The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) is designed to better safeguard the world's threatened biological hotspots in developing countries. It is a joint initiative of Conservation International (CI), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Government of Japan, the MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank. CEPF provides financing to projects located in biodiversity hotspots, the biologically richest and most endangered places on Earth.
CEPF has been designed to build on the World Bank's commitment to biodiversity conservation and sustainable management, primarily implemented through the GEF and channeled to governments. CEPF will complement the efforts of the World Bank and the GEF to conserve biodiversity by providing a streamlined funding mechanism to a broad range of civil society partners, including NGOs, community groups and private sector partners.
CEPF will further the overall goals of the Bank at the country level by offering an opportunity to engage local communities and other stakeholders in biodiversity conservation and ecosystem management. CEPF will also provide an important learning experience through an innovative online grant system at http://www.cepf.net/ and by focusing on on-the-ground results and experience. The site is designed to serve as a central node, disseminating lessons learned and facilitating cross-regional information exchange on conservation successes. It will also promote replication of successful projects by providing access to a wide range of resources designed to aid project implementers in the biodiversity hotspots.
CEPF will strive to use lessons from other programs, particularly the GEF's medium grants procedure, to ensure that funds are provided expeditiously and with appropriate, cost-effective levels of accountability. CEPF will also use the GEF national focal points to ensure client country endorsement of the strategic direction of the CEPF. CEPF is intended to complement, rather than duplicate or overlap with, regular GEF activities.
CEPF will support strategic working alliances among community groups, NGOs, government, academia and the private sector, combining unique capacities and eliminating duplication of efforts for a more comprehensive approach to conservation challenges. The CEPF is unique among funding mechanisms in that it focuses specifically on biological areas rather than political boundaries and will look at conservation threats on a corridor-wide basis for maximum return on investment. This will be a significant contribution in Madagascar where much of the investment has focused on safeguarding current levels of biological diversity within the existing protected areas, but not necessarily throughout the whole corridor. The strategic directions of the CEPF program are strongly linked to a thorough priority-setting process, and targets several gaps in this larger strategy. Building on the collaborative processes already underway in the region will allow not only for cooperation with the many nongovernmental, scientific and other private-sector participants, but also for the possibility of building the capacities of these various groups. In addition, CEPF aims to disburse funds to civil society in a more agile manner, complementing current funding available to government agencies.
Funds will be used to provide small grants to conservation projects managed by private, NGO and civil society groups working in the critical ecosystems. Funding from CEPF directed at the project level will leverage additional financial and in-kind contributions. By funding conservation efforts in production landscapes, such as agricultural areas, CEPF has the potential to build broader-than-usual support for conservation measures from the agricultural community, specifically encouraging agro forestry initiatives that maintain connectivity in corridor landscapes. In summary, CEPF offers an opportunity to promote the conservation of some of the most important ecosystems in the world--places of high biodiversity and great beauty. Conservation of these ecosystems is especially important given the values provided by healthy, diverse ecosystems to agriculture, forestry, water supply and fisheries. These are critical to the Bank's efforts to alleviate poverty. CEPF will deliver assistance in an agile manner; it will engage a wide range of local community groups, civil society organizations, NGOs and private companies in addressing conservation needs.
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