CEPF Mediterranean Basin Large Grants 2026: Historical Reference for the US$50,000–US$180,000 Call

CEPF Mediterranean Basin Large Grants 2026: Historical Reference for the US$50,000–US$180,000 Call

Status

CEPF’s large-grant letter-of-inquiry call for the Mediterranean Basin Biodiversity Hotspot is closed. CEPF’s official closed-calls listing records the call as closed on Friday, 18 September 2026. The official open-calls listing does not announce a successor Mediterranean Basin large-grant round. This page is therefore an archive of the 2026 opportunity, not an invitation to apply. Do not submit materials to ConservationGrants for this closed call. Applicants looking for current funding should consult CEPF’s live open-calls page and rely on the requirements and dates published for each new opportunity.

The archived call offered project grants of US$50,000 to US$180,000. It invited letters of inquiry (LOIs) under Strategic Direction 3, supporting traditional land-use practices, and Strategic Direction 4, supporting conservation of threatened plants. The call page names Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jordan, Lebanon, Montenegro, Morocco, North Macedonia, Palestine and Tunisia as eligible countries overall. Eligibility depended on the direction selected: the country list for threatened-plant projects was narrower. These facts describe the closed call only; a future round may have different priorities, countries, grant sizes or dates.

At a glance: the archived call

What the call was designed to fund

CEPF is a conservation fund that makes grants to civil society organizations in biodiversity hotspots. The Mediterranean Basin call was not a general-purpose environment grant. A competitive LOI had to connect a defined project location and target to one of the call’s published strategic directions and investment priorities. Applicants needed to show a credible conservation result and explain how their activities would contribute to the region’s ecosystem profile. A proposal could be worthwhile in its own right and still fail this call’s fit test if its location, species or activities fell outside that framework.

The call page provided the detailed LOI instructions, criteria and restrictions in accompanying English and French documents. It also linked the Mediterranean Basin ecosystem profile and a technical summary. Those are the primary references for interpreting the original call. The narrative below records the 2026 scope for archival use and cannot substitute for reading the call documents if CEPF republishes or updates them in a later round.

Strategic Direction 3: traditional land use

SD3 sought projects that promote traditional land-use practices capable of maintaining biodiversity in priority mountain corridors. Its emphasis was on working with traditional resource managers and sustaining land management approaches that support valuable habitats. Livestock grazing was a central concern, while related agricultural practices could also matter where they helped maintain a varied landscape.

The eight-country overview did not mean that every site in every country was eligible under SD3. Projects were expected to fit the named corridors: the Atlas Mountains and Rif Mountains in Morocco; the Eastern Adriatic in Bosnia and Herzegovina and Montenegro; the Southwest Balkans in Montenegro and North Macedonia; the Tellian Atlas Mountains in Tunisia; and the Levantine Mountains in Jordan, Lebanon and Palestine. The 2026 call materials also directed applicants to priority mountain Key Biodiversity Areas (KBAs), with attention to sites above 500 metres. Applicants needed to establish the project’s geographic fit using the call’s ecosystem profile and annexes rather than rely on a broad country label.

The design logic joined ecological goals to the choices and livelihoods of people who manage land. A strong concept would identify the practice to be maintained or improved, the resource users who would carry it out, the habitat or species expected to benefit, and the barriers that make the practice difficult to sustain. The call encouraged practical economic support, such as improving the processing or marketing of local products, certification or labelling, payments for ecosystem services, or links to appropriate public support. A proposal needed to make the relationship between the livelihood measure and the conservation result understandable; a list of income activities without that connection would not explain why biodiversity would improve.

Strategic Direction 4: threatened plants

SD4 aimed to strengthen civil society’s role in conserving threatened plants and plant communities. It covered three broad types of work: building botanical knowledge and applied conservation capacity; improving the way protected areas account for plant conservation; and taking innovative conservation action with landowners and land users. The eligible country subset named in the call was Bosnia and Herzegovina, Jordan, Lebanon, Montenegro and Palestine. Morocco, North Macedonia and Tunisia appeared in the call’s overall country list but were not included for SD4.

Projects were expected to focus on priority plant species or sites containing them. The call’s definition encompassed species assessed as Critically Endangered, Endangered or Vulnerable on the IUCN Global Red List; species included on regional red lists or considered likely to qualify for those categories under IUCN criteria; and narrowly distributed site-restricted endemics. Applicants should have named the species, explained the basis for its priority status and identified the site or conservation problem their actions would address.

CEPF’s stated preferences included direct conservation action, capacity building where useful, coordination with related site or landscape work, a clear need and opportunity for funding, and cooperation across borders or regions where relevant. These preferences offered a way to shape a focused proposal, not a replacement for the formal eligibility criteria. A useful plant project would connect field work, management or policy changes to a measurable benefit for the target species or plant community, and specify who would continue the work after grant activities ended.

