The World Bank has abandoned a target for 45% of the funding it gives developing countries to be “climate finance”, following months of pressure from the Trump administration in the US.
However, a concerted effort by developed- and developing-country shareholders has seen the bank hold onto its “action plan” for tackling climate change.
The multilateral development bank (MDB) – which is headquartered in Washington DC – is the single largest provider of climate finance globally, distributing $39.2bn in 2025 alone, primarily as loans.
Amid widespread aid cuts by developed countries, the World Bank and other MDBs have previously pledged to significantly scale up their climate finance over the next decade.
Despite scrapping its central target, the bank says it will continue to support the demands of its “clients”, many of which have explicitly stated their need for climate-related investment.
Here, Carbon Brief looks at the likely impact of the World Bank’s policy shift and whether it is – as one expert puts it – “mostly a symbolic victory” for the US.
- How does the World Bank support climate action?
- Why has the World Bank abandoned its climate-finance target?
- Why is the World Bank important for international climate finance?
- How will these changes affect global climate action?
How does the World Bank support climate action?
The World Bank is the oldest and largest MDB. It is tasked by its 189 member governments – the bank’s shareholders – with supporting development projects around the world.
The US is the bank’s largest shareholder, followed, in order, by Japan, China, Germany, France and the UK.
Every year, the bank provides billions of dollars – predominantly as loans – to developing countries.
(One part of the World Bank, the International Development Association – IDA – specifically distributes grants to lower-income nations, as well as lower-interest loans.)
Through its financing, the World Bank also has an important role in “mobilising” private investments in developing countries.
In recent years, the bank has increasingly focused on helping developing countries to cut emissions and adapt their economies for climate change.
The World Bank provided $164bn in what it calls financing with climate “co-benefits” between 2020 and 2025.
The largest share of this funding – roughly one-fifth – went to clean energy and electricity access projects. Smaller shares went to areas such as public transport, water supply and sustainable farming.
As the map below shows, the largest recipients of the bank’s climate funds since 2020 have been emerging economies, such as Turkey ($10.3bn), India ($9bn) and Nigeria ($6.3bn).
Among the largest World Bank projects in recent years are two extensive programmes in India, totalling nearly $3bn, supporting renewables and green hydrogen.
Others include $1.7bn for a Pakistan hydropower project, $926m for Iraq’s railways and $803m to boost “green development” in Colombia.
Despite the bank’s major role in providing climate finance to developing countries, it has faced heavy scrutiny from climate advocates.
In particular, they have noted the dominance of loans that push developing countries further into debt. The World Bank has also been criticised for a lack of transparency around how it classifies projects as “climate-related”, as well as “over-reporting” of climate finance.
Why has the World Bank abandoned its climate-finance target?
When World Bank president Ajay Banga – nominated by former US president Joe Biden – took over the institution in 2023, there were widespread calls for MDB reform.
Many of the bank’s shareholders wanted to see billions more dollars being channelled to support climate action. Later that year, Banga announced that the bank would ensure that 45% of the bank’s funding was climate finance by 2025.
This replaced an existing target of 35% for climate finance between 2021 and 2025, which had been set out in the bank’s second climate change action plan (CCAP).
The CCAP is intended to “mainstream” climate action in the bank’s work. With it in place, the World Bank’s climate finance more than doubled from $17.2bn in 2020 to $39.2bn in 2025.
As the chart below shows, this meant the World Bank exceeded its 2025 goal, with climate-related projects making up a 48% share of total funding that year.
When Biden was replaced by Donald Trump as president in 2025, the US administration turned against international cooperation, including climate finance.
However, the US did not walk away from the World Bank, where it exerts considerable power as the largest shareholder.
With the CCAP due to expire in July 2026, the US has spent months pressuring the bank and its shareholders to weaken or abandon the plan altogether.
US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent issued a statement during the 2026 World Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF) spring meetings in April 2026, in which he called for “jettisoning” the 45% climate-finance target. More broadly, he said:
“We welcome the coming expiration of the CCAP and…expect the bank to immediately shift its myopic focus on climate and financing volumes to one that emphasises high-quality, durable projects.”
