12.1 Conclusions

Relevance and performance

As the dedicated financial mechanism for six major multilateral environmental agreements, the GEF’s mandate ensures coherence between global policy commitments and country-level implementation, enabling countries to translate convention obligations into tangible environmental outcomes. The GEF continues to align its programming with the core mandates of the conventions it serves—biodiversity, climate change, international waters, land degradation, and chemicals and waste—while expanding into emerging areas such as circular economy approaches and nature-based solutions.

Its mandate has positioned the GEF to go beyond isolated, sectoral projects and embrace approaches that address complex, interconnected environmental systems. Building on its legacy of multifocal projects and the integrated approach pilots, the GEF has advanced toward large-scale impact programs grounded in systems change principles. These programs focus on tackling the underlying drivers of environmental degradation through cross-sectoral solutions and adaptive management—reflecting the GEF’s competitive advantage in delivering integrated responses across sectors, scales, and stakeholders.

The recent establishment of the Global Biodiversity Framework Fund (GBFF), alongside the continued operation of the Least Developed Countries Fund (LDCF) and the Special Climate Change Fund (SCCF), highlights the evolution of the GEF family of funds and its central role in mobilizing resources for pressing global priorities. These complementary trust funds provide targeted instruments to help countries meet biodiversity objectives, support climate adaptation, and address the unique vulnerabilities of the poorest and most climate-affected nations.

Even as the GEF increases its focus on integration and systemic transformation, it continues to maintain strong alignment with focal area priorities. Integrated programming is designed to support multiple conventions simultaneously, fostering cross-sectoral synergies and ensuring that country-level actions are structured to contribute to diverse international commitments.

Completed projects achieve satisfactory or higher outcome ratings—81 percent meet or exceed expectations—reflecting robust project design, effective implementation by Agencies, and close collaboration with national partners.

At the country level, many governments have strategically leveraged GEF support to integrate environmental priorities into national development frameworks, enhance interministerial coordination, and drive institutional reforms. Countries with established environmental institutions and strong leadership across sectors have reported particularly successful outcomes, including policy alignment and increased capacity. The Small Grants Programme (SGP) has further showcased the GEF’s ability to empower local communities, spark innovation, and strengthen grassroots environmental stewardship.

Nonetheless, performance varies. Projects in fragile or capacity-limited contexts often face delays, sustainability challenges, and weaker alignment with national systems. Large-scale, multicountry, or multisector initiatives—while offering promise for transformational change—typically require longer timelines and involve higher transaction costs. Monitoring and evaluation frameworks also remain weighted toward outputs and biophysical achievements, with less attention to the institutional or behavioral shifts needed for enduring impact. Although outcomes are rated in the satisfactory range for over 80 percent of projects, only 59 percent demonstrate broader adoption of results, and sustainability is in the likely range for nearly two-thirds. This performance is broadly in line with other international organizations, but the persistent gap between high project-level outcomes and weaker impact and sustainability underscores a critical challenge for the GEF. Bridging this gap will require stronger integration of projects into national policies and budgets, adequate financing mechanisms to sustain results, more consistent attention to institutional and behavioral change, and systems for learning and support beyond project closure—so that individual project successes translate into systemic and lasting global environmental benefits.

In biodiversity, projects have expanded protected areas, strengthened community-based conservation, promoted sustainable use and equitable benefit sharing of genetic resources, and supported policy reforms to reduce habitat pressures. Climate change interventions have promoted renewable energy, energy efficiency, and low-carbon transport, while adaptation efforts have enhanced resilience in vulnerable communities and ecosystems. Land degradation investments have improved sustainable land management, restored landscapes, and reduced deforestation, contributing to both ecological restoration and food security. Projects addressing chemicals and waste have cut the release of harmful pollutants, enhanced chemical management, and piloted circular economy models. International waters initiatives have strengthened transboundary governance and cooperation over shared marine and freshwater resources.

