Global Environment Centre
Since its inception in 1998, the Global Environment Centre (GEC) has been collaborating strategically with like-minded organisations to address environmental problems of international significance. GEC focuses on biodiversity, water resources, agriculture, forestry, and the mitigation and adaptation to climate change. Assessments on peatlands and climate change, sustainable agriculture, forestry, plantation and river management, disaster risk management, decreasing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+), as well as community-based forest conservation and restoration, are all areas in which they are actively involved.
GEC’s leadership comprises GEC’s Advisory Council, Management Board and Management Team
The River Care Programme is being implemented by GEC as a leader in the field. To help the community, government, and the private sector toproperly manage and maintain rivers, six different environmental education programmes have been developed. GEC has also undertaken river clean-up and rehabilitation in 27 river basins.
More than 400,000 mangrove trees have already been planted in partnership with local communities (Friends of Mangrove) on more than 130 hectares of degraded mangrove habitats in Malaysia, through GEC’s Forest and Coastal Programme.
Additionally, in collaboration with the Selangor State government, GEC has helped safeguard and rehabilitate 95,000 hectares of peat swamp forest.
GEC took the lead in preparing the global Assessment on Peatlands, Biodiversity, and Climate Change. The assessment collated and analysed data from all over the world, and was recognised by the Conference of Parties to the intergovernmental Convention on Biological Diversity in 2008.
GEC was also the founding collaborative partner of the ASEAN Peatland Management Initiative in 2003 and has been the technical and operational support Partner of the ASEAN Peatland Management Strategy 2006-2020.
To further raise public awareness, multiple projects have created 35 materials on peatlands in seven languages and identified 35,000 hectares of previously unrecognised peatlands in northern ASEAN.
Through a variety of strategic alliances throughout the years, GEC has helped more than 277 community organisations and 700 schools and educational institutions increase their capacity to protect and restore water resources and rivers as well as undertake water conservation and sustainable waste management; Friends of River Basin (FoRB), has brought communities together to manage river basins and ecology, GEC’s National River Care Fund (NRCF), has provided more than half a million Ringgit of grants to 47 community groups nationwide to run river conservation activities since 2016.