This vision involves a push for the World Bank to finance more fossil-fuel projects, including drilling for new gas. (The bank has committed since 2019 to stop funding upstream oil and gas projects.)
The decision on whether to continue with the CCAP was negotiated behind closed doors by the board of directors – representing national shareholders. There were reports of “deep divides”.
A joint statement from 19 of the 25 directors last year affirmed the need for both a plan and a target. The US, Russia, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia all declined to sign up, while Japan and India abstained, according to Reuters.
There were reports of European nations championing a climate plan, bolstered by support from the developing countries that would stand to receive climate finance. The US call to drop the 45% target entirely was reportedly backed by Saudi Arabia and Russia.
Ultimately, the day before the CCAP was due to lapse, the World Bank announced what appeared to be a middle ground. It would drop both the 45% target and the 35% goal it had replaced, while also “extend[ing]” the CCAP.
UK development minister Jenny Chapman told a committee hearing in the House of Commons the next day that this marked a “compromise”. She said:
“It wasn’t clear we were going to get a CCAP at all and a bank without an action plan on climate is a problem for us – so that’s a good outcome.”
Supportive shareholders had been pushing for a one-year extension of the plan. While the World Bank did not initially define the length, Chapman confirmed on LinkedIn that the plan had, in fact, been extended “indefinitely”.
The bank said it would also engage an “independent evaluation group” to assess the CCAP, in line with a board request.
Gaia Larsen, director of climate finance at the World Resources Institute (WRI), tells Carbon Brief that this evaluation will likely be “relatively free from political ideology” and could be “focused on how to make the CCAP more effective”.
Why is the World Bank important for international climate finance?
Under the Paris Agreement, developed countries – including major World Bank shareholders in Europe and elsewhere – are obliged to provide climate finance for developing countries.
This includes a target of $300bn a year by 2035, which is expected to largely come from developed countries. One significant way these nations can contribute to this goal is via their support for MDBs, particularly the World Bank.
The World Bank has described itself as “by far the largest provider of climate finance to developing countries”. Each year, it oversees half of all climate finance from MDBs and far more than any single donor country.
Many developed countries have, therefore, enthusiastically backed the World Bank’s climate efforts, as well as a “bigger” role for MDBs in development more broadly. The bank can lend sums that far exceed the amount of new public finance that individual nations are willing to commit.
This is particularly significant, given many of these nations, including the UK, Germany and France, have announced large cuts to their aid budgets in recent years.
Carbon Brief analysis suggests that roughly a fifth of the international climate finance provided and “mobilised” by developed countries in recent years can be attributed to their World Bank contributions, as the chart below shows.
(This only accounts for the World Bank financing that can be linked to developed-country shares in the bank. Developing countries, such as China, also have significant shares, which are not included in the chart below.)
MDBs – including the World Bank – have committed to providing $120bn in climate finance to developing countries by 2030.
This was set to come from greater shareholder contributions, combined with a programme of reforms to free up capital.
If the World Bank continued to provide half of the MDB total, it would need to increase its climate finance by around 50%, from $39.2bn today to $60bn in 2030.
Therefore, experts see a “key” role for the World Bank in achieving not only the $300bn target, but also the more aspirational $1.3n target that countries agreed as part of the “new collective quantified goal” (NCQG) on climate finance at COP29 in 2024. This includes the private capital it could “unlock” through its lending.
Joe Thwaites, international climate finance director at Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), tells Carbon Brief that these “NCQG politics” are “quite important”. He says:
“The maths of the $300bn does not work if the MDBs pull back and so I think that’s why you’re seeing developed countries taking a stand.”
How will these changes affect global climate action?
To date, the World Bank has only released minimal details about its new climate plans. As such, experts say the impact on future climate finance remains uncertain.
Jon Sward, environment project manager at the Bretton Woods Project, tells Carbon Brief:
“They have said they are going to retain all the same processes about climate-finance reporting. So, of course, there is a world in which, actually, climate finance continues to increase like it has been.”