Persistent challenges exist in implementation across focal areas. In biodiversity and land degradation, maintaining the long-term viability of protected areas and restored landscapes remains difficult in the absence of sustainable incentives and competing land uses. Climate mitigation efforts have delivered important benefits, but remain insufficient relative to the magnitude of the challenge. Funding for this area continues to prioritize established, country-driven solutions, while high-impact and experimental approaches receive limited support. At the same time, the proportion of GEF resources dedicated to climate mitigation has declined over the past decade.

Although select adaptation initiatives have demonstrated potential, systemic challenges persist in mobilizing continued financing and limit the replication of successful models. Chemicals and waste interventions face obstacles in achieving scale due to regulatory weak spots and limited private sector involvement. International waters programs continue to struggle in sustaining cross-border cooperation amid political and resource constraints. Moreover, focal area programming is sometimes siloed, missing opportunities to connect with broader systemic integration strategies—although integrated programming is gradually helping to bridge these gaps.

A growing overlap between GEF biodiversity efforts and the GBFF highlights the urgency of ensuring coordinated complementarity to prevent duplication and strengthen impact. Effective alignment between the GEF Trust Fund and related instruments such as the GBFF will be essential for optimizing resources.

Overall, GEF focal area work remains effective in delivering global benefits. To amplify impact, however, future direction should focus on deeper thematic integration, sustainable design and scalability, and strategic coordination across emerging funding mechanisms.

They demonstrate how environmental investments can strengthen human and social capital, create opportunities for income generation and diversification, and enhance community resilience. These benefits foster local ownership and long-term support for conservation and sustainable resource management, helping to sustain environmental outcomes. By improving livelihoods and reducing vulnerability, they also encourage broader adoption of sustainable practices and catalyze behavior change necessary for lasting impact.

Many projects have successfully linked biodiversity conservation to improved livelihoods through ecotourism, sustainable agriculture, and nature-based enterprises. Interventions addressing land degradation and desertification have supported sustainable land management, improved soil fertility, and boosted agricultural productivity, contributing directly to food security and rural incomes. Climate mitigation and adaptation initiatives have enhanced energy access, increased agricultural resilience, and reduced vulnerability to climate shocks. Chemicals and waste interventions have contributed to safer working conditions and public health gains, while integrated programs have demonstrated the potential to couple environmental outcomes with food system transformation and sustainable urban development. These co-benefits have often strengthened local ownership and created the political and social support that helps sustain environmental outcomes over time.

Despite these achievements, socioeconomic co-benefits are not yet systematically captured or fully leveraged across the GEF portfolio. While many projects identify potential co-benefits during design, they often lack robust indicators or monitoring frameworks to track progress and assess how benefits are distributed among different social groups. The inclusion of marginalized populations—such as women, youth, Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and vulnerable rural communities—remains inconsistent and often dependent on project-specific choices rather than an institutionalized approach. While some initiatives have successfully generated new livelihood opportunities and markets, scaling these gains beyond the pilot stage remains difficult—particularly where enabling policies, market linkages, and financing are weak, and where mechanisms for coordination among country-level stakeholders to foster cross-project synergies and scaling opportunities are lacking. More systematic integration of socioeconomic considerations, supported by clear scaling strategies and sustainability pathways, would likely enhance the socioeconomic co-benefits of GEF interventions, thereby supporting broader development outcomes while maintaining the GEF’s core mandate of delivering global environmental benefits.

Enablers of transformational change

Integration

Integrated programs have strengthened alignment between national priorities and global environmental commitments, enhanced institutional collaboration across sectors, and introduced broader frameworks that connect landscapes, supply chains, urban systems, and biodiversity corridors. They have fostered innovations in governance, stakeholder engagement, and in some cases, efforts to engage the private sector and establish multistakeholder platforms. When supported by strong country ownership and capable coordination mechanisms, these programs have delivered early results such as improved landscape management, updated urban and spatial plans, and strengthened enforcement and compliance systems. They have also demonstrated the potential of linking global thematic expertise to country‑led implementation, supporting the integration of environmental priorities into national development planning.

