Beneath the thick and unbroken rainforest canopy, there is a growing sense of desperation among the guardians of French Guiana’s slice of the Amazon.
Illegal miners, lured by the prospect of untapped gold, are crossing into the French-ruled territory from the nearby border with Brazil, pushing local authorities to the limit.
France spends more than 100 million euros ($115 million) a year to fight illegal gold mining in Guiana Amazonian Park, which extends over some 34,000 square km (13,000 square miles) – an area larger than Belgium.
But stopping the miners sneaking in from Brazil sometimes feels like a losing battle.
“More than money, we need a joint, permanent policing strategy, with officers from both countries on the same boat, to create a barrier and stop the mining along the border,” said Thierry Girardot, a former senior official with the French park’s delegation in Camopi, a handful of wooden buildings separated from Brazil by the meandering Oiapoque River.
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There are an estimated 7,000 miners digging for gold inside the national park at present and about 95% of them are Brazilian, said Major Christophe Laratte, who oversees French operations to combat illegal gold mining in French Guiana alongside the national police force.
The wildcat miners cut down trees and use mercury to separate fragments of gold, polluting rivers and leaving desolation behind them. About 90% of the territory’s coastline shows signs of mercury contamination, Laratte told Climate Home News.
What is the TFFF and will it help?
But despite the damage caused by miners, the vast expanse of forest around the Oiapoque is still relatively pristine, making the Brazilian side of the border a potential candidate for funding from the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), the new multilateral fund launched by Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva ahead of COP30 in the Amazon city of Belém.
Under the current plan, Brazil would be eligible for an estimated $1.3 billion a year in forest payments, according to online platform TFFF Watch. However, this amount would need to be split between the country’s conservation areas and Indigenous territories, numbering more than 3,700 in total.
Part of France, French Guiana is not listed among the forested developing nations that could be eligible to benefit from the fund, in contrast with Brazil.
But while authorities on both sides of the border hope the TFFF could boost efforts to fight illegal mining by channelling cash to local communities, Indigenous leaders and economists told Climate Home News they feared the planned fund would be no match for the profits from illegality – even once the fund is able to start disbursing aid.
The TFFF aims to raise $25 billion in public capital and an additional $100 billion from private investors, operating as a fixed-income investment fund. Its returns will be used to reward developing countries and local communities that conserve tropical forests and act as a disincentive to activities that damage them.
So far, Brazil and Indonesia have contributed $1 billion each and Norway has promised to provide $3 billion once the fund secures its first $12 billion. Germany, France and Colombia have also offered support under varying conditions.
Brazil’s Ministry of Finance told Climate Home News that the next step after COP30 is to set up governing boards for the TFFF and the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF), its investment arm.
The TFIF will only be launched when it reaches an initial goal of $10 billion in startup capital, the ministry said, adding that more fundraising activities are planned for the short term. So far, the TFFF has raised about $6.7 billion in total, around half on conditional terms.
The new rainforest fund plans to pay countries about $4 per hectare of conserved forest per year, obliging them to demonstrate the results of their forest protection efforts before receiving the money. According to the concept note, at least 20% of the resources should be allocated to Indigenous peoples and local communities.
Miners use profits to make inroads
But officials and Indigenous leaders battling illegal miners along the border between French Guiana and the far northern Brazilian state of Amapá said their experience suggests the fund’s promise of more financial aid may not be enough to deter the destructive activity.
Siméon Monnerville, chief of the Teko people, said basic social assistance paid by the French government to every resident of about 600 euros (around $700) a month had not stopped miners from recruiting Indigenous locals.
He said the miners look for people who know the rivers and streams, initially offering them excessive sums of more than 1,000 euros per day.
Explainer: Can a new climate fund help save the world’s rainforests?
With few other ways to earn money to buy goods such as smartphones, many are tempted, said a leader of the Waiãpi people, another Indigenous community living on both sides of the border.
“There is almost always an Indigenous person in the boat, because they know how to pass the rocks in the river,” the leader said, asking to speak on condition of anonymity.
