CEPF and the Biodiversity Hotspots

CEPF works in developing and transitional countries and territories within Earth’s 36 biodiversity hotspots. These hotspots hold especially high numbers of unique species and provide services that are vital to human well-being, such as clean air and water; flood and climate control; soil regeneration, and food, medicines, and raw materials. The hotspots face extreme threats. Each hotspot has lost at least 70 percent of its original natural vegetation, and the remaining areas of natural habitat within the hotspots cover only 2.3 percent of the planet’s land surface. But this relatively small area harbors 77 percent of the planet’s terrestrial vertebrate species, many of which can only be found in the hotspots.

From its inception through fiscal year 2016, CEPF awarded grants to civil society partners in 24 hotspots to implement its stakeholder-informed strategies—known as ecosystem profiles—for protecting the most critical ecosystems in the hotspots. During the 2016 fiscal year, CEPF launched its first investment in the Cerrado Hotspot found primarily in Brazil, and a new investment in the Guinean Forests of West Africa Hotspot.

CEPF also pursued development of ecosystem profiles—stakeholder-informed analyses and conservation strategies—for a first-time investment in the Mountains of Central Asia Hotspot, and a reinvestment in the Mediterranean Basin Hotspot.

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