By Luisa Freitas and Abiodun Salako
Replenished every four years, the Global Environment Facility (GEF) defines the strategic direction, funding levels, and programming priorities that direct the flow of environmental finance to developing nations. The GEF is now in its ninth replenishment cycle, a four-year, multi-billion-dollar commitment to tackling some of the world’s most pressing environmental challenges.
The five focal areas are the bedrock of GEF programming. Under GEF-8, they produced measurable results: 218 million hectares of protected areas conserved, over 9 million hectares of land and ecosystems restored, 1,905 million metric tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions reduced, management improved across 40 transboundary water ecosystems, and over 261,000 metric tonnes of hazardous chemicals and waste removed. GEF-9 advances that record, and it is programmed to go further, with sharper integration, stronger country ownership and a more concerted effort to mobilise private finance alongside public grant resources.
This is the second in E Co’s GEF-9 blog series. The first piece introduced the replenishment, its vision and programming structure. This piece examines what each of the five focal areas is designed to deliver under GEF-9, how their objectives and targets compare to GEF-8, and what the shift in priorities means for the coming four years.
Biodiversity
By the time governments agreed to the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework in 2022, the estimated annual biodiversity financing gap had reached between USD 722 billion and USD 967 billion. The GEF’s role is catalytic within that context. Its job is not to fill the gap but to create the conditions under which public and private finance can be redirected at scale to maintain and restore habitats for biodiversity.
Three objectives structure the biodiversity focal area. The first and most resource-intensive focuses on conservation, sustainable use and restoration through integrated landscape and seascape approaches. Project proponents must demonstrate the global significance of anticipated biodiversity benefits and justify their chosen landscape boundaries with specificity. The fund is moving away from broad geographic claims towards evidence-based justification for where interventions will make globally significant biodiversity persist. Eligible strategies include integrated governance and spatial planning, effective management of protected area systems, other effective area-based conservation measures and Indigenous territories, legal and sustainable use of natural resources, bioeconomy, restoration, and the prevention and management of invasive alien species.
The second objective supports the ratification and implementation of the Cartagena and Nagoya protocols, ensuring policy instruments are in place to move biosafety and genetic resource benefit-sharing from paper to practice.
The third objective is structurally the most ambitious. GEF-8 helped 91 countries develop their first national biodiversity finance plans. GEF-9 builds on that foundation, focusing on creating enabling conditions, including policies, incentives and institutional frameworks, for public and private finance realignment and the mobilisation of new domestic resources. GEF-9 sets a target of protecting or sustainably managing approximately 280 million hectares of conservation areas, up from 150 million hectares under GEF-8.
Climate change
Within the multilateral climate finance architecture, the GEF’s climate change focal area occupies a well-established position. Its comparative advantages, as identified by the GEF’s own independent evaluation, are flexible and predictable grant financing, a focus on upstream and regulatory environments, targeted support for innovation and piloting of new technologies and financial approaches, the ability to programme resources across environmental priorities, and support for countries to meet their UNFCCC obligations. GEF-9 climate investments are designed to complement and maximise synergies with the GCF, the Adaptation Fund and other multilateral climate funds rather than duplicate their work.
Dropping from 16 per cent in GEF-8 to 9 per cent in GEF-9, the climate change allocation does not lead to a proportionate reduction in climate results. Biodiversity and land degradation investments, particularly those targeting forests and landscapes, generate substantial climate co-benefits, reducing the need for dedicated climate resources to achieve comparable greenhouse gas outcomes.
Two objectives structure the strategy. The first, advancing transformational climate mitigation pathways, covers integrated long-term net-zero planning and just transition, resource efficiency and the circular economy, low-carbon power systems and energy access, zero-emission mobility, and nature-based solutions for climate mitigation. GEF-9 places the just transition at the centre of its climate strategy, supporting inclusive energy transition roadmaps, multi-stakeholder platforms and investments in reskilling and social protection, with particular attention to women, youth and Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Methane management is also identified as a time-critical mitigation priority that GEF-9 will actively pursue.
Strengthening enabling conditions, the second objective, focuses on two areas. One is building national capacity to meet the transparency requirements of the Paris Agreement through the Capacity-building Initiative for Transparency, which supports the preparation of biennial transparency reports and national communications. The other is helping countries fulfil their UNFCCC obligations, including nationally determined contributions and technology needs assessments, with priority access for small island developing states and least developed countries.
Supporting countries in pursuing climate-resilient development pathways is the goal of the focal area, with projects expected to maximise adaptation co-benefits alongside mitigation outcomes. GEF-9 sets a greenhouse gas mitigation target of 1.2 billion tonnes of CO₂ equivalent, supported by climate co-benefits from the biodiversity and land degradation focal areas and from integrated programming.
Land degradation
The goal of the land degradation focal area in GEF-9 is to avoid, reduce and revert land degradation, combat desertification and proactively manage drought through a people-centred approach, fully aligned with the UNCCD’s Land Degradation Neutrality targets and the ambition for a land degradation-neutral world by 2030.
Three objectives structure the focal area. The first promotes sustainable land management practices that improve land health while maintaining agro-ecosystem services that support food security and livelihoods. Community-based resource management, agroecological approaches, agro-biodiversity conservation and blended finance structures that make restoration economically viable are all supported pathways. The emphasis on community landscape stewardship is explicit and central to the design of eligible projects.
Directly targeting drought, the second objective allows all GEF-eligible nations to formulate and execute national drought plans. These investments primarily fund nature-based solutions that secure global environmental benefits, enhance local livelihoods, and build capacity for communities and landscapes to proactively manage drought rather than just reacting to it. Countries also have the option to collaborate with the Drylands and Drought Management Integrated Programme, which takes an integrated, multi-focal area and multisectoral approach to drought management.
