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Don't forget: forests feed, protect, and sustain people | GEF
This week, governments, experts, and members of forest communities are gathering in Rome for the 28th session of the FAO Committee on Forestry (COFO28), timed with World Forest Week 2026 whose theme is “forests for food, resilience and prosperity.” For those of us working to support forest projects at the Global Environment Facility (GEF), these words carry a special resonance. They describe crucial co-benefits that GEF investments have been delivering for decades, beyond the environmental results we are expected to deliver. As financial mechanism of several global multilateral environmental agreements, the GEF’s core mandate is to invest in the planet in five areas: biodiversity, climate change, land degradation, international waters, and chemicals and waste. Forests sit at the heart of that mission. But the GEF forest portfolio also reflects something that communities living in and around forests have always known. When we protect forests, we are also protecting people's lives, today and for generations to come. Since 1991, the GEF has provided about $6 billion in grants to forest and landscape protection and restoration projects, mobilizing another $31 billion in co-financing from governments, development banks, the private sector, and other partners. It is the largest sustained multilateral grant investment in...