Despite these advances, integrated programs face significant challenges. Their complexity leads to heavier coordination demands at both the global and national levels. Compressed design schedules have at times limited opportunities for inclusive stakeholder consultation and full alignment with national systems, while operational focal points have not always had access to the information or support required to manage the additional demands of integrated approaches. Coordination between global platforms and country‑level child projects has been uneven, weakening knowledge exchange and overall program coherence. Scaling and sustaining results often depend on temporary funding or individual champions rather than durable institutional arrangements. Although private sector engagement has grown, it has yet to reach its potential, and mechanisms to maintain investments and outcomes beyond GEF support remain underdeveloped.

These findings underscore the importance of a more strategic focus on integrated program design. The focus should be on contexts where institutional readiness and country demand are strong and where there is clear potential for systemic transformation, while ensuring mechanisms are in place to enable participation by countries with more limited capacity. Integrated programs work most effectively when design timelines are realistic, roles and responsibilities between global platforms and country‑level components are clearly defined, and systems for adaptive learning and knowledge exchange are robust. Their transformational potential also depends on broad and inclusive participation, and the active engagement of diverse stakeholders, including the private sector.

As programs mature, evolving needs will require the GEF to introduce new programs while phasing out those that are ineffective or that have fully achieved their objectives. Clear principles and strategies are needed for selecting new programs, and graduating mature ones and sustaining the knowledge resources they produce—resources that are currently difficult to access, including through the GEF website. Incentives for participation have also shifted: with reduced System for Transparent Allocation of Resources (STAR) allocations in GEF‑8, countries are increasingly joining integrated programs based on alignment with national priorities rather than financial leverage. This shift highlights the importance of ensuring program relevance, transparent participation incentives, and accessible knowledge systems to maintain strong engagement and lasting impact.

Inclusion

Gender equality and the participation of Indigenous Peoples and local communities are now more systematically embedded in project design and implementation, with gender action plans, budgets for gender-specific interventions, and gender‑responsive indicators and monitoring increasingly common. However, gender equality is not always well operationalized—measuring participation (e.g., the percentage of women in activities) is not the same as ensuring equitable decision‑making and influence. This challenge extends beyond gender to other domains of inclusion, where progress often depends on the presence of committed and competent individuals within project teams. Without dedicated expertise and capacity to translate inclusion principles into practice during implementation, advances risk being inconsistent and unsustainable.

The SGP and community‑based approaches have been particularly effective in demonstrating how community-driven approaches integrate social inclusion with environmental outcomes. Such initiatives empower women, Indigenous Peoples, youth, and marginalized rural groups to take leadership roles in ecosystem restoration, climate resilience, and sustainable livelihoods. These efforts show how participatory governance, benefit‑sharing arrangements, and the recognition of traditional knowledge enhance local stewardship and contribute to equitable, durable environmental outcomes.

Civil society has also played an important role, with the GEF–Civil Society Organization (CSO) Network and other mechanisms helping to amplify local voices and foster inclusive decision-making. Many integrated programs have built on this foundation by embedding inclusion into broader landscapes and value chains, illustrating how socially inclusive approaches can strengthen environmental impact and foster local ownership.

Despite advances, inclusion remains uneven and often dependent on individual champions rather than institutionalized practice. Engagement of youth, persons with disabilities, and other marginalized populations is still limited, rarely integrated into programmatic planning, or backed by systematic reporting and consistent monitoring indicators. The GEF-CSO Network has yet to be fully utilized, presenting an opportunity to strengthen systematic engagement across GEF programs and to build on past recommendations for reform. Many projects acknowledge inclusion as a priority but lack clear pathways or resources to operationalize it, and compressed preparation timelines frequently constrain opportunities for meaningful participation—particularly in fragile or capacity-constrained settings. Sustaining inclusive outcomes beyond the life of GEF funding also remains challenging where local institutions are weak or enabling policies are absent. Addressing these gaps will require projects to focus on strengthening institutional frameworks, fully leveraging civil society networks, building capacity for inclusive design and participatory monitoring, and ensuring adequate time and resources for social analysis and engagement across all levels of programming.