Across the Oiapoque, Brazil’s Montanhas do Tumucumaque national park spans nearly 39,000 square km (15,000 square miles).
Here, too, the miners have made deep economic inroads.
Inside the borders of the national park, many of the 800 residents of the village of Vila Brasil make a living by catering to the needs of the miners, operating restaurants and guesthouses and selling equipment.
The community also has secured political backing – highlighting another potential hurdle for the TFFF in Brazil and elsewhere. A bill in the Brazilian Congress introduced by Senator Lucas Barreto, who represents Amapá, seeks to remove the village from the national park’s boundaries and shrink the protected area by 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres).
Shopkeepers in Vila Brasil, who spoke to Climate Home News on condition of anonymity, said they supported the bill and wanted the village removed from the park, which would drastically reduce the risk, intensity and frequency of government enforcement.
Fund’s financial promises “too small”
The issue highlights a crucial flaw in the TFFF’s design, said Tasso Azevedo, one of Brazil’s leading experts in climate and forest policy, founder of MapBiomas and former director of the Brazilian Forest Service.
Azevedo, who two years ago presented the original conservation finance proposal to Lula’s team that eventually became the TFFF, said the amount the TFFF has fixed for reward payments is no match for the illegal profits that drive deforestation.
“The payment per hectare was set very low, because it was calculated based on what they thought could be raised from the fund,” he said.
The original idea, developed by Azevedo and economist Pedro Moura, was for the global oil industry to commit $1 per barrel of oil produced. With current demand of roughly 30 billion barrels per year, this could have supported payments of about $30 per hectare per year of conserved tropical forest – while the final TFFF proposal offers just $4.
“Certainly, the current value is not enough to stop economies that destroy forests. It’s a very small amount,” Azevedo said.
In the meantime, the biggest question mark hanging over the plan is whether it can raise its initial target of $125 billion, said Moura, a specialist in market-based conservation mechanisms who heads BVRio, an environmental commodities and traceability company.
“That’s the big ‘if’ right now,” he said.
“It’s not all about money”
The Brazilian government says the TFFF’s distinguishing feature lies in its promise of a steady, long-term flow of payments guaranteed by investment returns, and that the proposed $125 billion target is only a starting point rather than a minimum requirement.
For João Resende, secretary for economic affairs at Brazil’s Finance Ministry, the key lies in changing how governments see climate spending.
“The big shift is getting countries to stop seeing it as an expense and start treating it as an investment. Brazil was able to put in $1 billion because we see it as investment,” he said.
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In Montanhas do Tumucumaque, park director Fernanda Brandão said budget constraints limit the Brazilian authorities’ ability to crack down on illegal mining. That means proposals such as the TFFF could help bring consistency to enforcement actions as long as the payments ensure a steady stream of funding.
On the other side of the border, Laratte said reining in the miners is challenging and requires a multi-pronged approach.
Miners quickly adapt to law enforcement strategies by funding networks of lookouts and preparing back-up kits to replace equipment seized during operations, which cost the French government about 110 million euros per year, he added.
“It’s a complex issue, involving social, strategic and diplomatic aspects,” Laratte said. “It’s not all about money.”
Reporting for this story was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Main image: Siméon Monnerville, chief of the Teko people, says illegal miners recruit Indigenous locals with the promise of high wages, in Camopi, French Guiana. (Photo: Pedro Ladeira)
The post Deep in the Amazon, forest protection cash must vie with glitter of illegal gold appeared first on Climate Home News.
Deep in the Amazon, forest protection cash must vie with glitter of illegal gold
Even measures designed to help, like air conditioning, can create vicious cycles that lead to hotter temps.
It’s about to get hotter in our nation’s cities. Just how hot it gets depends not only on the weather, but also on infrastructure, working conditions and ZIP codes.
The Turkish government has announced the dates and venues for the COP31 leaders’ summit and pre-COP meetings, and appointed a Turkish waste campaigner and Australian cattle farmer as climate “champions”.
