The GEF’s ninth replenishment comes at a time of escalating global environmental crises. Despite progress in areas such as biodiversity conservation, renewable energy, and sustainable agriculture, the overall pace of environmental degradation is accelerating. In 2024, global temperatures exceeded the 1.5°C threshold, triggering more frequent extreme weather events, intensifying ocean pollution, and accelerating biodiversity loss (Tollefson 2025). The Stockholm Resilience Centre reports that six of the nine planetary boundaries have already been breached, placing humanity beyond the safe operating space necessary for Earth’s long-term stability.1
Greenhouse gas emissions are at their highest recorded levels, surpassing 500 ppm carbon dioxide equivalent. The energy sector accounts for over 60 percent of these emissions (IPCC 2023). Despite commitments under the Paris Agreement, emissions continue to rise, and the remaining global carbon budget could be depleted by 2028. Although global temperatures have already temporarily breached the 1.5°C threshold, limiting long-term warming to this target would require global emissions to decline by approximately 42 percent by 2030 and 57 percent by 2035 (Forster et al. 2025). Without rapid and sustained action, the world remains on course for 2.6°C–3.1°C of warming by the end of the century, with severe and widespread consequences (UNEP 2024b).
Biodiversity is also under severe threat. Species are going extinct at rates 10 to 100 times higher than natural background levels, with the most recent Living Planet Report 2024 noting a 73 percent decline in wildlife populations between 1970 and 2020 (WWF 2024). Key drivers include deforestation, habitat fragmentation, and climate change. The loss of biodiversity threatens vital ecosystem services—such as pollination, soil health, and water purification—which directly affects human well-being. For instance, global wetland coverage has declined by 35 percent since 1970, undermining water quality and access for over 2 billion people2. The economic impact is equally alarming: the Intergovernmental Science-Policy Platform on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services estimates biodiversity loss costs the global economy approximately $10 trillion annually, with impacts spanning agriculture, fisheries, health care, and food security (IPBES 2024). Pollinator declines alone put at risk $235 billion worth of crop production annually.
Pollution now stands alongside climate change and biodiversity loss as a leading global crisis. It causes an estimated 9 million premature deaths annually (Fuller et al. 2022), affects ecosystem resilience (see, e.g., Sigmund et al. 2023), and imposes staggering economic costs (see, e.g., World Bank 2025). Each year, 19–23 million tonnes of plastic waste enter aquatic environments, degrading ecosystems and reducing the adaptive capacity of coastal and freshwater systems3. Air pollution is the top environmental health risk, causing around 6.7 million deaths annually, largely due to cardiovascular and respiratory diseases. Broader chemical pollution—from air, water, soil, and food—contributes further to the burden of disease (Fuller et al. 2022). Meanwhile, global municipal solid waste is projected to rise from 2.1 billion tonnes in 2023 to 3.8 billion tonnes by 2050, with the cost of management and environmental damage expected to reach $640 billion annually by midcentury (UNEP 2024c).
Echoing these concerns, the World Economic Forum’s Global Risks Report 2025 identifies environmental risks as among the most severe long-term threats to global stability. Based on findings from the Global Risks Perception Survey, expert consultations, scenario analysis, and real-world data, the report offers a comprehensive assessment of the interconnected risks the world now faces. In its 10-year outlook, four of the top five global risks are environmental in nature: extreme weather events, biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse, critical changes to Earth systems, and natural resource shortages (World Economic Forum 2025). These escalating environmental threats are further compounded by misinformation, geopolitical conflict, trade tensions, and economic instability—factors that undermine development finance and global cooperation.
Underlying these environmental crises are persistent market failures, policy incoherence, and weak governance. In addition, institutional failures persist, with governments paying people more to exploit nature than to protect it (Dasgupta 2021). Governments continue to provide at least $1.8 trillion annually in environmentally harmful subsidies (Koplow and Steenblik 2022), which in turn catalyze an estimated $5 trillion in private investment in damaging sectors such as fossil fuel extraction, industrial agriculture, and commercial fishing (UNEP 2023). These financial flows undermine both environmental sustainability and efforts to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), especially for vulnerable populations.
The urgency of the current environmental situation cannot be overstated. Accelerating climate change, biodiversity loss, pollution, and land degradation are converging in ways that threaten both planetary stability and human well-being. These crises are unfolding more rapidly than earlier projections anticipated, creating a narrowing window for action. For many vulnerable populations, the impacts are already acute—manifesting as food insecurity, water stress, health risks, and displacement.
Confronting these interconnected challenges will require an integrated and ambitious global response that addresses biodiversity loss, climate change, land degradation, and social inclusion in a coordinated way. Investments in nature-based solutions—including sustainable forest management, climate-smart agriculture, and ecosystem restoration—will be critical for enhancing resilience and securing food and water systems. At the same time, scaling up low-carbon technologies, resilient infrastructure, and circular economy models will be essential to ensure an inclusive and sustainable development pathway. Effective monitoring, knowledge exchange—including South-South cooperation—and the use of innovative platforms and technologies will be key to capturing lessons from pilot efforts and scaling impact. Funding constraints will require selectivity in programming and focusing resources on interventions that can achieve the greatest catalytic and transformational impact.
An investment of $700 billion is needed to close the biodiversity financing gap (Nature Conservancy 2020). The International Energy Agency and the International Renewable Energy Agency estimate, based on the COP28 consensus, that meeting energy system transformation goals aligned with a 1.5°C pathway requires at least $4.5 trillion per year (IEA 2023; IRENA 2024). Agriculture, forest, and land-related initiatives received $38 billion in 2023—just 2 percent of total climate finance (CPI 2025), even though the sector contributes about 21 percent of global emissions (Nabuurs et al. 2022). To align with Paris Agreement pathways, investment in this sector must rise nearly 26-fold to about $423 billion per year by 2030.
On the supply side, global climate finance, including both public and private flows, reached an estimated $1.9 trillion in 2023; preliminary data suggest it exceeded $2 trillion in 2024. This falls well short of the $6 trillion-plus annual requirement (CPI 2025). Meanwhile, the green bond market has grown rapidly, with issuance topping $620–$700 billion in 2024, although this amount remains a fraction of required funding (Environmental Finance 2025).
Cleaning up chemical contaminants such as per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) globally is not just a massive environmental undertaking, but also a staggering economic challenge. Even the most conservative annual cleanup projections are in the trillions of dollars (approximately $16 trillion), with added societal costs—such as health impacts, lost productivity, and ecological damage—pushing the total far higher (Ling 2024). The costs of cleaning up coastlines, waterways, marinas, and ports range between $5.6 billion and $15.0 billion per year just for direct cleanup efforts; addressing ocean plastic pollution is estimated at around $150 billion in upfront investment, largely to support cleanup and shift to circular economies (Toloken 2020).
These figures clearly show that while progress has been made in mobilizing climate and green finance, funding remains vastly insufficient across biodiversity, climate mitigation, chemicals, and water pollution. The scale of the funding shortfalls—spanning hundreds of billions to trillions annually—underscores a systemic mismatch between global environmental goals and available financial resources.