Private sector engagement

The GEF has moved from isolated pilot initiatives toward more systemic approaches embedded in integrated programs, sustainable commodity supply chains, renewable energy, circular economy models, and sustainable urban services. Nongrant instruments (NGIs) have shown promise in mobilizing private capital and sharing risk through blended finance and performance-based mechanisms; while partnerships with agribusiness, financial institutions, and small and medium enterprises have supported sustainable production, improved market transparency, and enabled early-stage innovation. Through global supply chain programs such as the Food, Land Use, and Restoration Impact Program and GOLD (Global Opportunities for Long-term Development of ASGM [Artisanal and Small-scale Gold Mining] Sector), and national initiatives in fisheries, livestock, and e-waste, the GEF has catalyzed behavioral shifts and opened pathways for sustainable practices to take root. Collectively, these achievements underscore the GEF’s value as a flexible and catalytic partner capable of influencing business practices and expanding markets for environmental solutions.

At the same time, significant challenges persist in effectively engaging the private sector. Many projects remain discrete rather than systemic in design, with engagement often limited by short project cycles, insufficient enabling conditions, weak business cases for sustainability, and underutilization of NGIs. Private sector contributions frequently take the form of in-kind support rather than substantial financial commitments, and the $15 million cap on NGI projects constrains larger, more catalytic investments in capital-intensive sectors such as renewable energy and sustainable infrastructure. Additional barriers include the complexity and time required to structure NGI projects, capacity gaps among Agencies and country partners, weak regulatory frameworks, and limited appetite for higher-risk investments, particularly in least developed countries and small island developing states.

Realizing the full catalytic potential of the GEF will require combining market transformation with catalytic financing. This can be accomplished through policy reform, standards, capacity building, and value chain engagement, while scaling up the use of NGIs to mobilize private capital and de-risk innovation. Expanding partnerships with multilateral development bank private sector arms, strengthening internal capacity for financial innovation, and embedding more strategic, investment-ready models across focal areas and geographies will also be essential. By combining market transformation with catalytic financing, the GEF can better align with private sector incentives, foster systemic change, and accelerate progress toward global environmental benefits.

Partners and systems

The GEF Partnership

The GEF’s partnership structure—bringing together 18 Agencies, the Secretariat, the Scientific and Technical Advisory Panel (STAP), civil society, and national partners—delivers environmental outcomes across regions and focal areas. This model offers flexibility and breadth, as Agencies contribute specialized expertise in biodiversity, chemicals, climate mitigation, land degradation, international waters, and finance, enabling the GEF to address diverse country needs and evolving global priorities. When Agency selection is well aligned with technical requirements, performance has been strong, leveraging Agencies’ institutional networks and financing capacity to achieve significant results. Institutional and operational complexity—including overlapping roles and differing Agency procedures—has at times slowed delivery and increased transaction costs, pointing to the need for clearer division of responsibilities and simplified processes.

The Country Engagement Strategy (CES) has improved alignment between GEF programming and national priorities, with opportunities for improvements in implementation. It has done so through national dialogues, pipeline planning, and support to the operational focal points. In countries that have fully embraced the CES, environmental priorities are better defined, cross‑ministerial collaboration has improved, and GEF pipelines have become more strategically focused. However, CES implementation has been uneven. Some dialogues have occurred late in replenishment cycles, limiting their ability to inform upstream programming. There have been fewer expanded constituency workshops conducted than originally planned. Engagement from nonstate actors—including civil society, the private sector, and local communities—has been inconsistent, and limited focal point capacity and political turnover have hindered follow‑up and continuity. Addressing these engagement challenges by ensuring more timely and inclusive dialogues and investing in focal point capacity would strengthen country ownership and programming coherence.

