Launching a plan to unlock much-needed finance to protect rainforests, a group of 34 countries – including both developing and donor nations – have backed Brazil’s proposal for a new rainforest fund, set to be launched at COP30 in Belém.
The Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP) – a coalition formed at COP27 in Egypt to raise ambition for forest protection – unveiled an action plan in New York this week with six proposed solutions to reverse forest loss by 2030 – among them the creation of Brazil’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF).
The TFFF would invest in financial markets and use the expected returns to pay forest-rich nations to halt deforestation. It aims to raise initial capital of $25bn in public funds and $100bn from private investors. Brazil is the only country to have pledged money so far, announcing a $1bn investment this week.
Guyana’s Minister of Natural Resources Vickram Outar Bharrat said at the New York event that the new six-point forest finance plan “underlines that real solutions are already within our reach, with a menu of options that can move forward together at speed”.
André Aquino, economy and environment advisor at Brazil’s Ministry of Environment and Climate Change, said the country has made “significant progress” finalising the details of the TFFF proposal, and added the country has “sprinted” to launch the fund at COP30.
“Where we are now with this is basically the design of the facility is mostly concluded,” Aquino said at the finance roadmap launch. “There are ongoing conversations on some aspects. Basically, we move now into full-fledged investment mode.”
The countries behind it include forest nations that could potentially benefit from the TFFF and other forest financing measures, including the Democratic Republic of Congo, Colombia and Vietnam, among others. It also includes wealthy donor governments such as Japan, Canada, UK and the US.
Despite the US’s roll-back of international climate finance under the Trump administration, Brazilian President Lula da Silva told journalists in New York this week he is “optimistic” about landing an American contribution to the TFFF.
The TFFF has already been endorsed by the eight South American countries that are home to the Amazon rainforest, the largest forest basin in the world. The BRICS group of large emerging economies have also voiced their support.
But while some wealthy countries – among them the UK, Germany, Norway and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) – have engaged in the design of the TFFF, funding pledges have yet to follow. The Brazilian government aims to sign a letter of intent with donors at COP30 in November.
UK climate minister Katie White said at the event that establishing the TFFF and scaling up forest carbon markets is among the country’s priorities. “Rather than announcing lots of new plans, we want to work with existing initiatives, which can make the biggest impact in the smallest time,” she added.
Unlocking finance for rainforests by COP30
A new analysis by the UN Environment Programme (UNEP), published during Climate Week NYC, estimates the annual funding gap for forest protection at around $67 billion. The roadmap launched by the FCLP presents six potential solutions to quickly ramp up forest finance by COP30.
Among them are a scale-up of state-level forest carbon credits and debt-for-nature swaps, which free up debt repayments for ecosystem protection. Taken together, the proposed solutions could raise as much as $50bn a year, proponents say.
The most potentially profitable option, according to the roadmap, would be enabling local communities to produce more sustainable products from the forest, such as wood products and organic foods. This “bioeconomy” approach could raise up to $15bn every year to protect forests, experts say.
The funding roadmap estimates that a fully operational TFFF could raise up to $4 billion by 2030. The fund’s concept note claims it could pay countries up to $2.8 billion annually.
At COP28 in Dubai, all countries adopted a target of ramping up efforts to stop and reverse deforestation and forest degradation by 2030. But monitoring shows the world is losing forests at “frightening” record speed – not only due to humans cutting down trees but also because of massive wildfires amplified by global warming.
Developing countries, meanwhile, have argued that high government debt levels, limited access to multilateral banks, and unpredictable payments from donors make financing forest protection difficult.
