Feature Story

Say the word “coal” and most people think glossy black, slow-burning rocks, the hard stuff that generations of miners dug out of the Appalachian Mountains in the eastern United States, Shaanxi Province in central China, or Jharkhand in eastern India.

Lignite, while technically a kind of coal, does not fit that image. First of all, it is brown, and crumbly. Lignite burns so fast it just seems to disintegrate. Geologists classify lignite as coal but really it is just peat that never quite hardened. It seems unfinished, like half-fired clay.

Thousands of years ago, the Nama people of what is now southern Namibia described the enormous desert that stretches for 1,500 kilometers along the Atlantic coast with a stark but telling word; they called it simply Namib, or “vast place.”

In 1998, the President of Brazil, Fernando Henrique Cardoso, surprised his country and the world with a bold announcement: Brazil would set aside 10 percent of its forests in protected areas, a commitment of 25 million hectares, about half the size of France, most of it tropical rainforest in the Amazon.

April 7, 2016 - Located in the lush Arima Valley in the northern region of Trinidad, the Asa Wright Nature Centre (AWNC) is a nonprofit trust established in 1967 and one of the first established in the Caribbean. Its goal is to "protect part of the Arima Valley in a natural state and to create a conservation and study area for the protection of wildlife and for the enjoyment of all."

The GEF’s support of this project in Morocco helped the further adoption of solar technology across the globe.

In 1999, there were no iPhones, no social media, and landlines were used to connect to the internet. The euro was just born, the first Matrix movie hit theatres, and everyone was waiting for the end of the world that computers were supposed to cause at the change of the millennium.

A blog by Andrew Steer, President and CEO, World Resources Institute; and Naoko Ishii, CEO and Chairperson, Global Environment Facility*

The GEF/UNDP/UNEP Integrating Watershed and Coastal Areas Management in Small Island Developing States of the Caribbean (IWCAM) Project was a collaboration between 13 Caribbean nations: Antigua & Barbuda; The Bahamas; Barbados; Cuba; Grenada; Dominica; Dominican Republic; Haiti; Jamaica; Saint Kitts and Nevis; Saint Lucia; Saint Vincent and the Grenadines; and Trinidad and Tobago.

The Yellow Sea Large Marine Ecosystem (YSLME) is a semi-enclosed body of water between the People’s Republic of China and the Korean Peninsula. This shallow sea has an area of about 400,000 km² and boasts a wide variety of habitats and a high level of marine biodiversity, but the coastline is heavily populated, urbanized, and industrialized. Fisheries have become increasingly important to the region: total annual landings have increased from 425,000 tonnes in 1986 to an average 2.40 million tonnes in 2003 and 2004.

One of the most remarkable success stories of a GEF investment in water quality improvement and regional cooperation can be found in the Danube and Black Sea region. The Black Sea experienced unprecedented degradation in the 1990s when widespread nutrient loading caused a large dead zone. The main sources of nutrients were runoff from the agricultural sector (fertilizers and livestock waste) as well as domestic and industrial wastes. The Danube River alone contributed 80% of the land-based inorganic nutrients and 50% of the phosphorus loading.

Indonesia has nearly one-eighth of the world’s coral reefs, some 75,000 km2. Coral reef ecosystems serve as essential habitat for many commercially valuable fish species. Coral reefs support artisanal subsistence fishing, commercial fisheries, aquaculture, live reef fish for food industry, recreational fishing, aquarium/marine ornamental trade, and the curio and fashion industries. Coral reef ecosystems account for 30% of Indonesia’s GDP and generate employment for about 20 million people in 67,500 coastal villages (ADB, 2012a).