Message from the Executive Director

20 YEARS HELPING TO CONSERVE OUR OUTSTANDING BIOLOGICAL BIODIVERSITY

Twenty years ago, with the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development, the international community opened the way to the approval of transcendent multilateral agreement, the most important of which were the Agenda 21, the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Framework Convention on Climate Change. From a financial standpoint, the conference also marked the beginning of operations of the Global Environment Facility (GEF), first initiative of international financial cooperation designed to address the challenges identified in the aforementioned conventions as well as in subsequent conventions passed between 2001 and 2003 on Persistent Organic Pollutants and the Fight against Desertification.

GEF’s pilot phase (starting in October 1991) and implemented with the World Bank, identified some projects for developing countries and Peru was one of the first to provide an innovative approach in the field. As a result of a long process of analysis, consultation and coordination between government, civil society and private institutions, the initiative of a fund emerged, to contribute to the conservation of the biological diversity found in the protected areas and their spheres of influence, so they could be provided with stable and predictable funding in the long term.