STOP the TFFF now!
World Rainforest Movement has put out a sign on statement to stop the TFFF.
With COP30 starting in Belém next week, discussions around the Tropical Forests Forever Facility are heating up. On 21 October 2025, the World Bank confirmed that it will be Trustee and Interim Host of the Secretariat for the TFFF.
“The World Bank’s decision today transforms the Tropical Forest Forever Fund [sic] from an idea into a fully operational reality,” Fernando Haddad, Brazil’s Minister of Finance, said. So far, though, only two countries, Brazil and Indonesia, have pledged a total of US$2 billion out of the US$25 billion the Facility hopes to raise from governments, foundations, and philanthropies.
The day before the World Bank made its announcement that it would be Trustee and host the Secretariat for the TFFF, World Rainforest Movement launched a sign on statement to stop the TFFF.
WRM had previously published two critiques of the TFFF. REDD-Monitor wrote about the first of these, written by Larry Lohmann, earlier this month:
The second WRM report is titled “TFFF: A new trap for peoples and forests in the Global South” and is available here.
WRM is calling on groups, organisations, and movements to sign on to its statement to stop the TFFF. WRM notes that the TFFF is “not designed to address the drivers of deforestation, but to benefit investors in financial markets that are actually driving deforestation”.
Far from protecting forests and their communities, this new market-based initiative will actually reinforce a capitalist, racist, colonialist and patriarchal worldview that only deepens current manifold crises and injustices.
Organisations can sign on to the statement here.
The statement is posted here, in full:
Sign-on statement:
Let’s STOP the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) now!UN climate conferences have become a popular place to launch international initiatives with much fanfare, initiatives which usually fail to live up to their promises. At the UN climate summit, in November 2025, in the Amazon city of Belém in Brazil, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) is expected to attract much attention. The center piece of the proposal, however, is the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF).
The architects behind the TFFF promise that by investing US$125 billion of borrowed money into global financial markets, the TFIF will be able to generate profits of around US$3.75 to 4 billion annually. Some of the profits would be passed on to the TFFF to distribute them to countries with tropical forests in the global South.
The TFIF would not use carbon markets or carbon offsetting to raise the money which TFFF expects to distribute to countries with tropical forest. TFFF documents also note that such countries should pass on 20 percent of the money they receive from TFFF to Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities. The idea has been praised by governments, banks and big conservation NGOs.
What lies behind the nice words, however, is a proposal that would make rich investors richer at the cost of people in countries in the global South that are crippled with unsustainable and illegitimate debts.
The set-up of the initiative reveals a colonial rationale:
The TFFF is merely an accessory to the financial core of the initiative, the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF). TFIF will likely be hosted by the World Bank, be staffed by highly paid financial managers and be governed mainly by entities from the global North. Governments of countries with tropical forests will have no say in crucial TFIF financial decisions.
TFIF hopes to borrow US$125 billion by selling bonds to companies from the finance sector and rich country governments. It will then lend this money to countries in the global South in need of more money to pay their crippling and illegitimate debt, or to large-scale state-backed energy, mining, infrastructure, agribusiness, or industrial tree plantation companies in the global South. The hope is that TFIF will receive more annual interest payments from these investments than it has to pay to its lenders, and that a portion of this profit will be used for forest conservation.
Forests and forest peoples are the last in line to receive a share of the hoped-for profits: Any profits TFIF may generate will first be used to pay management fees to the bank hosting the TFIF and TFFF and their financial managers and consultants, then to pay off the TFIF’s big “senior” private investors, then to pay off the “junior” investors (Northern governments and private foundations). If anything is left, governments of countries with tropical forests can apply to receive US$4 per hectare of forest registered with the TFFF – if they pass a ‘deforestation test’.
Governments receiving money from the TFFF are expected to commit to pass on 20 percent to Indigenous Peoples and forest-dependent communities, in recognition of communities’ contributions to forest protection. These payments to communities will not be made directly by TFFF; they will be at the discretion of governments.
The investors buying TFIF bonds and the activities financed by TFIF loans will very likely be linked, directly or indirectly, to deforestation and human rights abuses. In other words, TFFF’s payouts to governments of countries with tropical forests are likely to be funded with profits derived from the destruction of tropical forests. Moreover, the World Bank, as the likely host of the initiative, will control day-to-day decisions of the Fund. The World Bank has a terrible record of promoting deforestation, financing programmes that violate community rights, and imposing policies that have contributed to the crippling debt crisis in many countries in the global South.
TFFF’s claim of addressing large-scale tropical deforestation is empty talk. Past market-based initiatives to protect forests, created in the global North and managed by bankers or other actors, have not halted deforestation. There is no indication that the TFFF and TFIF will be any different. Worse, the TFFF would make wealthy investors who profit from forest destruction look like forest defenders.
Hence, the conclusions are clear:
TFFF is yet another trap that will not stop deforestation.
TFFF is a colonial plan of Northern elites, by Northern elites and for Northern elites that will make the rich richer by extracting wealth from the global South. Initiatives like this one end up reinforcing a capitalist, racist, colonialist and patriarchal vision of the world that only deepens the current injustices and manifold crises.
It is high time to address the root causes of deforestation: unjust economic relations and trade, land grabbing by agribusiness, and expansion of mining and other extractive industries.
Our commitment is to resistance struggles against large-scale projects that destroy forests and fuel climate chaos. TFFF will put solidarity among communities protecting their territories at risk.
For all these reasons, we say NO to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility!
Let’s STOP the TFFF now!
20 October 2025
Initial signatories:
World Rainforest Movement
School of Democratic Economics (Indonesia)
Acción Ecológica (Ecuador)
The Corner House (United Kingdom)
Struggle to Economize the Future Environment (Cameroon)
Project SEVANA South-East Asia (Thailand)
Focus on the Global South
Alianza Biodiversidad – Latin America
Indigenous Environmental NetworkFor further reading:
OMG the TFFF sounds utterly deranged and so last century. I don’t have a great grasp of financial markets but this sounds like: borrow money from Peter, lend it to Paul who is already in debt, use Paul’s repayments (that he likely can’t make) to line the pockets of Peter and his pals, chuck a few pennies at Paul’s communities, pats on the back for Peter and friends who are now the saviours (and richer) AND in the event that Paul can’t pay back the loan, Peter may have access to Paul’s community resources by way of repayment.
Is that close?