Rewarding Tropical Forest Conservation and Restoration
Deforestation and degradation – especially in the tropics – contribute to more annual CO2 emissions in the atmosphere than any human activity other than energy production and consumption.
Deforestation also cripples our planet’s ability to filter carbon dioxide from our air. Destroying these carbon sinks threatens entire watersheds, endangered species and endangered cultures. According to the IPCC, “reducing deforestation and forest degradation rates represents one of the most effective and robust options for climate change mitigation.”
During a panel at the COP28 climate summit in Dubai, Brazilian Environment Minister Marina Silva and Finance Minister Fernando Haddad unveiled “Tropical Forests Forever,” which aims to raise $250 billion for efforts to protect and restore the world’s tropical forests. This proposal builds on the earlier work led by the World Bank, the Center for Global Development and the Rockefeller Foundation.
Environment ministers of the Group of 20 nations agreed Thursday to support the creation of funding sources for ecosystem services, acknowledging Brazil’s proposal to establish a trust fund for forest conservation.
Known as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), the Brazilian initiative would reward tropical forest countries for protecting the critical biomes. The environment ministers of leading rich and developing countries assembled this week in Rio de Janeiro for four-day meetings to discuss climate change and sustainability. The topic is one of Brazil’s priorities as it hosts the G20 presidency until the end of the year, with heads of state convening in Rio next month.
The TFFF would reward tropical forest countries for protecting the natural tropical forests that provide enormous development benefits and are a critical part of humanity’s effort to combat climate change. The funds, which would be raised from governments and the private sector, would go into an independently-managed fund which could be drawn upon by tropical countries that meet expectations for forest conservation and deforestation. Countries would see a reduction in the availability of funding if their deforestation rate increased.
By providing an explicit payment for conservation and restoration of tropical forests, the facility would help to address a significant market failure, placing a value to the ecosystem services that those forests render to water management, biodiversity preservation, soil protection, nutrient cycling, continental and global climate regulation, and climate resilience.
Correcting this market failure will also help reduce poverty and advance economic development, both in forest countries and globally. As this market failure has gone unaddressed, deforestation and degradation have proceeded unabated in many developing countries as a result of seemingly compelling economic incentives.
Existing initiatives and programs have made progress, but they have not proven sufficient to overcome entrenched interests in the business-as-usual drivers of destruction, and reverse global trends in deforestation and degradation of forests. A new large incentive is needed to generate political will, support country ownership of conservation objectives, and draw attention of key decision makers, including heads of state and ministers of finance and planning, to address the governance changes needed.
The TFFF will offer a substantial, long-term reward for successfully tackling deforestation. It provides an additional incentive for forest nations to meet this challenge and to seek out and effectively utilize the international community’s existing mechanisms, without increasing funding demands on government budgets. In short, the proposed facility seeks to establish financial transfers that do not rely on grant contributions strategically designed as conditional incentives for results-based efforts at halting and reversing deforestation and forest degradation. Importantly, while the TFFF would provide a major incentive for forest nations to conserve and enhance these important resources, it is not intended to be the only solution. It would complement, not replace, other policies and initiatives necessary to achieve this key objective, including REDD+ program, development of effective carbon credit markets, and changes in agricultural policies and practices.
The TFFF proposal emerges amid a growing interest in nature-based solutions for addressing climate change and other environmental challenges. It also follows a significant decrease in Amazon deforestation after Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s re-election as President of Brazil.In the first ten months since Lula’s return to office, deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon has dropped by 50 percent compared to 2022.
“We need more economic incentives to expedite forest conservation,” said Gary Chandler, founder of Sacred Seedlings. “Economic incentives are driving deforestation and global warming, so we must fight fire with fire to defend ecosystems and the livability of our planet.”
During last year’s presidential campaign against incumbent Jair Bolsonaro, Lula committed to addressing rampant deforestation in the Earth’s largest rainforest. Since taking office, his administration has been working to rebuild the environmental policy framework dismantled under Bolsonaro while proposing new initiatives to protect forests. Lula has also advanced the idea of an alliance of tropical forest nations, including Indonesia and the Democratic Republic of Congo, to secure global support for conservation.
After unveiling the Tropical Forests Forever, Brazil continued on its tropical forests push at COP28 by announcing the Arc of Restoration program, which will allocate up to $205 million to restore 60,000 square km (23,160 square miles) of deforested and degraded forest land in the Amazon by 2030.
