The Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund (CEPF) is designed to better safeguard the world's threatened biodiversity hotspots in developing countries. It is a joint initiative of Conservation International (CI), the Global Environment Facility (GEF), the Government of Japan, the MacArthur Foundation and the World Bank. The CEPF provides financing to projects in biodiversity hotspots, the biologically richest and most endangered places on Earth. A fundamental purpose of the CEPF is to ensure that civil society, such as community groups, nongovernment organizations (NGOs) and private sector enterprises, is engaged in efforts to conserve biodiversity in the hotspots. An additional purpose is to ensure that those efforts complement existing strategies and frameworks established by local, regional and national governments.
The CEPF promotes working alliances among diverse groups, combining unique capacities and eliminating duplication of efforts for a comprehensive, coordinated approach to conservation. The CEPF is unique among funding mechanisms in that it focuses on biological areas rather than political boundaries and examines conservation threats on a corridor-wide basis for maximum return on investment. It focuses on transboundary cooperation when areas rich in biological value straddle national borders, or in areas where a regional approach will be more effective than a national approach. The CEPF aims to provide civil society with an agile and flexible funding mechanism complementing funding currently available to government agencies. Given the political and economic landscape in China, however, it is important to recognize that the definition of civil society should not be strictly limited to NGOs but should also include research institutes, universities, associations, community groups, private sector, and even individuals.
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