Some of the World Bank’s internal organisations will, in fact, keep their climate-finance goals for the time being. For example, the IDA’s largely grant-based funding retains a 45% target for its current round, which will last until 2028 – the year of the next US presidential election.
However, WRI’s Larsen tells Carbon Brief that the changes, from a bank that was previously a “champion for climate action”, remain significant:
“This reality, reinforced by the elimination of the 45% goal, means that it would not be surprising to see a reduction in climate investments.”
In a statement, the World Bank said its “work on climate is and will remain firmly client driven”, noting that it supports nations undertaking their Paris Agreement climate plans.
Therefore, its climate focus may come down to whether there is demand for climate action from “client” countries receiving finance.
At an April event in discussion with the climate sceptic Bjørn Lomborg, Bessent said that global financial institutions should focus on growth, characterising climate action as an “elite belief”.
The implication from the US Treasury secretary was that recipient countries are not interested in climate action. However, as reported by Devex, a group of World Bank shareholders representing nearly 100 developing countries, wrote a letter that appeared to push back against this framing.
This “G11+” group, led by Brazil and China, said the bank “must remain firmly client-driven”, noting that countries are “following nationally determined pathways toward climate action”. NRDC’s Thwaites tells Carbon Brief:
“It’s one thing for the Europeans to talk about climate…This was the client countries [100 developing countries] saying: ‘No, we want this.’”
Recent research by the ODI thinktank found that 79% of developing-country officials polled wanted to see MDB investment in solar projects, 54% wanted hydropower and 47% wanted wind power. Only 13% wanted investment in gas-power plants.
Rishikesh Ram Bhandary, a senior development researcher at Boston University, has stressed the need for an “enhanced CCAP”, which could be supported by the bank’s new independent evaluation. Among other things, he tells Carbon Brief:
“The bank needs to make a more convincing case about how climate change is being integrated into development priorities rather than competing with them.”
Thwaites says he is hopeful that the outcome is “mostly a symbolic victory for the US”.
However, he says major shareholders from Europe and elsewhere should make it clear to the bank that it is not “the only game in town” when it comes to climate finance. He says:
“If [the World Bank] are going to cave into one shareholder, when the vast majority of the other shareholders are supportive of continuing climate action, they can take their money elsewhere.”
The post Q&A: How will the World Bank’s abandoned finance goal affect climate action? appeared first on Carbon Brief.
Q&A: How will the World Bank’s abandoned finance goal affect climate action?
Rich Wilson is CEO of the Iswe Foundation and co-founder of the Global Citizens’ Assembly.
The numbers are stark. According to the 2026 Global Report on Food Crises, 266 million people across 47 countries experienced high levels of acute food insecurity last year, nearly double the figure recorded a decade ago.
Meanwhile, disruptions to oil, gas and fertiliser flows through the Strait of Hormuz drove a 46% month-on-month spike in urea prices early this year, sending agricultural price indices up 8% and raising the spectre of a global affordability crisis.
This is not a blip. It is a new baseline. The EAT-Lancet Commission concluded that food systems now account for roughly 30% of total greenhouse gas emissions and are the largest single contributor to the climate crisis. The science has been clear for years.
Now some of the solutions to the problem are becoming socially acceptable too.
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Earlier this year, people from more than 60 countries and territories, selected not by vested interest, but by lottery, spent seven weeks examining the evidence on food and climate for the latest Global Citizens’ Assembly. They heard from scientists, farmers and industry. They worked through 42 hours of structured deliberation, engaging with some difficult trade-offs.
They were not asked to endorse a predetermined conclusion. They were asked an open question: what changes, if any, should we make to how we grow, share and eat food, so that everyone has enough to nourish themselves while tackling the causes and impacts of climate change?
Phase down industrial animal farming
Their answer was unambiguous. They voted to protect forests. They voted to phase down industrial animal food production. They voted for supply chain reform and corporate accountability, explicitly rejecting the idea that the burden of change should fall on individual consumers. All 22 of their Calls to Action passed with over 85% support, a super-majority of randomly selected people from every region of the world, in agreement.
