The Global Environment Facility (GEF) has selected seven projects as winners of its first Innovation Window, which will provide $12.3 million in grants to initiatives that test and pilot new solutions to stubborn challenges, from improving food systems to protecting wild cat habitats.
The Innovation Window programme was launched as part of the GEF’s eighth funding cycle, to support and help road-test novel approaches, tools, and business models for complex problems related to biodiversity, climate change, pollution, and inter-related areas, engaging new and varied partners.
“The Innovation Window is a new and unique opportunity for the GEF to support highly innovative ideas together with partners from the private sector, civil society, academia, and leading research institutions,” said Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, CEO and Chairperson of the GEF.
“We are looking forward to boosting technologies, policies, and business models that can enhance the impact of the GEF’s funding to deliver global environmental benefits at scale and support a systems change towards societies and economies that are nature-positive, low-carbon, and pollution-free,” added Rodríguez.
The winning projects were chosen from an initial pool of 128 applications and cover a wide range of issues in finance, behavior change, systems transformation, technology, and tools.
Winners include a project that seeks to accelerate collaborative and adaptive approaches to address complex environmental challenges, focusing on the link between food, biodiversity, and climate. Another winning project will develop a comprehensive guidance on finance for nature-positive, with a framework to be used by investors, banks, and insurers.
Five of the projects are global in their reach, one focuses on Latin America and one on Africa. The Africa project will pioneer innovative approaches to food systems transformation. The Latin America project will help protect jaguar conservation along a vast stretch of land – known as the Jaguar Corridor – through a satellite and automated cloud-based monitoring and assessment system.
The wining projects include:
- C3 Labs – Collaboration for Complex Challenges: addressing the food-biodiversity-climate nexus
- Accelerating Rapid Transition of Subsidies and Incentives (ARTSI) Grants Mechanism
- Private Finance and Investments for Nature-Positive: Developing a Framework and Guidance for Measurement, Targets, and Innovative Investment Strategies on Nature
- Accelerating Integration, Policy Coherence, and Food Systems Investment with the TCC – Learning from Africa’s Food Systems Vanguard Countries
- Revolutionising Indicators of (Un)sustainable Wildlife Use and Trade by Harnessing Social Media Big Data
- Jaguar Corridors in the Face of Rapid Environmental Change: A Dynamic Monitoring and Assessment System for Prioritising Conservation Investments
- AgroWeb3 powered by LACChain: Market Access Window (European Union Deforestation Regulation Compliance).
