More GEF nature finance must reach Indigenous Peoples and local communities
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is a major funder of nature and climate finance. As the GEF consults on its plans for the next four years, Ramson Karmushu and Nicola Sorsby share preliminary research indicating that not enough GEF funding is reaching communities on the frontline of the biodiversity crisis. They explain how the GEF and other major funders must overhaul their funding mechanisms to deliver money to where it matters.
Napier grass is planted by farmers to prevent soil erosion in the Kenya's Tana River Basin, which is the life blood of local communities (Photo: Alliance of Bioversity International and CIAT, via Flickr, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0)
Earlier this year, parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) agreed a new roadmap to mobilise biodiversity finance (PDF) to 2030 and beyond. Mobilising finance is critical to halting and reversing nature loss. Yet there is not enough finance available; researchers estimate that the global biodiversity funding gap averages US$700 billion per year.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) and its flagship fund for nature, the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), are vital to bridging this gap. The GEF is currently consulting on its ninth replenishment phase (GEF-9), which will set the framework and ambition of GEF funding provided to developing countries from 2026 to 2030.
It is crucial that future nature finance reaches the Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPs and LCs) worldwide who suffer the immediate consequences of biodiversity loss. These communities take care of huge areas of nature and have the best knowledge and practices for conserving biodiversity.
However, too much finance still goes to international and local intermediaries and only a fraction reaches IPs and LCs, by some estimates, less than 2.5%. They are also under-represented in decision-making and governance of nature funding.
IPs and LCs have long been raising issues about accessing and influencing GEF funding and concerns about the GBFF’s structure, governance arrangements and lack of clear criteria for allocating resources.
In-depth research into GEF funding and IP and LCs
To shed light on existing GEF funding, IIED and partners conducted in-depth research into the amounts of GEF nature finance reaching IPs and LCs, and IP and LC women and girls.
We analysed GEF project documents and interviewed funding recipients in five countries who worked on projects funded by the GEF Trust Fund’s recent replenishment phases (GEF-5, 6 and 7), the GEF Small Grants Programme (SGP) and the GEF-7 Inclusive Conservation Initiative (ICI).
Limited funding reaching IPs and LCs
For the main GEF trust fund, our findings estimated that 24% of total GEF-6 funding and 30% of GEF-7 funding was ‘targeted’ towards IP and LC actors. However, even where IPs and LCs were targeted in a project, there was little evidence to suggest they received funding directly.
We found it challenging to find local-level organisations that had participated in GEF-6 or GEF-7 trust fund projects to interview, suggesting that few biodiversity projects within these phases had significant local-level involvement. Only one local organisation in Malawi reported how much they had received as part of a GEF-6 project, and that was only 0.3% of the project total.
Recipients of the SGP reported receiving much higher amounts – $50,000, on average, per project. However, the SGP is not the model on which the main GEF trust fund or the GBFF are based.
Information gaps and limited transparency
Missing, illegible or incomplete data in the GEF’s project database made it challenging to track funding flows to IPs and LCs or women’s organisations. There are no indicators within the GEF reporting framework that obligate agencies to report how much funding goes where, so it is impossible to track through project data alone.
Furthermore, GEF proposal documents often state that IP organisations and communities will be potential partners, but these partners are rarely listed.
Difficulties accessing funding information and short-term funding
All GEF trust fund funding flows through intermediaries in the form of implementing agencies and country focal points. This creates an information gap between local organisations and the GEF, with many IP and LC organisations left in the dark about funding opportunities and how to access funding. Interviewees reported that they didn’t understand how the GEF funding process works, and they found it inaccessible for local groups.
Most respondents said they need to secure longer-term funding from the GEF to ensure the sustainability of their projects. This is true across all the GEF funding mechanisms and indicates that opportunities to scale up after grant funding has concluded are limited.
Funding not in line with IP and LC priorities
Our findings revealed that local organisations involved in GEF trust fund projects were only approached for funding by an intermediary if their work aligned with an existing project. We found no examples of GEF trust fund projects in which local organisations could apply for funding directly to align with their own priorities.
Even within the SGP and ICI, respondents reported that funds were implemented according to activities proposed to them, not according to local needs. So, although the SGP and ICI are getting funds to the local level in greater quantities, they are not responding to or solving challenges faced by communities.
Limited support for capability building and project preparation
The GEF proposal process is complicated, and often, there are English language requirements that communities cannot meet. Respondents reported little to no support from GEF agencies during proposal development until the last stages, and highlighted a lack of support for capacity building as one limitation of the SGP.
Support is needed to ensure more organisations have the capacity to engage with GEF funding. Similarly, the GEF and its implementing agencies must build their capabilities to maximise the range of organisations able to access their funding.
Important lessons from the GEF Small Grants Programme
Interviewees highlighted many positive elements of the SGP, and it is a working example of how GEF funding can be delivered in ‘business-unusual’ ways. There is significant scope for the lessons and experiences from the SGP to be factored into the rest of the GEF trust fund, and especially the GBFF.
Recommendations for the GEF
In a briefing paper detailing our findings, we make four recommendations for how the GEF can improve its mechanisms:
- Increase access to funding for local actors, including reducing reliance on intermediaries and country focal points
- Improve data transparency and implement clear monitoring and reporting indicators to track how much money goes to each project partner (including IPs and LCs and women’s organisations)
- Provide long-term, patient, predictable, inclusive and flexible funding to support institutional capability building within local organisations, and
- Incorporate lessons and processes from the ground-breaking SGP and other funds that are directly accessible to IPs and LCs (such as funds led by Indigenous Peoples) across the full GEF funding portfolio.
Call to action for all funders
Looking beyond the GEF, more funders should aim to fund local actors directly, to enable positive action for nature in this critical decade.
We call on all nature funders to review their policies and procedures to set more ambitious targets for funding to reach IPs and LCs, ensure mechanisms exist to enable easy access by local actors, and guarantee accurate, transparent reporting about where funding ends up.
Only then can the delivery of nature finance be truly transformative and deliver meaningful outcomes for nature and the people closest to it.
With thanks to consultant Anthony Waldron for contributing his technical expertise to this research, and our partners who interviewed funding recipients in several countries: Minnie Degawan, Ramson Karmushu, Ruth Spencer, Madiha Chowdhury, Brenda Mwale and Corey Huber. We also thank the interviewees who provided us with this information and made this research possible behind the scenes.