Consider what the assembly was actually being asked to decide. Industrial animal food production is the primary driver of tropical deforestation. Protecting more land as forest and ecosystem means less land available for the expansion of industrial production. That is a real trade-off, with real consequences for real livelihoods. Politicians have spent years avoiding it.
These randomly selected people looked at the evidence, deliberated across time zones and cultures, and chose the forests, with 64% in strong support and a further 20% in favour. People from livestock farming communities voted for change. Not because they were told to. Because deliberation led them there.
We estimate there have now been more than 7,000 citizen participation initiatives worldwide in the last decade. They have been organised because, as our 2025 report: People in the Lead demonstrated, people are now consistently and significantly ahead of politicians on issues ranging from climate to AI governance.
The people know best
What the research consistently shows is that ordinary people, given proper evidence and time, produce recommendations that are more effective and more aligned with public values than what emerges from elected legislatures. The gap in global governance is no longer primarily between science and the public. It is between citizens and their political leaders.
That gap matters for more than procedural reasons. When policy treats people as passive recipients rather than active participants, it leaves out the very actors whose behaviour, trust and consent the transition depends on. Institutions that speak only to other institutions, and negotiate only with state actors and industry lobbies, are missing out on the trust and energy of the people they are supposed to serve.
Governments, left to their own devices, are not moving fast enough to prove that argument wrong. At COP30 in Belém last November, countries failed to agree on a fossil fuel phaseout roadmap, and even full implementation of every submitted national climate plan still leaves the world on course for 2.3 to 2.8C of warming.
Citizens’ track at COP
But the Brazilian presidency grasped something important. Among the conference’s more significant outcomes was the formal launch of a Citizens’ Track within the UNFCCC process, a mechanism for connecting the global participation field to intergovernmental climate negotiations. Türkiye and Australia, who together hold the COP31 presidency in Antalya this November, now have the opportunity to strengthen and institutionalise what Brazil began.
In Guatemala, Indigenous women build climate resilience with old and new farming methods
The question before us is no longer whether citizens can contribute to solving these problems. Across the world, in local food networks, in community assemblies and in participatory planning processes, they already are, quietly generating more ambitious and more legitimate solutions than those emerging from formal diplomatic channels.
What is required now is the political courage to connect people to power. Not to consult citizens and file the results. Not to invite them to observe while the real decisions are made elsewhere. But to recognise the public as partners in perhaps the most consequential governance challenge of our time.
The post As food shocks spread, citizens are showing more leadership than governments appeared first on Climate Home News.
As food shocks spread, citizens are showing more leadership than governments
Climate Change
The Northern Endeavour Saga: Decommissioning, Legal Loopholes, and Toxic, Hazardous Waste
Woodside’s Toxic Legacy is still haunting the oceans
For the last 10 years Woodside and the Australian government have been embroiled in a long-running saga that led to the Northern Endeavour–a giant oil processing vessel–being shipped halfway across the planet to dismantle and deal with the toxic waste onboard.
Our colleagues at Greenpeace Denmark were particularly concerned to learn that Australia had sent this toxic waste, including mercury, asbestos and low-level radioactive material, to their shores.
Now it turns out that the Naturally Occurring Radioactive Materials (NORMs) onboard will have to be sent all the way back to Australia for disposal. It’s the latest twist in this saga, full of dodgy corporate manoeuvres, environmental risks, and bureaucratic bungles that make up the story of the Northern Endeavour.
What is the Northern Endeavour?
The Northern Endeavour is a giant 274 metre-long, 43,000 tonne-long Floating Production, Storage and Offloading (FPSO) vessel that operated off the northern coast of WA for 26 years, producing more than 200 million barrels over its lifetime. By the end of its life, the Northern Endeavour was a corroding rust-bucket, harbouring toxic and hazardous materials, slated for decommissioning.
ICYMI: decommissioning refers to the removal of offshore oil and gas infrastructure, including plugging and abandonment of the well. In layman terms, it’s what’s required of the oil and gas industry to clean up their mess, and ensure no waste is left in the environment.
How legal loopholes allowed for a dodgy sale of a degrading asset
By 2015 the Endeavour’s production was on the decline, so Woodside scaled back maintenance and let the vessel rot and degrade in the Timor Sea…until, out of the deep blue sea, they found a buyer.
