17/12/2013 13:00 – Portal Brasil
Brazil, along with representatives from another 182 countries, donors and beneficiaries, in partnership with international institutions, civil society and private sector organizations, met in Paris between the 10th and 12th of this month, to define how to make a sixth replenishment to the resources of the Trust Fund of the Global Environment (Global Environment Facility – GEF) for the period 2014-2017. The funds are intended to support national initiatives for sustainable development and related global environmental issues. Created after the Rio de Janeiro Conference in 1992,to provide funding and grants to benefit environmental projects in the areas of climate change, biological diversity, international waters, persistent organic pollutants and destruction of the ozone layer, the GEF is an international agency that also supports global agreements to combat desertification.
This was the third meeting to set the amount of the replenishment. Since 1992, GEF has invested R$ 26.8 billion (US$ 11.5 billion) to subsidize projects on environment and climate in developing countries and countries with economies in transition, funding more than 3,215 projects in over 165 nations, among other investments. In Brazil, the funds donated by the GEF support the actions of the Amazon Region Protected Areas Program (ARPA), the GEF Sea, which is an expansion program of the UC Marine system and marine biological research, GEF Cerrado, which invests in expansion of UC systems and the strengthening of local clusters in the Cerrado and the GEF Pollinator Project, which gathered a range of information about the causes of pollinator decline.
The Secretary of Biodiversity and Forests from the Ministry of Environment (MMA), Roberto Cavalcanti, who was at the meeting in Paris, confirmed that the resources for the GEF Trust Fund is replenished every four years. During the negotiation sessions, participants also define the set of policy reforms to be developed, compiled in a document to guide the programming of resources (the program document), and the volume of resources allocated to beneficiary countries during replenishment. “Brazil has a prominent position in the GEF because, along with Indonesia, the country is number one in biodiversity including in relation to marine ecosystems, and therefore receives considerable resources from the Fund, and it is also a donor, “said Cavalcanti. For him, Brazil’s position greatly influences the availability and allocation of resources, because with other countries, such as China, Indonesia itself and various Amazonian nations, investments in biodiversity have a regional impact and, in many cases, global. The Secretary drew attention to the fact that many emerging countries, as well as beneficiaries, are also becoming donors to the fund. Despite this there is still some resistance from the emerging nations to become beneficiaries. This is because many of these resources are not to help a certain country, but are targeted towards environmental issues of a global impact and there is an openness to consider increasing of the compensatory measures and participate in strategic projects. Donations, which are repayable resources, are aimed at training activities, strengthening, local arrangements, consolidation of conservation units (CU), and forest recovery.