In an open letter, published by the UN climate body on Tuesday, the Turkish environment minister and COP31 President-Designate Murat Kurum said the COP31 World Leaders’ Summit, at which dozens of heads of government are expected, will take place in Antalya, on Türkiye’s south coast, on November 11 and 12.
Previous leaders’ summits have taken place on the first two days of the COP negotiations or, at last year’s conference in Belém, before the start. But this year’s gathering will take place on the third and fourth day (Wednesday and Thursday) of the November 9-20 talks. Kurum said the summit “will be a key moment in generating political momentum and visibility for COP31”.
Last November, when Türkiye was chosen as host of the annual UN climate summit, Kurum said that, while the negotiations would be in the resort city of Antalya, the leaders’ summit would take place in the country’s largest city Istanbul. No explanation for the change of decision was given in Kurum’s letter.
Pacific pre-COP
Every COP conference is preceded by a smaller pre-COP gathering, attended by government climate negotiators. Because of a deal struck with Australia, which gave up its bid to physically host the summit in exchange for leading the COP31 discussions, this year’s pre-COP will take place on the Pacific island of Fiji, with a “leaders’ event” a 2.5-hour flight north in Tuvalu.
Kurum’s letter said both events would take place between October 5-8 and “will contribute to reflecting diverse perspectives in an inclusive manner”.
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The letter confirms that Australia’s climate and energy minister, Chris Bowen, will be given the title of “President of Negotiations” and “will have exclusive authority in leading the COP31 Negotiations, in consultation with Türkiye”.
“I have complete faith in his work,” said Kurum, adding that the two will send out a joint letter “in the coming weeks” which outlines their priorities regarding the negotiations.
The COP negotiations will be discussed at the annual Petersberg Climate Dialogue in Berlin on April 21 and 22. German State Secretary Jochen Flasbarth recently announced plans to travel to Australia and meet with Bowen to discuss the talks.
COP31 champions
In his letter, Kurum announced that Samed Ağırbaş, president of Türkiye’s Zero Waste Foundation, which was set up by the country’s First Lady, has been appointed as the COP31 Climate High-Level Champion, tasked with working with business, cities and regions and civil society to promote climate action.
Sally Higgins, a young Australian cattle farmer and sustainability consultant who has also carried out research on land-use change, has been appointed as Youth Climate Champion. Kurum said she “is a passionate advocate for climate change and elevating the voices of young people”.
Turkish officials Fatma Varank, Halil Hasar and Mehmet Ali Kahraman have been appointed as COP31 CEO, Chief Climate Diplomacy Officer and Director of the COP31 Presidency Office respectively. Deputy environment ministers Ömer Bulut and Burak Demiralp will lead on construction and infrastructure, and operational and logistical processes.
Kurum said Türkiye’s Presidency would continue to use the Troika approach – a term coined two years ago under Azerbaijan’s COP29 Presidency, which worked with the previous Emirati COP28 and subsequent Brazilian COP30 hosts.
Kurum said the Troika approach offers “stability and predictability by connecting past, current and future presidencies” and that “in this regard” Türkiye and Australia would work “in close cooperation with Azerbaijan and Brazil”. This appears to overlook the 2027 COP32 host – Ethiopia.
The post Türkiye sets COP31 dates and appoints Australian cattle farmer as youth champion appeared first on Climate Home News.
Türkiye sets COP31 dates and appoints Australian cattle farmer as youth champion
Mae Buenaventura is the manager of the debt justice programme of the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development, a regional alliance of peoples’ movements, community organizations, coalitions, NGOs and networks
A potentially historic shift in public debt governance is set to unfold in Washington DC this week as Global South governments take a collective stand to stop a “silent killer” of development financing.
The first-ever UN-hosted borrowers’ forum will officially be launched on April 15 on the sidelines of the 2026 Spring Meetings of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. Led by five convening countries – Zambia, Egypt, Nepal, the Maldives and Pakistan – the initiative is one of the key wins of last year’s 4th Financing for Development Conference (FFD4) in Sevilla, Spain.
The forum’s mandate is to establish a platform for borrower countries, supported by a UN secretariat, “to discuss technical issues, share information and experiences in addressing debt challenges, increase access to technical assistance and capacity-building in debt management, coordinate approaches and strengthen borrower countries’ voices in the global debt architecture”.