The STAP plays a central role in embedding science, innovation, and technical rigor across the GEF partnership; refining its mandate could amplify its scientific contributions and strategic influence across programs. It provides independent, objective advice on GEF strategies, programs, and projects, producing thematic papers, early-stage project reviews, and strategic guidance on policies. Its contributions—especially in regard to integrated programming, risk appetite, and innovation—have bolstered the scientific underpinnings of GEF operations and influenced the shift toward systemic and cross-sectoral approaches. The STAP also has been instrumental in horizon scanning for emerging tools and technologies, supporting adaptive learning, and integrating resilience and knowledge management considerations into project design. However, its influence is shaped by an advisory mandate rather than direct implementation authority, which can limit the uptake of recommendations in country-level contexts. Stakeholders value its strategic thematic work, but note that the burden of routine project reviews—which could be handled effectively by reviewers with deep project management and field experience—may divert attention from broader horizon scanning and policy-oriented guidance to operational items. Updating the STAP’s terms of reference and clarifying its focus could better align its expertise and governance structure with the evolving needs of the GEF, ensuring timely and impactful scientific input to the GEF’s strategic directions while continuing to support innovation and quality assurance across the portfolio.

The GEF partnership model remains inherently complex in administrative terms. Differences in Agency risk appetites and operational policies can create inefficiencies, while multi-Agency projects often face elevated transaction costs, longer preparation times, and challenges in coordination. In many cases, components implemented by different Agencies within a multi-Agency project are managed and reported on as separate projects, sometimes resulting in reporting gaps and reducing overall coherence. Knowledge‑sharing systems also are fragmented across Agencies, limiting the ability to synthesize and disseminate lessons in real time. Addressing these challenges will require harmonization of operational practices where feasible, stronger institutional support for country coordination platforms, earlier and more inclusive CES dialogues, and a more integrated, systemwide approach to knowledge management.

Risk and innovation

Despite growing recognition that testing new approaches and deploying emerging technologies often leads to transformational change, risk-taking within the GEF is still moderate, and innovation is not yet systematically embedded across the partnership. The adoption of a formal risk appetite statement in GEF‑8 marks an important step toward greater openness to higher‑risk, innovative initiatives. Further, several programs have successfully piloted novel governance models, digital tools for monitoring and transparency, and advanced technologies such as remote sensing, data analytics, and traceability systems for sustainable supply chains. These innovations have shown potential to improve efficiency, influence behavior change, and open new markets for environmental solutions—in some cases catalyzing additional investment and shaping national policies.

Constraints to adopting innovative technologies persist across multiple dimensions. Approval processes tend to favor established approaches over untested but potentially transformational solutions, slowing the introduction of innovation at scale. Many GEF Agencies and countries face technical, institutional, and infrastructure barriers to adopting advanced technologies, particularly in lower‑capacity settings. Limited incentives to take risks—coupled with concerns about being penalized for failure—further discourage innovation. The partnership’s varied risk appetites, combined with limited dedicated funding (including the $15 million cap on NGIs) and insufficient incentives to pilot and scale innovative approaches, have limited the GEF’s ability to fully exploit emerging opportunities. Mechanisms to learn quickly from both successful and unsuccessful experiments remain underdeveloped, reducing opportunities to replicate proven innovations. Strengthening innovation in the GEF will require operational guidance to manage risk consistently, targeted resources to support experimentation and technology deployment, and stronger systems for rapid learning and knowledge exchange across the portfolio. It will also require partnerships with not just ministries and public regulation agencies but with proven innovators, including private sector entities as well as universities or university spin-off enterprises in countries.

GEF funding sources

Successive replenishments have secured stable contributions that have enabled the GEF to maintain its catalytic role in supporting global environmental action. However, the donor base has narrowed over recent cycles, with emerging and middle-income countries reducing their participation, and contributions becoming increasingly concentrated among a small number of donors. This concentration heightens exposure to financial and geopolitical risks. Despite record nominal funding secured for GEF‑8, real‑term resources have declined compared to GEF‑5, although they remain higher than in GEF‑6 and GEF‑7. This erosion in purchasing power constrains the GEF’s ability to meet rising global environmental demands. At the same time, the GEF has yet to fully leverage new sources of capital, such as philanthropic contributions and private finance, leaving significant opportunities for financial diversification untapped.

