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Global Environment Facility
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) was established in India on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, to help tackle our planet’s most pressing environmental problems.
The Global Environment Facility (GEF) was established in India on the eve of the 1992 Rio Earth Summit, to help tackle our planet’s most pressing environmental problems. Since then, the GEF has provided $14.5 billion in grants and mobilised $75.4 billion in additional financing for almost 4,000 projects.
The GEF has become an international partnership of 183 countries, international institutions, civil society organizations, and private sector to address global environmental issues. The United Nations Development Programme, the United Nations Environment Program, and the World Bank were the three initial partners implementing GEF projects.
GEF has the mandate to resolve problems related to global environment. GEF provides financial support for environmental improvements. The span of GEF is for five years which reflects sustainable agriculture development, land degradation, bio diversification and sustainable forest management because it is directly related to the adaptation of climate change process.
For the first time, GEF has approved the project related to Ministry of Agriculture and Farmers Welfare on the subject “to obtain revolutionary change on the strategies and methodologies for sustainable agriculture in India” to implement it in a various parts of five states viz Uttarakhand, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Orissa and Mizoram. A sum of $37 million (Rs 250 crore) would be incurred on this project which India has achieved in the form of grant-in-aid.
This project will be implemented by the Agriculture Departments of the States within the span of seven years. For this programme, Ministry of Finance, Department of Economic Affairs, Government of India is a political focal point of GEF which is responsible for the strategies and administration, whereas the Ministry of Environment, Forest and Climate Change is a focal point of GEF in India which will carry out the responsibilities of coordinations of GEF programmes.
The GEF serves as financial mechanism for the following conventions: Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD); United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC); Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs); UN Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD); and Minamata Convention on Mercury .
The GEF, although not linked formally to the Montreal Protocol on Substances That Deplete the Ozone Layer (MP), supports implementation of the Protocol in countries with economies in transition. The GEF also works on several multi-focal and cross-cutting issue and programs like: Food Security Sustainable Cities; Commodities; Country Support Programme; Gender Mainstreaming, etc.
