A representative of the United States Treasury Department participated in a meeting to structure the ninth replenishment of the Global Environment Facility, or GEF, despite the U.S. government shutdown, an anonymous source with inside information of the meetings told Devex, adding that the chance of continued contributions from the U.S. sounded “positive but not certain.”
GEF is one of the world’s main multilateral funds for environmental protection and sustainable development. It is a coalition of 186 member countries, as well as international institutions, civil society organizations, and the private sector.
Hillary Clifford, an international economist in the U.S. Treasury Department, told GEF members that the U.S. does not want to increase the amount it pays toward climate change in GEF, but instead focus on biodiversity, plastics, illegal fisheries, and Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction, or BBNJ, which refers to marine life and ocean ecosystems that span multiple countries, according to the source.
About the author
Jesse Chase-Lubitz
Jesse Chase-Lubitz covers climate change and multilateral development banks for Devex. She previously worked at Nature Magazine, where she received a Pulitzer grant for an investigation into land reclamation. She has written for outlets such as Al Jazeera, Bloomberg, the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project, and The Japan Times, among others. Jesse holds a master’s degree in Environmental Policy and Regulation from the London School of Economics.
