The Tropical Forest Forever Facility beat goes on
With more questions than answers.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) was launched at the Belém Climate Summit which took place just before COP30 in November 2025. In a TFFF press release about the launch, Brazil’s President President Lula da Silva said,
“The Tropical Forest Forever Facility will be one of the main tangible outcomes in the spirit of COP30 implementation. It is symbolic that the celebration of its birth is taking place here in Belém, surrounded by sumaúmas, açaí palms, andirobas, and jacarandás. In just a few years, we will begin to see the fruits of this fund.”
But the reality is that the TFFF raised far less than its target of US$25 billion from countries and philanthropic organisations. So far, Brazil and Indonesia have committed US$1 billion each. France has committed US$578 million. Germany has committed US$1.17 billion.
Norway is “proposing to allocate” US$3 billion over a period of ten years. But this comes with three conditions:
At least US$10 billion must be raised by the end of 2026;
Norway is not to provide more than 20% of the total amount; and
The funding model must be sustainable and “maintain an acceptable level of risk”.
These conditions raise several questions. Will Norway’s US$3 billion be allowed to count towards the US$10 billion target by the end of 2026? Or, in order to comply with the second condition and not to exceed 20%, will only US$2 billion be counted? Since US$3 billion is 20% of US$15 billion, does the second condition mean that Norway will only start handing over the money when the total committed reaches US$15 billion? Presumably the third condition reflects the fact that Norway doesn’t consider the current level of risk involved to be acceptable. But how exactly will Norway determine what an “acceptable level of risk” is?
Too risky?
The idea behind the TFFF is to invest a total of US$125 billion. Governments will provide US$25 billion and institutional and private investors the remaining US$100 billion. The aim is to raise US$4 billion a year, which will be payable to tropical governments a the rate of US$4 for every hectare of forest that they protect.
Development Today’s Ann Danaiya Usher lists a series of questions that economists have raised about the scheme:
Can it raise as much as USD 25 billion from the sponsors, the donor governments? Is it too risky to focus exclusively on emerging market bonds, as originally proposed? Will payments start flowing soon enough to address the deforestation crisis? Can it really deliver the promised USD 4 billion a year? If disbursements dry up due to market volatility, will there still be an incentive to keep forests standing?
Development Today reports that Charlotte Hamill, a partner at Boston-based hedge fund Bracebridge Capital, has been advising the Brazilian government on the TFFF. She suggested investing not only in emerging market bonds, but also in corporate bonds in rich countries. This increases the number of investments available and helps reduces risks, João Paulo de Resende, TFFF leader at Brazil’s Ministry of Finance, told Development Today.
TFFF plans to exclude “investments that cause significant environmental impact, such as deforestation and GHG emissions,” according to the latest version of the TFFF Concept Note (which is dated October 2024, but is still only available in English, and is labelled “Official Use Only”).
Payments delayed
Recently, Andrew Deutz, managing director of global policy and partnerships at WWF, told Climate Home News that raising US$125 billion of public and private investment could take years. “I don’t think we’re going to see payments to rainforest countries until 2028 or 2029,” Deutz said.
WWF is one of the organisations involved in developing the TFFF.
“There needs to be a capacity-building process over the next couple of years with Indigenous organisations and local communities to be able to manage the flow of funds at that level,” Deutz added.
Which sounds ever so slightly like a return to the REDD-readiness phase of the World Bank’s Forest Carbon Partnership Facility from over a decade ago.
Resende told Climate Home News that he recently toured East Asia and spoke about the TFFF with government officials from Japan, South Korea, and China.
According to Deutz, if the TFFF reaches the US$10 billion target by the end of 2026, the fund could start raising private finance up to about US$40 billion.
“We need US$125 billion”
In January 2026, at an event at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Xenia zu Hohenlohe , Special TFFF Envoy for the World Bank said, “The fantastic figures that we’re going to be hearing about is because we need US$125 billion. We need something that is so huge to address this huge issue.”
To put this in context, in 2025 military spending globally reached US$2.63 trillion, up from US$2.48 trillion in 2024. The illegal, illegitimate, dangerous, and undeclared US-Israel war in Iran is costing about US$2 billion a day.
Deutz told Climate Home News that the UK is expected to announce a commitment to TFFF this year. This is despite the fact that last week the UK announced a 20% cut in international climate finance. Yvette Cooper, the UK’s Foreign secretary said the cuts were necessary “to deliver the biggest increase in defence spending since the Cold War”.