Instead of facing lenders alone, these countries will now use a UN-backed platform to share technical expertise and coordinate their approach to a global debt system that is fundamentally broken.
Debt grips climate-vulnerable nations
The human cost of the current debt architecture is staggering. According to the UN trade and development agency, UNCTAD, more than 40% of the global population – roughly 3.4 billion people – live in countries where the government is forced to spend more on debt payments than on the health, education and social protection of its citizens.
In so-called low-income countries, governments spend an average of 7.5% of their total budgets on debt service, with interest payments consuming up to 20% of total government revenue in these regions.
The Philippines is a case study in this financial stranglehold. It is part of a global majority forced to watch its public services crumble and infrastructure lag while its wealth is siphoned off to satisfy foreign lenders.
The policy of automatic appropriations – a legacy of the rule of late former President Ferdinand Marcos Sr. – mandates that debt servicing takes precedence over any other public expenditure, effectively placing the demands of lenders above the needs of the Filipino people. Even as it faces a $1.5 trillion regional financing gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030, its hands remain tied by a legal framework that values credit ratings over human lives.
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As a “middle-income country” (MIC), the Philippines is stuck in a frustrating purgatory. It is often deemed “too wealthy” for the G20’s debt-relief framework, yet too poor to absorb global economic shocks. Last year, Finance Undersecretary Joven Balbosa hit the nail on the head when he called for support that goes “beyond the simplistic income categorization” that ignores a country’s actual vulnerabilities.
Without an inclusive and equitable global debt architecture, nations including the Philippines are left to navigate catastrophic climate risks and economic shocks with zero fiscal breathing space.
No respite during climate disasters
The regional evidence of this systemic failure is everywhere. Take Pakistan, which in 2022 was hit by catastrophic flooding that submerged a third of the country and caused billions in losses. Despite this climate-driven disaster, World Bank data shows that Pakistan made payments in 2023 of $11.8 billion for public and publicly guaranteed (PPG) external debt, while its PPG external debt reached $93 billion that same year, surpassing pre-pandemic debt of $87 billion (2020).
Sri Lanka followed IMF prescriptions throughout 16 lending programs since 1991, only to become the first Asian country this century to default. Its MIC status prevents application for debt relief and restructuring measures. Today, the Sri Lankan people bear the brunt of harsh conditionalities, including raising VAT from 8% to 15%, slashing food and fuel subsidies, and the erosion of hard-earned worker pensions.
Currently, the global rules of lending and borrowing are set by a “creditors’ club” composed of the IMF, the World Bank and the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable it set up, and the Paris Club.
These institutions measure “debt sustainability” through a narrow lens of a country’s capacity to make timely repayments. They largely ignore internal economic inequalities, gender disparities and the existential threat of climate change.
Crises should trigger debt service cancellation
By organising the new borrowers’ forum, the Global South is signalling that the era of passive “standard-setting” by lenders is over.
The ultimate goal for global civil society and debt justice movements is the establishment of a UN Debt Convention; a democratic, binding and inclusive framework that governs both lenders and borrowers. This mechanism would ensure that debt restructuring and cancellation are sufficient to allow countries to fulfill their international human rights obligations and implement necessary climate actions.
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To be truly transformative, debt sustainability analyses must align with human rights and sustainable development needs. This means conducting impact assessments – both before and after loans are issued – to identify “illegitimate” debts that do not benefit the public.
Crucially, we need an automatic debt service cancellation mechanism that triggers during extreme climatic, environmental or health shocks. We also need a binding global debt registry to ensure that every loan is transparent and subject to public scrutiny.
Whether the borrowers’ forum becomes a true milestone depends on its courage to challenge the status quo. We can no longer allow debt to act as a “silent killer” of our future. It is time to demand a financial system that serves humanity, not just the balance sheets of the powerful.
The post Broken debt system must be fixed to confront future climate shocks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Broken debt system must be fixed to confront future climate shocks
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