Woodside took advantage of a legal loophole of that allowed them to transfer titles and sell off the Endeavour and the associated oilfield production licenses to the Northern Oil & Gas Australia Pty Ltd (NOGA)–a newly created, undercapitalised, one-person company with zero experience operating a complex offshore production facility like the Endeavour. The legal loophole enabled Woodside to bypass the regulator, who would normally rigorously scrutinize the new titleholders’ capacity to safely operate and decommission an oil rig. Woodside even paid NOGA (whose name was now TSOGA…confusing right?) USD$16.5 million (m) in cash and $5.4m in services. Nothing like a little bonus for taking a giant rust-bucket off a giant oil and gas company’s hands so they don’t have to pay to decommission it…
So what happened next? Spoiler alert: Not good!
TSOGA contracted out the operation and safety management of the Endeavour to UPS, but it was to no avail. In its first inspection of the vessel, the federal regulator, the National Offshore Petroleum Safety and Environmental Management Authority (NOPSEMA), found “extensive corrosion was present throughout the facility”. NOPSEMA issued 16 recommendations, with the need for a corrosion management plan being most urgent. That was on top of the 21 outstanding recommendations they had put to Woodside. Things didn’t get better from there as TSOGA failed to comply with the recommendations, and the regulator issued a series of escalatory breach notices. Then in 2019, after almost 3 years, NOPSEMA finally ordered TSOGA to cease all production on the Endeavour. In February 2020, NOGA and all its companies, including TSOGA, conveniently went bankrupt, passing the buck–the Endeavour and its decommissioning liability–to the federal government.
From ‘Lighthouse Mode’ to industry levies and regulatory overhaul
After landing Australia’s largest decommissioning liability in its history, the federal government forked out more than $200m to keep the Endeavour in ‘lighthouse mode’ while they worked out what to do–and in fact what they did was make some sweepingly positive moves.
In the face of staunch opposition and criticism, the government introduced trailing liability provisions as a backstop against another Northern Endeavour scenario, and the OP Levy, which taxes the oil and gas industry to cover the cost of the Endeavour’s decommissioning.
The upshot is for every dollar Woodside saved offloading the Endeavour, the industry is paying it back (and lots more!) to cover the cost of cleaning up their mess–tipped at $1 billion dollars. These were bold moves and a strong signal from the government that they wouldn’t be held captive by the industry’s dodgy corporate maneuvers. In response, Shell is suing Woodside for costs incurred by the levy–seems like nobody likes Woodside, not even within their own industry!
A green and golden missed opportunity
With a levy in place to recoup the cost of the clean-up from the industry, the government was presented with a golden opportunity to test-run a decommissioning pilot case. Australia has 5.7 million tonnes of offshore oil and gas infrastructure to recycle — the steel equivalent of 110 Sydney Harbour Bridges and 11 more FPSOs like the Northern Endeavour. Of this, the vast majority of the industry lies off the coast of WA, making the state ground zero for what may be the largest industrial and environmental clean-up in Australian history.
Instead, the Australian Government awarded a $35.6m contract to the Modern American Recycling Services, Europe (MARS) to dismantle the vessel, and sent it 17,000 kilometers across the world to Denmark. Freedom of Information (FOI) documents obtained by Greenpeace Denmark revealed that the Endeavour contained toxic waste when it was shipped off, and that it does not appear to have received official sign off by Australia’s Basel Competent Authority prior to departure–potentially in contravention of the international Basel Convention. Sending a corroding rust-bucket, full of flammable liquids, poisonous substances, corrosive substances, toxins, and ecotoxins to a harbour in Denmark was not the ending to the Northern Endeavour saga we were all hoping for.
