF and provide feedback on its fit-for-purpose to implement the KMGBF.