Who could apply and what constraints applied

For this call, CEPF invited LOIs from nongovernmental organizations, community groups, universities and small private enterprises. Individuals could not apply directly and had to develop a project through a civil society organization. The applicant organization needed its own bank account and legal authorization under the relevant national law to receive charitable contributions. Government-owned institutions or enterprises faced additional tests: they needed legal personality independent of a government agency, authority to apply for and receive private funds, and no ability to claim sovereign immunity. Public universities, botanical gardens and protected-area bodies therefore needed to check their legal status rather than assume that public ownership either automatically qualified or disqualified them.

The call allowed an organization to send more than one LOI only when those applications belonged to different strategic directions. It would not award more than one project to an organization under this call. Applicants had to consider that rule while choosing projects and coordinating within their institution.

CEPF’s standard exclusions and safeguard policies also applied. The archived call excluded uses such as land purchase, involuntary resettlement, and activities that harm physical cultural resources. Restrictions also covered adverse impacts on Indigenous Peoples without broad community support and a range of prohibited labor, infrastructure, security, chemical and invasive-species activities. This summary is not a complete safeguard checklist: applicants in any future call should read the current safeguard documents and assess the actual project activities before applying.

How the archived application process worked

The first stage was a letter of inquiry submitted online through CEPF’s ConservationGrants portal. The call accepted LOIs in English or French and said it would not accept submissions by email or another route. Existing ConservationGrants users were expected to sign in with their existing credentials; new users had to create an account. The official call page advised applicants to submit several days ahead of the deadline to reduce the risk of connection delays and stated that late applications would not be accepted.

For an archive user trying to understand what an LOI involved, the practical lesson is that stage one was a screening proposal, not the final compliance package. Applicants needed to explain the project, its fit with the chosen strategic direction, eligible geography, conservation target, proposed activities and expected results in the fields provided by CEPF. The LOI template and detailed call document were the authorities for length, questions and required information. Drafting from those documents before entering the portal would have helped keep the narrative consistent and reduced the risk of leaving a required field incomplete.

CEPF described a two-stage selection process. Organizations whose LOIs passed review could be invited to develop full proposals in ConservationGrants; an invitation was required before proceeding to that stage. The detailed financial and institutional checks belonged to the grant-development process and should not be represented as universal LOI attachments. Invited applicants could be asked for financial information, bank and signatory details, tax documentation, cash-flow estimates and security screening materials. The grant agreement would be with Conservation International, which hosts the CEPF Secretariat. Safeguard screening could lead to additional assessments or plans depending on the project’s risks.

The application route and terms in this section refer solely to the closed call. ConservationGrants links, forms, supporting-document requests and contact details can change. Anyone preparing for a future CEPF opportunity should start from that opportunity’s own page, download its current documents and follow the instructions there rather than reuse a saved 2026 application.

How to use this archive

Organizations can use the closed call as a reference when reviewing whether their work resembles CEPF’s past Mediterranean Basin priorities. It can help with early planning: locate the proposed activity against the published corridor and country distinctions; identify a target KBA, threatened plant or traditional land-use practice; and consider which local organizations and resource users need to be involved. Those steps may help an organization prepare for a future announcement, but they do not establish that a future call will repeat these priorities.

Before investing in a new application, check CEPF’s official open-calls listing. If a Mediterranean Basin opportunity appears there, read its current call document and ecosystem profile closely. Confirm the new deadline, eligible locations, grant size, thematic scope, applicant requirements, submission language, portal procedure and safeguard rules directly from that announcement. Do not reuse the dates, country list, amount or strategic-direction details on this historical page as current instructions.

CEPF describes itself as a joint initiative involving public and private donors and states that a fundamental goal is to ensure civil society is engaged in biodiversity conservation. In the Mediterranean Basin, the regional implementation team has supported applicants and coordinated the grant portfolio. The structure explains why local civil-society leadership and partnership appear prominently in the call, but the name of a past regional team contact or the availability of a particular officer should not be assumed to remain current. Use the contact information published with any new call.

Official references

• CEPF closed calls for proposals for 2026 — official listing that classifies the Mediterranean Basin large-grant LOI call as closed.
• CEPF’s archived 2026 Mediterranean Basin large-grant call — official archived call details, including the countries, grant range, strategic directions, dates and ConservationGrants instructions.
• CEPF open calls for proposals — check this live page for new funding announcements; it is the appropriate starting point for future opportunities.
• CEPF’s archived 2026 Mediterranean Basin call page — the original call overview and links to the detailed English and French call documents and ecosystem-profile resources.
• CEPF eligibility and how to apply — general guidance that should be rechecked alongside the specific terms of any future call.

The archived opportunity is closed. No application can be made through this page; check CEPF’s official announcements for a new call before preparing or submitting a proposal.