Shipping the decommissioning overseas is an enormous missed opportunity across the entire value chain—with the industry valued at more than $60 billion dollars til 2060 and beyond. With more than 50% of infrastructure to be decommissioned before 2030, and nearly 75% by 2040, it’s urgent that Australia establishes a plan that will benefit the environment, economy and workers. If we get the conditions right with proper planning and coordination, it will drive investment, create thousands of jobs, support the circular economy and green steel industries and lay a foundation for clean energy pathways. That means:
- Build a WA decommissioning hub
- Enforce and strengthen existing laws to ensure full and timely decommissioning
- Invest in ports, recycling facilities, and a local workforce
- Hold operators financially responsible and mandate full industry-funded clean-up
- Introduce strict environmental monitoring
- Consult unions, First Nations, and communities to deliver a just, inclusive transition
- Link recycling to national green steel plans to position WA as a global clean energy leader
One last hurrah: the return of the NORMs!
But wait…there’s more! It turns out that any naturally occurring radioactive materials (NORMs) found on board the Endeavour won’t be disposed of in Denmark, and instead they’ll make the return trip back to Australia. NORMs are an expected hazard in oil and gas production processes, and given that Danish law on their disposal is very clear–namely that it rests with the operator–the federal government would have known from the outset that the NORMs would be making a round-the-world return trip back to Australia. This latest development means Australia would have to deal with the most toxic legacy of the oil and gas industry, while all the valuable material is gifted away.
Importation of radioactive material into Australia is not something we understand has happened before and questions remain as to how this complies with the Basel Convention. While there may still be more twists in the tale of the Northern Endeavour, it must serve as a wake-up call to get moving on a homegrown decommissioning industry. With the right planning, coordination and ambition, government and industry can get this right and ensure a prosperous pipeline of work for decades to come that will support the economy, provide jobs, and ensure our oceans are healthy and protected from corroding, toxic rust-buckets like the Endeavour.
The Northern Endeavour Saga: Decommissioning, Legal Loopholes, and Toxic, Hazardous Waste
A new global rainforest fund, unveiled by Brazil at COP30, will likely struggle to meet its initial funding target this year, after the UK failed to announce an expected pledge during London Climate Action Week and other donors have been slow to come on board.
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) was launched on the sidelines of last November’s UN climate summit as an innovative mechanism to fund rainforest protection. Instead of relying on grants, it seeks to raise public and private money, invest it in financial markets, and then pay rainforest countries a share of the returns.
The facility has so far raised $6.8 billion but needs to mobilise at least $10 billion by the end of 2026, under conditions set by Norway to unlock its pledge. If the fund falls short of this goal, the Norwegian contribution of up to $3 billion in loans over 10 years will not be disbursed.
At a gathering of ministers from rainforest-rich countries at London’s Kew Botanic Gardens last Tuesday in searing heat, UK climate minister Katie White praised the TFFF and said she had held a “robust conversation in government over the last few weeks” about the importance of forests and climate action.
She had argued, she said, that “this is not a nice to have – this is absolutely vital for our security and our prosperity”. She told the small crowd of visiting ministers, officials and forest campaigners at Kew that the TFFF was an “innovative and impactful development”.
But despite climate campaigners’ hopes, the British minister did not follow Norway, Germany, France, Brazil, Indonesia and Luxembourg in pledging to the fund, whose aim is to use returns on the capital it invests in bond markets to financially reward countries who keep their tropical forests standing.
Ed Davey, UK lead for the World Resources Institute who was in the room for White’s speech, told Climate Home News afterwards that as the UK was involved in inventing the idea and the British public care about rainforests, it is “incredibly important” that the government invests in the TFFF “as soon as possible”.
“The TFFF is at a very important stage of its gestation, and if a few other critically important sovereign governments don’t come on board quite soon, there is a risk that the idea will lose momentum,” he said.
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Anders Haug Larsen, advocacy director for the Rainforest Foundation Norway, was also disappointed at the lack of a British pledge during London Climate Action Week (LCAW).
The UK government’s money and its power to mobilise private sector investment are crucial to the TFFF’s success, he said, adding that “saving tropical rainforest is a key component in solving climate change and preserving life on this planet”.
Political divisions?
British newspaper The Times later reported that White’s boss – energy and climate minister Ed Miliband – had been poised to announce a £400-million ($528m) investment pledge to the TFFF but had been opposed by UK finance minister Rachel Reeves.