Cofinancing remains central to the GEF model and has consistently exceeded corporate targets, demonstrating its catalytic effect in mobilizing additional resources; nevertheless, the quality and durability of cofinancing vary widely. Much of the reported cofinancing is derived from public sector budgets and linked to short-term project timelines, rather than representing sustained commitments. Private sector participation is still limited, and contributions often take the form of in-kind support rather than significant financial investments, reducing their transformational potential. The GEF’s flexible definition of cofinancing, which includes parallel financing and noncash contributions, has broadened participation but also raised questions about comparability and credibility, as these different types of contributions are not always equivalent or consistently reported. Realization rates are particularly low for loan-based cofinancing—55 percent of which goes unrealized—and for projects in least developed countries and small island developing states. In addition, verification of actual contributions is challenging due to incomplete documentation and difficulty tracking in-kind resources.

NGIs, designed to mobilize private capital and share risk have demonstrated potential, but remain underutilized relative to their potential because of several structural barriers. These barriers include weak financial markets and regulatory environments in many recipient countries, which constrain their ability to mobilize private capital at scale and limit their contribution to the GEF’s catalytic mandate. Additional challenges include the complexity of structuring financial products under current GEF procedures, uneven Agency capacity for financial innovation, and the lack of robust risk-sharing mechanisms. Addressing these constraints—including revisiting the NGI operational cap and strengthening financial structuring capacity—will be critical for scaling private sector engagement and diversifying financing for environmentally sustainable solutions.

The STAR, introduced in 2010, provides countries with a transparent, equitable, and predictable source of GEF funding. It covers biodiversity, climate change, and land degradation, while other focal areas and special initiatives—such as international waters, chemicals and waste, the LDCF, and the SCCF operate outside its scope. GEF‑8 strengthened national ownership by allowing countries full flexibility to reallocate STAR funds across focal areas based on their priorities, supporting strategic and long‑term planning. Although the STAR remains a predictable source of funding, STAR country allocations for GEF-8 accounted for 46 percent of total programmable resources for the period, compared to 53 percent in GEF-6; this reflects a drop in resources for the climate change focal area and an increase in resources for set-asides.

Systems for results and knowledge

However, to support adaptive management, innovation, scaling, and transformation, these systems require deeper integration into core project functions, improved feedback loops, and sustained institutional commitment and resourcing. The GEF has strengthened its results-based management framework by expanding tracking tools and refining its corporate results system to better capture global environmental outcomes. Indicators are better harmonized across Agencies, aligned with environmental conventions, and tailored for integrated programming. These enhancements bolster the GEF’s ability to monitor biophysical results such as greenhouse gas reductions, land restoration, biodiversity gains, and pollutants control.

However, the results-based management system remains heavily oriented toward outputs and near-term environmental outcomes. It has limited capacity to track deeper transformational changes including institutional strengthening, policy alignment, behavior shifts, and program sustainability. Reporting on socioeconomic co‑benefits and inclusion outcomes remains inconsistent, making it difficult to assess broader development impacts. Weak feedback loops hinder the timely translation of data into adaptive decision-making and program refinement.

Knowledge efforts continue to grow, offering scope to overcome fragmentation and timing gaps. Knowledge management has advanced through targeted coordination platforms under integrated programs and thematic initiatives that produce technical guidance and foster exchanges within specific focal areas. Yet knowledge remains fragmented even within a program and is often confined to individual projects or Agencies. Timing mismatches—when global knowledge production does not align with country-level implementation—reduce practical value. Lessons from innovations such as blended finance initiatives, private sector engagement, and integrated programs are captured in evaluations but not consistently converted into operational tools or shared across programs and geographies. Notably, there is no centralized repository for knowledge generated across the integrated and impact programs despite knowledge being claimed as the core element of integrated programming value addition.

The GEF has strengthened its results and knowledge systems, but institutional learning from challenges and failures is not yet fully systematized. While valuable insights on stakeholder engagement, financial design, and risk treatment are generated, they often remain confined to individual projects. Building on existing progress, the GEF should enhance feedback loops, create incentives for learning from failures, ensure structured uptake of evaluation findings, and translate lessons into practical guidance for both project and policy design, moving toward a culture of continuous learning and improvement to support catalytic change.