Assessment of global marine biodiversity indicators for the Global Environment Facility Resource Allocation Framework (GEF RAF)

The Global Environment Facility (GEF) is the financial mechanism of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD). In 2002, the GEF Council requested the GEF Secretariat to “...establish a system for allocating scarce GEF resources within and among focal areas with a view towards maximizing the impact of these resources on global environmental improvements...”. In 2005, this system was introduced as the Resource Allocation Framework (RAF) that calculates indicative financial allocations on a country-by-country basis. The RAF for the biodiversity focal area is based on a set of scientific biodiversity indicators. This set is divided into two parts with uneven contributions to the whole RAF. Four indicators reflect biodiversity and threat to biodiversity for the terrestrial environment and are weighed by 80% while marine biodiversity is only represented by one indicator and weighed by 20%. This unequal weighting has been criticized at various GEF fora, especially by Small Island Developing States (SIDS), as an unjustifiable underestimation of the importance of marine biodiversity that discriminates against SIDS. Concerns were also raised that this issue contradicts the character of the guiding Convention.