The third is to promote fair governance of land and natural resources, with women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and local communities named as active participants rather than passive beneficiaries. The elimination of harmful subsidies in the agricultural sector is explicitly identified as a support option, placing GEF-9 in a position to engage with the policy distortions that drive land degradation at source rather than managing its downstream consequences.
GEF-9 sets out to restore 8 million hectares of land, comparable to GEF-8 results, while placing 45 million hectares of production landscapes under sustainable management.
International waters
Marine programming receives the largest increase within the international waters focal area under GEF-9, rising from USD 186 million to USD 201 million under the notional USD 4.5 billion scenario, with dedicated resources for Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction (BBNJ) Agreement enabling activities for the first time.
The three objectives cover sustainable management of shared coastal and marine ecosystems, support for the BBNJ Agreement, and sustainable management of shared freshwater systems. The BBNJ Agreement was adopted on 19 June 2023 and entered into force on 17 January 2026, after nearly two decades of negotiations and 60 country ratifications. GEF-9 begins just six months after that entry into force. Its governance architecture is still being constructed, and GEF-9 has committed dedicated enabling activity resources and a USD 50 million allocation for BBNJ implementation under the notional scenario.³
The GEF is part of the financial mechanism of the BBNJ Agreement and is the largest multilateral public funder for oceans, having invested over USD 2.5 billion since 1992. GEF-9 expands on that track record at a moment when the legal framework for governing the high seas, which covers nearly half the planet’s surface, is operational for the first time.
The focal area targets cooperative management across 45 shared water ecosystems and a transition of 2.2 million tonnes of overexploited marine fisheries to more sustainable levels, surpassing the GEF-8 result.
Chemicals and waste
GEF-9’s chemicals and waste strategy pushes towards circularity, safer and greener chemistry, improved chemicals management and pollution prevention across value chains. The increase in resources under this focal area follows rising demand across the conventions it serves. As the financial mechanism for the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Minamata Convention on Mercury, and a key supporter of the Global Framework on Chemicals and the Montreal Protocol, the GEF also addresses priorities under the Basel and Rotterdam Conventions where they intersect with its mandate on hazardous chemicals and waste. Ongoing negotiations for a binding international instrument on plastic pollution have also expanded the focal area’s agenda in GEF-9.
Six objectives define the focal area strategy: strengthening policy and regulatory frameworks; driving innovation and technology deployment; building capacity and ensuring a just transition; transforming supply chains and markets; engaging strategic financial mechanisms and the private sector; and eliminating a hazardous legacy.
Phasing out hazardous chemicals affects workers, communities and economies unevenly. GEF-9 names this directly, making equitable transition an objective rather than a supplementary concern. The private sector engagement objective carries a dedicated country incentive allocation that rises from USD 26 million in GEF-8 to USD 90 million under the notional GEF-9 scenario, a measure of how important private capital mobilisation is to the focal area’s strategy.
The focal area will also address persistent organic pollutants contained in difficult-to-recycle materials and products, including plastics with hazardous additives, promoting policies and regulations that target the full life cycle of such materials from production to disposal. This work complements the Circular Solutions to Plastics Pollution Integrated Programme, ensuring that chemical and plastic pollution are tackled together rather than separately.
GEF-9 commits to directly avoiding 5 million tonnes of chemical-containing materials and products, more than double the GEF-8 result, and reducing mercury by 900 tonnes across the GEF-9 cycle. Zero waste and pollution-free economies remain an aspirational goal, but one the GEF names directly as the scale of change the strategy is working towards.
The focal areas at a glance
The table below summarises objectives and key targets across the five focal areas:
| Focal area | Key objectives | GEF-9 target |
| Biodiversity | Integrated landscape conservation; biosafety and benefit-sharing; financial flow realignment | 280 million hectares conserved or sustainably managed |
| Climate change | Transformational mitigation pathways; enabling conditions for net-zero; UNFCCC support | 1.2 billion tonnes CO2e mitigated |
| Land degradation | Sustainable land management; national drought plans; fair land and water governance | 8 million hectares restored; 45 million hectares under sustainable management |
| International waters | Coastal and marine management; BBNJ Agreement support; freshwater system management | 45 shared water ecosystems under cooperative management |
| Chemicals and waste | Policy frameworks; innovation and technology; just transition; supply chain transformation; private sector engagement; legacy elimination | 5 million tonnes of chemical-containing materials avoided; 900 tonnes of mercury reduced |
Source: GEF (2026). GEF-9 programming scenario and global environmental benefits targets (GEF/R.09/21)
The five focal areas are closely connected and often overlap. GEF-9 recognises this by supporting projects that address biodiversity, climate, land and water challenges not as competing line items but as parts of the same system.
E Co. across the focal areas
Project design now begins with the design specificity of GEF-9’s five focal areas. In this new cycle, each domain demands a more targeted approach: biodiversity proposals are required to rigorously justify their landscape boundaries, while climate initiatives must align clearly with the GCF. Likewise, land degradation projects must shift their focus to prioritise people alongside soil health. For chemicals and waste, private sector collaboration and transition costs must be fully addressed, whereas international waters projects must operate within a governance framework that was activated just six months ago.
E Co. has worked across the GEF focal areas, supporting governments, implementing agencies and financial institutions in developing projects and programmes across multiple recipient countries. Explore our project footprint here. If you are developing projects under GEF-9, we would be glad to support that work. Get in touch with our GEF focal points, Anne Gander at: anne@ecoltdgroup.com and Beverley Salmon at: beverley@ecoltdgroup.com.
