For more than 30 years, UNEP has played a leading role in developing and advancing the international agenda on biodiversity: catalysing awareness on global environmental problems, building consensus on action to address those problems, and promoting and supporting conservation programmes of a catalytic nature. Foremost among these efforts has been the strengthening of the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) to which UNEP provides the Secretariat and for which the Global Environment Facility (GEF) acts as the financial mechanism.

The UNEP GEF portfolio of biodiversity projects is active in four main areas of intervention consistent with UNEP's mandate in the GEF:

1. Strengthening the enabling environment so that countries can more effectively implement commitments made as Parties to the CBD;
2. Environmental information management, environmental assessments, analysis and research;
3. Identification and development of tools and methodologies for conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity;
4. Transboundary conservation and sustainable use of biodiversity