Although tropical rainforest They contain the world’s richest biodiversity, regulate the climate and hold vast stores of carbon dioxide, with humans often seeing more value in destroying them.
The vast Amazon rainforest has generally suffered from overexploitation, loss Up to 3,000 football fields of forest will be removed every day during the peak of deforestation in 2022 to make way for cattle and crops such as soybeans.
Myriad International Treaties and environmental laws aimed at protecting these forests have had limited success. But a new conservation initiative, the so-called The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), plans to shift the target by putting a value on conservation.
How does the Forest Initiative work?
Initiated by the Brazilian government, The TFFF aims to create a global forest facility or fund through national contributions totaling $25 billion (€21.5 billion), which is expected to be quadrupled by private investors to $125 billion.
The plan is to invest these funds in high-yield bonds, in which investors will receive annual fixed interest rate returns from approximately $4 billion of projected annual profits. After interest is paid to investors, the remaining amount will be distributed among developing countries that have committed to preserving or restoring their rainforests.
paid per copy-On a hectare basis, these funds will almost triple existing financing available for tropical forest conservation. In some cases, the amount may exceed the entire national budget for the environment and forest ministries.
National Commitments to the facility will be sought when the TFFF is launched in November at the United Nations Climate Summit, or COP 30, in the Brazilian city of Belém – the gateway to the Amazon.
“We know that tropical forests are a source of climate stability because they retain carbon and ensure the water cycle,” Andre Aquino, chief special economic adviser at Brazil’s environment ministry, said in a statement. “More than 80% of the world’s terrestrial biodiversity is found in tropical forests.”
Aquino has said before The TFFF seeks to remunerate some critical ecosystem services through a stable fund that is untouched by even short-term political cycles.
,brazil has introduced a financing mechanism [that] Wants Pay per hectare of protected forest, whether in Brazil, Congo, Indonesia or Malaysia,, e-minister of brazilEnvironment and climate change, marina silva Told DW.
Want to protect the declining forests, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva first suggested the TFFF financing mechanism at COP28 in Dubai in 2023. Now Brazil has pledged $1 billion for the facility.
“Brazil will lead by example,” Lula said in September. The initiative claims that if funding can be found at the upcoming COP30, the conservation mechanism could become one of the largest multilateral funds ever created.
A price tag on the standing forestS
more than that 70 developing countries with tropical forests are eligible to receive the funds. In addition to Brazil, countries joining the TFFF initiative include Colombia, Ghana, Democratic Republic of Congo, Indonesia and Malaysia. Potential investor countries range from Germany to the United Arab Emirates, France, Norway, the United Kingdom and China.
“Finally we are putting a price tag and giving value to standing forest,” said Claudio Angelo, chief communications officer for Climate Observatory, a network of 77 NGOs in Brazil. “This could be a game changer because it will change the way we think about the value of forests,” he told DW.
for natalie According to Unterstel, founder and president of Talanoa, a climate policy think tank based in Rio de Janeiro, the added value of the TFFF is that it does not promote carbon offsets or reforestation schemes used to offset carbon emissions.
“There is no compensation,” he said, noting that forest conservation measures under the TFFF do not incentivize countries to emit carbon elsewhere. This scheme is purely “for protection” Support added.
The climate campaigner hopes countries will donate generously to the TFFF at COP30 “so that the initial $25 billion target can be met as quickly as possible.”
Indigenous and local communities will be the key to conservation
While national governments Those who manage the forests will be the primary beneficiaries of the TFFF payments, with local indigenous communities having direct access to 20% of total funding for forest conservation under the deal.
indigenous and According to a 2021 report by the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization and the Fund for the Development of Indigenous Peoples of Latin America and the Caribbean, indigenous peoples are the “best custodians” of forests, meaning the ecosystems they manage lead to less deforestation and lower carbon emissions. The report states that in Brazil, deforestation in indigenous areas is 2.5 times less than in other areas.
Dario Brazil’s Finance Deputy Minister Durigan, who oversees funding for the TFFF, confirmed to DW that a “minimum” of 20% of resources paid to tropical countries “will be given directly to local communities.”
New multilateral initiatives have been described Seen by Greenpeace as a potential “breakthrough in forest conservation”, the environmental organization also wants to ensure that funds are properly invested in effective conservation, and that any ongoing deforestation and forest degradation is expertly monitored.
Durigan It stressed that tropical forest countries ranging from Brazil to Congo, Indonesia, Peru and Colombia will receive funding from the TFFF facility only if they show “concrete results” in terms of conserving standing forests.
Syahrul Fitra, global co-project lead for Greenpeace Indonesia’s Forest Solutions, said in a statement that she hoped the initiative could succeed if it avoided the “same trap” of prior initiatives that failed to reduce deforestation – which is set to double globally between 2023 and 2024, largely due to fires lit to clear tropical forests for agriculture.
tfff This is novel, Durigan says, because unlike piecemeal National Forest Conservation grants, this fund is a “permanent instrument” founded on “multilateral cooperation” and “investing in the future of our countries.”
Edited by: Tamsin Walker
Additional reporting by Lewis Osborne and Beatrice Cristofaro.