CEPF and the Biodiversity Hotspots

CEPF supports civil society-led conservation projects 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 biodiversity 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 biodiversity 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 biodiversity hotspots.

From its inception in 2000 through fiscal year 2017, CEPF has awarded grants to civil society partners in 24 biodiversity hotspots to implement its stakeholder-driven strategies—known as ecosystem profiles—for protecting the most critical ecosystems in the biodiversity hotspots.

During the 2017 fiscal year, CEPF was active in grant making in nine biodiversity hotspots: Cerrado, East Melanesian Islands, Eastern Afromontane, Guinean Forests of West Africa, Indo-Burma, Madagascar and the Indian Ocean Islands, Mediterranean Basin, Tropical Andes, and Wallacea. In late 2015, CEPF launched development of a new ecosystem profile for the Caribbean Islands, following the completion of five years of grant making in the hotspot. Once completed, the new profile will provide the framework for future biodiversity conservation funding in the Caribbean Islands. Also, during fiscal year 2017, CEPF completed ecosystem profiles for a planned first-time investment in the Mountains of Central Asia Hotspot and a reinvestment in the Mediterranean Basin Hotspot.

Learn More