US cuts funding to GEF

The Global Environment Facility (GEF), to which the US now contributes $428 million for the current budget cycle, could see a huge change in fudning if the Bush Administration plan goes through. The proposal for the 2006-2010 budget cycle is to nearly halve funding to the program ($224 million), which fund projects to protect global biodiversity. This is not good news after the UN report released last week on the state of global biodiversity. Could other countries follow suit? Let's hope not. The US provides a huge chunk of funding to the program as it is. Any further cuts could severely jeopardize it.