News Release

Revolutionary global environment fund announces $50M expansion

French development agency joins partnership to protect biodiversity

Business Announcement

Conservation International

This release is also available in French.

Arlington, Virginia (July 11, 2007) – A global environment fund that revolutionized how international partners work together to protect the world’s biologically richest and most threatened regions today announced $50 million in new funding.

The French Development Agency (AFD) becomes the sixth partner to commit $25 million to the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF). In addition, Conservation International (CI), a founding partner, agreed to match the AFD commitment dollar-for-dollar, which doubles CI’s total contribution to date to $50 million.

“Millions of people are directly dependent on biodiversity for their livelihoods, so saving it is a condition for their development,” said Jean-Michel Severino, the AFD director general. “In CEPF, we are joining an alliance of donors who pool their resources and expertise to have a greater impact on the preservation of poor countries’ most precious capital – their natural environment.”

The other CEPF partners are the World Bank, the Government of Japan, the Global Environment Facility, and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

Since its inception in 2000, CEPF has helped protect nearly 10 million hectares – an area larger than Portugal – of Earth’s richest biodiversity while influencing government policies in dozens of countries. With the new funding, CEPF will expand to the Indochina region of Indo-Burma; the remote Pacific island nations of Micronesia, tropical Polynesia, and Fiji in Polynesia-Micronesia; and the Western Ghats region of southern India.

These biodiversity hotspots are among 34 regions identified by CI as containing a high percentage of species found nowhere else and facing extreme risk, with at least 70 percent of their natural vegetation already lost. In Indo-Burma, only 5 percent remains in pristine condition.

CEPF makes funding available through grants for nongovernmental organizations and other civil society groups to help conserve the hotspots. The first step in grant making for these new regions will be the selection of regional implementation teams.

CEPF has supported more than 1,000 civil society groups in biodiversity hotspots to date, while contributing to the creation of protected areas in 15 countries that are part of 11 hotspots.

For example, CEPF support enabled 130 small-scale farmers in the Tropical Andes Hotspot to secure Brazil nut concessions from the Peruvian government and thereby safeguard 225,000 hectares of primary tropical forest, as well as their own livelihoods.

Additionally, CEPF-identified Key Biodiversity Areas in the Philippines covering 20 percent of the nation’s total land area were declared by presidential order to be “critical habitats,” with the Department of Environment and Natural Resources directed to promulgate guidelines for their management and protection.

The new funding is part of an ambitious fund-raising plan for CEPF, with a goal of $150 million to expand its work to 11 more hotspots in Africa, Asia and Latin America.

“Saving the hotspots is an investment well worth it in terms of not only protecting irreplaceable natural places, but also helping local people benefit from those resources,” said Jorgen Thomsen, CEPF executive director and senior vice president at CI. “We applaud AFD for joining us and for recognizing how healthy ecosystems and human health and prosperity are so fundamentally linked.”

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