The Multilateral Fund has demonstrated how resolute leadership, clarity of vision and lucidity of purpose can make radical changes to international environmental action. The Fund, dedicated to reversing the course of the deterioration of the Earth's ozone layer, was the first financial mechanism to be borne from an international environmental agreement.

The Fund has made major achievements both in terms of the phase-out of ozone depleting substances (ODS) in developing countries and in charting new ground in the operation of international environmental agreements.

Fulfilling its Mandate

The achievements of the Multilateral Fund can be measured through the rate of payment of contributions, technology transfer, ODS phase-out, and the behavioural and institutional changes it has stimulated.

• Donor countries have held to their commitments to provide funding with more than 90 per cent of the pledged contributions having been paid, amounting to US $1.865  billion out of a total of US $2.1 billion between 1991 and 2005.
• By  March  2007, the Fund had supported the transfer of technology and capacity building through about 5500 projects and activities in 144 developing countries.
• Projects approved through 2005 have already eliminated the consumption of nearly 190,625 ODP tonnes and the  production of 116,197 ODP tonnes.
• National Ozone Units have been established in 140 developing countries, raising understanding of how to implement environmental regulations and the capacity and confidence to do so.
• Virtually all Parties to the Protocol have been able to meet their phase-out targets, and prospects are good that this success rate will be continued in the future.
• This, in turn, will result in a lowering of levels of ODS in the stratosphere. The graph shows predictions of levels in the future with and without the Protocol and its subsequent amendments.

Achievements of international significance

• The Fund has played a pivotal role in demonstrating that international environmental agreements can be highly successful.
• The idea of funding only 'incremental costs' has been very successful and could have widespread implications for other agreements.
• The Fund is an excellent model of how to achieve successful technology transfer which could make both economic and environmental sense.