Strategy

Ocean view from cliff in Madagascar
© Giacomo Abrusci
 
We provide financial and strategic assistance to enable local communities, nongovernmental organizations and governments to protect critical areas for conservation.

GCF is the first global fund designed to target two critical needs: creating and expanding protected areas, and ensuring effective management of those areas for the long term.

The goal for all GCF projects is a newly created or expanded protected area supported by a financing strategy and well-capitalized mechanism to cover management costs in the future.

The global fund:
  • Makes investment decisions based on sound science to benefit the highest priority places for conservation through the creation or expansion of protected areas.
  • Supports long-term management of protected areas to ensure effective and lasting protection.
  • Mobilizes additional financial resources to multiply and sustain results.

GCF supports a wide range of approaches to create and expand protected areas, from national parks decreed by governments to privately owned lands to community-managed reserves that combine conservation with responsible natural resource use and development.

Our focus on ensuring effective management for the long term is both unique and vital. Many protected areas, once created, lack sufficient funding to be effective.

GCF helps design and support endowments, trusts and other special mechanisms that create a steady flow of funds for managing important new protected areas into the future.
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