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The Environmental Benefactor |
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By Monique Barbut*
The
Global Environment Facility has provided grants totaling more than
six billion dollars since its creation 15 years ago. The third GEF
assembly takes place in South Africa at the end of August.
WASHINGTON - In "Great Expectations" (1861)
by British novelist from the Victorian era, Charles Dickens, the
hero, Pip, has as his anonymous patroness the very colorful Miss
Havisham.
In the environmental arena, the usual and unrecognized benefactor
behind the scenes is not a person, but rather the Global Environment
Facility (GEF), based in Washington DC.
In the past 15 years, the GEF has issued more than six billion dollars
in environmental grants in the developing world, from Quito to Kuala
Lumpur, with more than 1,800 projects in 140 countries
There is practically no crucial area in which the GEF hand is not
present. Consider wind energy and India, one of the world's fastest
growing countries and with acute and expanding need for energy in
order to help millions of people escape poverty.
The projects and partners of the GEF have helped to bring about
dramatic growth in the deployment of wind turbines and have cooperated
to initiate a domestic manufacturing market.
In 2005, India displaced Denmark as the fourth leading nation in
wind energy production, with an installed capacity of 4,253 megawatts.
In the African Great Rift Valley, where humanity made its first
hesitant steps, the heated rock promotes a new and abundant source
of energy. A GEF project has the goal of avoiding the risks of perforation,
instead taking advantage of the steam produced.
The fault, which extends from Mozambique to the Red Sea, could,
in theory, provide enough electricity to meet all of the region's
development needs, reducing dependence on fossil fuels and contributing
to energy security.
In the developing world, the vertiginous urbanization of the cities
is multiplying health risks, air pollution, and noisy streets jammed
with traffic.
The GEF, through the United Nations Development Program, the United
Nations Environment Program and the World Bank, is directing the
bus rapid transit initiatives and other types of clean transportation
in urbs like Dar es Salaam, Guatemala City, Panama City and Santiago.
The 20th century was the industrial era. The 21st will increasingly
become the biological era.
The GEF supports the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor, which connects
protected areas and biological corridors in development from Mexico
to Panama. Its aim is to help conserve the region that sustains
seven percent of the Earth's plant biodiversity, along with exotic
endangered animals like the jaguar.
The Facility is also helping developing countries to be pioneers
in innovative trade mechanisms so that the products and services
provided by the environment are better appreciated and its guardians
better compensated.
In Costa Rica, the GEF is accelerating payments to ranchers and
farmers. The project has helped with reforestation, which in exchange
will reinforce nature's ability to provide renewable sources of
freshwater and will help capture climate-changing greenhouse gases
from the atmosphere.
Environment ministers and officials from more than 150 countries
will gather in Cape Town, South Africa, Aug. 29-30, for the third
assembly of the GEF, the first to take place in Africa.
The meeting gives us a good opportunity to remember and renovate
the vision -- and the determination and optimism -- that gave birth
to the Facility 15 years ago.
Times were different when the GEF was established. The end of a
bipolar world and the peace dividend seemed to offer a new opportunity
for resolving many of the problems and challenges faced by the planet
and its people.
Those hopes have not yet become reality, in spite of several obvious
victories and many success stories. Environmental degradation continues
its destructive and unsustainable course.
A strong, creative, vibrant, visible and well supported Global Environment
Facility is important -- in fact, more important today than ever.
* Monique Barbut is the GEF's Chief Executive
Officer.
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