“Game changer” as Guyana’s Global Biodiversity Alliance membership reaches 125

…this year’s summit to focus on financing

Less than a year after its launch, the Global Biodiversity Alliance (GBA) has seen its membership skyrocketing to a whopping 125, according to Senior Director of Climate and Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in the Office of the President, Pradeepa Bholanath. The Global Biodiversity Alliance – an initiative crafted by President Dr Irfaan Ali that seeks to accelerate international financing and technical expertise to conserve the world’s diminishing biodiversity resources – was launched in July 2025 in Guyana with 17 signatories ranging from countries, civil society bodies, the private sector, the indigenous peoples and other local and regional organisations.
“To date, I’m pleased to note that that membership has expanded to 125 members from 17 members back in July, and that has been really a game changer, because it allows for us to now benefit from growing interests,” Bholanath said during an appearance on the Starting Point podcast. She explained that this increased interest is sparking within the private sector. In fact, all the major development banks within the Latin-American and the Caribbean (LAC) region – Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), the World Bank, and the Caribbean Development bank (CDB) – have joined this initiative. According to the Climate Director, this is particularly significant especially since the focus at the second GBA summit to be held in Georgetown later this year, would be on mobilising financing.
“That kind of momentum really is opening a lot of new frontiers in terms of looking at ways in which we can finance biodiversity conservation. So, this year the focus…will be in biodiversity financing. So, that will see, you know, the conversation move from beyond science to now practical undertakings in terms of how do we mobilise financing to be able to get biodiversity conservation activities, receive more resourcing, and that should be for interesting discussions. We look forward to that,” Bholanath stated. This year’s summit is scheduled to take place sometime in the last quarter – with President Ali slated to announce the dates in the near future.
Stemming from the inaugural Global Biodiversity Alliance Summit in Georgetown last July, the GBA Secretariat would be set up in Guyana and will work with key stakeholders to advance its priorities which includes the designation of new protected areas, and securing the necessary funding and resources for managing them effectively. President Ali had previously indicated that he intends to significantly increase the Alliance’s membership by the 2026 summit. In fact, the Guyanese Leader has been engaging key global officials and organisations to advance the country’s work on biodiversity protection and conservation.
Only back in January, President Ali had engagements with King Charles III and the Commonwealth Secretary-General (SG), Shirley Ayorkor Botchwey – both of whom commended Guyana’s efforts and pledged for the Global Biodiversity Alliance.
As a matter of fact, the Commonwealth as agreed to collaborate on strategic initiatives to support Alliance. A Joint Working Team will advance efforts to establish an International Biodiversity Centre of Excellence based in Guyana. The country is already working with United States (US)-based Yale University to establish this centre and to build a global mechanism through which the facility would be the hub for research, development, policy making, education, marketing, developing financing models. The Guyana Government signed the landmark collaboration agreement with the Yale Centre for Biodiversity and Global Change during the GBA summit last year in Georgetown. Under this agreement, Yale—through Map of Life, their global biodiversity intelligence platform — will work with Guyana to support the Global Biodiversity Alliance, and help design a world-class International Centre of Excellence for Biodiversity Research here. The university will also build a national biodiversity information system, with maps, dashboards and data layers; and guide the application of cutting-edge biodiversity science to decision-making processes.
The Yale Centre for Biodiversity and Global Change is a research centre at Yale University dedicated to studying and understanding the patterns, drivers and consequences of biodiversity change on a global scale. Currently, more than 70 per cent of the world’s biodiversity have already been lost over the last 50 years. According to the 2024 WWF Living Climate Report – a biennial publication, freshwater populations have declined by 85 per cent; followed by terrestrial, 69 per cent; and marine population, 56 per cent.
In the LAC region, 95 per cent of biodiversity loss has been recorded.