The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) — a proposed $125 billion fund to conserve tropical forests worldwide — was developed by Brazil in 2023, and pushed forward in 2024 at the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia. Since then, momentum has built in support of this market-driven approach to conserving tropical forests.
President Lula calls on world leaders to support the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) at upcoming COP30 in Belém, Brazil, to advance climate action and conserve tropical forests. Image by Ricardo Stuckert / Presidency of the Republic.
As nations struggled during Climate Week (Sept 21-28) in New York City to increase their emission-reduction pledges to slow the alarming rate of global warming, Brazil stepped forward to support and showcase a novel, innovative plan of its own design to incentivize the protection of carbon-absorbing tropical forests around the world.
Representatives from more than two dozen countries looked on at the United Nations on Tuesday, September 23, as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that his nation will invest the first $1 billion in the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a planned $125 billion fund that Lula and Brazilian finance experts first described in 2023.
“TFFF is an unprecedented tool in this fight against climate change,” said Lula, emphasizing that Brazil is leading by example. “Tropical forests are critical to keeping alive the [goal] of limiting global warming to 1.5° [Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels]. The TFFF is not a charity; it’s an investment in humanity and the planet to counter the threat of climate chaos.”
The fund — in which $25 billion is to come initially from sovereign nations, with $100 billion coming later from private investors — is expected to be a centerpiece of the 30th UN climate summit (COP30) in Belém, Brazil from Nov. 10-21.
Described as a climate-action fund like no other, TFFF will work in ways similar to how banks operate as lenders. Instead of donations, the billions committed will be invested in capital markets with investors receiving an estimated annual return of 5.5%.
Once fully funded, TFFF is projected to spin off as much a $4 billion annually above that paid to investors over the 20-year life of the fund. The interest will be paid on a per hectare basis to qualifying countries to keep their tropical forests intact and protected.
More than 70 developing nations, which collectively have more than 1 billion hectares of tropical forests, are potentially eligible for annual TFFF payments. Regular monitoring will determine which forests qualify and whether they remain intact. If those forests are clearcut or degraded, countries will be required to return far more money than they were originally paid.
Tropical forests like this one in the Peruvian Amazon could qualify for annual payments from the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) to help keep them standing and delivering planetary ecosystem services — especially carbon sequestration that slows the rate of climate change. Image by Justin Catanoso
Lula’s plan and pledge were widely applauded in New York. With the U.S. under President Donald Trump turning away from the planning and implementation of TFFF, China is stepping up, a significant development which Lula has been personally courting. China’s environmental minister, Huang Runqui, praised Lula’s leadership and endorsed the TFFF, to which China is expected to contribute.
Max Fontaine, Madagascar’s environmental minister, added: “For the first time, a global mechanism declares that protecting a forest is not a burden but a value. For the first time, our nations are recognized as guardians of a common good essential to life on earth.”
But even if successfully launched, TFFF will embark on a daunting mission. According to World Wildlife Fund, the world is “dangerously off track to meet the goal set by over 140 world leaders to halt and reverse” deforestation and degradation by 2030. In 2024 alone, the tropics lost 6.7 million hectares of primary forest; inadequate finance is seen as among the biggest barriers to forest conservation.
Influential Indigenous input
Andrew Deutz, WWF’s managing director of global policy and partnerships, has been consulting with Brazilian finance officials in planning the TFFF and was in New York for Climate Week. He told Mongabay the fund “is almost custom-built for this moment.”
“Multilateral systems seem to be breaking down,” Deutz said, “foreign aid budgets are getting cut and we’re looking for new leadership around the world. So here comes TFFF, which is new and innovative in a number of ways. It’s being led by a developing country, for example, and it’s not asking for grants. It’s asking for loans that will be used to leverage private sector finance.”
Since October 2024 when the TFFF was first described in great detail at the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia, important changes have been written into the fund’s design in response to concerns and criticisms.
Because Indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) are seen as crucial to tropical forest conservation, 20% of all TFFF payments will be earmarked for them. But rather than routing funds through national governments, where money is often stalled or diverted, TFFF can in some cases be paid directly to qualified IPCLs. To help assure compliance, Deutz said, tropical countries who fail to allocate 20% to IPLCs, will lose their eligibility for future payouts.
Marina Silva, Brazil’s minister of the environment and climate change, has been instrumental in TFFF development and was in New York City during Climate Week to discuss it with other environmental ministers. She is shown here in an Oct. 2024 meeting with journalists at the UN biodiversity summit in Cali, Colombia. Image by Justin Catanoso for Mongabay.
To further institutionalize Indigenous involvement, the TFFF will include an Indigenous peoples advisory council to help determine where money should be paid and how it should be used. The Indigenous council will be paired with a technical advisory committee of scientists that will devise systems for monitoring conservation compliance.
The changes thus far in TFFF have earned the support of Juan Carlos Jintiach of Ecuador, head of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, an influential Indigenous political advocacy group.
Though not everyone is fully onboard yet. In an interview with Mongabay prior to Climate Week, Jannes Stoppel, a senior policy advisor for biodiversity and climate politics with Greenpeace-Germany, said that while he supports the idea of TFFF, he’s concerned that greater monitoring transparency will be needed to achieve broader forest protections beyond saving trees.
“If you want to end deforestation and degradation by 2030, you also need to improve your forest monitoring [so] you’re not only looking at hectares,” Stoppel said. “You’re looking at different means of degradation such as road building, logging and so on. I think the more the next iteration of the TFFF aligns with the 2030 forest protection goals, the better.”
Simply put, Stoppel emphasized that monitoring overall ecosystem integrity and ecological health is more important than simply knowing the number of hectares of restored trees.
An Indigenous park guard on forest patrol in Suriname. Indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLCs) are vital to tropical forest stewardship. Image by Rhett A. Butler/Mongabay.
Likely investors
While the TFFF will initially be managed by the World Bank, Brazilian fund organizers listened to critics and pledged that investments will exclude fossil fuel interests and companies in which deforestation is part of their business model.
“That decision is significant because [policymakers] were looking to solve a complicated math problem,” Deutz said of the evolving investment strategy. “How do they invest this portfolio in a way that generates enough return so that they can pay tropical countries $4 per hectare as promised, and do it so that it gets an AA or AAA credit rating and excludes fossil fuels? They [now] believe they have the answers they need.”
Along with China, Deutz said countries such as Norway, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Canada could announce their investments in the TFFF at the UN climate summit in Brazil this November. Oil-rich countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — who often veto climate-action plans at UN meetings — have shown an interest in investing as well.
Realistically, Deutz said, it’s possible that the $25 billion from various nations could be committed by year end. It could then take another three or four years to line up the $100 billion in private investment. Some funds could be paid out before 2030.
Unlike so many past empty promises of global efforts to protect forests, Deutz said, “I am optimistic that we will soon launch something called the TFFF. I’m not sure how much money it will have in the initial phase, but I’m confident it will demonstrate a new model of conservation finance.”
Author: Justin Catanoso
This article was originally published on Mongabay under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence. Read the original article.
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