Everyone depends on the Earth’s ecosystems and their life-sustaining benefits, such as clean air, fresh water and healthy soils.
Founded in 2000, the Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) has become a global leader in enabling civil society to participate in, and benefit from, conserving some of the world’s most critical ecosystems. CEPF is a joint initiative of l’Agence Française de Développement, Conservation International, the Global Environment Facility, the Government of Japan, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and the World Bank.
CEPF provides grants for non-governmental and other private organisations to help protect biodiversity hotspots – Earth’s most biologically rich and threatened areas. The convergence of critical areas for conservation, with millions of people who are impoverished and highly dependent on healthy ecosystems, is more evident in the hotspots than anywhere else.
CEPF is unique among funding mechanisms in that it focuses on biological areas, rather than political boundaries, and examines conservation threats on a landscape-scale basis. From this perspective, CEPF seeks to identify and support a regional, rather than a national, approach to achieving conservation outcomes, and engages a wide range of public and private institutions to address conservation needs through coordinated
regional efforts.
www.cepf.net
