Guyana’s Global Biodiversity Alliance, piloted by President Dr Mohamed Irfaan Ali, is recording rapid international growth, with membership expanding significantly from its initial 17 founding members to 125 members to date.
Speaking on the Starting Point podcast on Sunday, Senior Director of Climate and REDD+ in the Office of the President, Pradeepa Bholanath, stated that the expansion reflects growing international recognition of biodiversity as a critical component of climate and development policy, beyond traditional forest-based carbon approaches.
“We now have all the development banks within our region as part of the membership of the Global Biodiversity Alliance… and that kind of momentum is opening a lot of new frontiers in terms of biodiversity financing,” she explained.
The increase in participation now includes major multilateral development institutions such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, and the Caribbean Development Bank (CDB), further strengthening the alliance’s technical and financial potential.
The alliance is now preparing to shift the focus toward scaling up biodiversity financing mechanisms, which will be the central theme of its work moving forward.
This year’s biodiversity conference, expected in the last quarter of 2026, will focus on access to financing for biodiversity.
President Ali is expected to announce the exact date for the event in the coming weeks.
The conference will bring together international partners to further advance investment and cooperation in the sector.
The initiative, launched in July last year, brought together governments, civil society, the private sector, indigenous peoples and local organisations in a unified effort to advance biodiversity conservation.
DPI