According to The Times, Reeves was concerned an announcement would be unpopular, as the government was being criticised by its former defence minister for not spending enough on the military, and had pushed for the announcement to be shelved.
Climate Home News understands, however, that the UK Treasury had given the climate ministry approval to tell Brazil and Norway it would invest in the TFFF, but the administrative procedures needed to make the pledge had not been completed in time to announce a contribution during LCAW.
The UK has been cutting the amount it spends on foreign aid, including on climate projects, in order to deliver what its foreign minister called “the biggest increase in defence spending since the Cold War”.
Projects affected include rainforest protection schemes like the Congo Basin Forest Action Programme, which has had its budget slashed by nearly 80%.
Despite these moves to shrink overseas assistance, defence secretary John Healey resigned a few weeks ago, calling for even more spending for his department.
Last Monday, the first day of LCAW, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced he would soon resign following bad local election results, with his fellow Labour parliamentarian Andy Burnham highly likely to replace him by the end of July. Reeves is looks set to be replaced as finance minister, with Miliband reportedly a leading candidate to succeed her.
Norwegian test looms
If the UK does not invest in the TFFF by the end of the year, along with other government donors, the initiative’s chances of reversing the destruction of tropical forests will be diminished, experts say.
With the US under Donald Trump unlikely to pledge and the two biggest European Union nations France and Germany already having done so, forest campaigners were hoping that the UK could fill some of the roughly $3.2 billion in new pledges needed to meet the minimum goal set by Norway.
Asked by Climate Home News if France would increase its $0.6 billion pledge, its minister for international partnerships Eleonore Caroit said last week, “I don’t have any specific information of any increase.” She added that France supports the TFFF but is also “focusing on other similar projects to achieve the same results”.
The Brazilian finance ministry has courted investments into the fund from Japan, South Korea and China. Last Friday, Brazilian finance minister Dario Durigan met Chinese finance minister Lan Fo’an and afterwards told Valor Econômico that he had raised the possibility of an investment in the TFFF.
“I think today, for the first time, China gave a stronger, firmer indication that it understands the TFFF model and is comfortable with it,” Durigan was quoted as saying. “There has been a positive signal,” he added. “Now we will work with his team to turn that into concrete commitments.”
Larsen of the Rainforest Foundation Norway said there is also hope that Middle Eastern countries, more European nations and the European Union could contribute. The UAE has expressed interest in the fund, and has provided technical assistance for its development.
Following a recent investor retreat in Rotterdam attended by government officials and private investors, a group of 12 financial institutions – including UK-based Ashmore Group and Dutch firm Robeco – endorsed the fund as an “opportunity to support the protection of up to a billion hectares of tropical forests”.
They added that the fund’s seed capital from governments is “building momentum” and that the TFFF has put in place a “robust institutional governance” that can deliver results in the long term.
Economic value for standing forests
Details of how the TFFF will work are being finalised in an attempt to encourage investment.
Earlier this month, it was announced that its investment arm (the Tropical Forest Investment Fund – TFIF) would be based in Luxembourg. The European financial hub said it will provide €50 million ($57m) to the TFIF through its Climate and Energy Fund between 2026 and 2030, after which it will “maintain a long-term annual contribution”.
The Norwegian government has tasked a veteran of its sovereign wealth fund, Knut N. Kjaer, with reviewing the TFFF’s financial model.
At Kew Gardens last week, the head of the Brazilian forest service Garo Batmanian said the TFFF and other measures are needed so that standing forests are economically valued and therefore protected.
“There is no chainsaw-wielding maniac out there cutting down trees out of pleasure,” he said. “He’s cutting down trees because he thinks he can get more money using the land for something else, so it’s not only about stopping deforestation but also promoting that the standing forest has value.”
The post Tropical forest protection fund at risk after UK stalls on pledge appeared first on Climate Home News.
Tropical forest protection fund at risk after UK stalls on pledge
Q&A: How will the World Bank’s abandoned finance goal affect climate action?
As food shocks spread, citizens are showing more leadership than governments
The Northern Endeavour Saga: Decommissioning, Legal Loopholes, and Toxic, Hazardous Waste
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