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.”
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Tropical forest protection fund at risk after UK stalls on pledge
Three countries have been named by the Paris Agreement’s compliance committee for failing to submit a nationally determined contribution (NDC) and repeatedly snubbing offers of help with their climate plans.
After months of internal debate over whether to identify serial non-responders, the Paris Agreement’s Implementation and Compliance Committee (PAICC) named the three countries which have failed to engage with it over their NDCs on Friday.
It named Democratic Republic of Congo, Senegal and North Korea in a footnote of its annual report, adding that it decided to name them “with a view to facilitating engagement”, adding that representatives of the three nations had been invited to its meeting in early 2027 “with the purpose of identifying any challenges and constraints”.
“The Committee noted the importance of Parties engaging with the Committee in a timely manner, while noting that some delays may be due to the national capabilities and circumstances of the Parties”, the report said.
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In July, PAICC said 12 countries had ignored its repeated attempts to discuss why they had not published an NDC as required every five years under the 2015 Paris accord.
Members of the committee had been divided over whether to name them, but at a September meeting decided to do so in their annual report to the annual climate COP summit.
By the time the report was published on Friday, only Congo, Senegal and North Korea “had not communicated an NDC or submitted a [Biennial Transparency Report] and had not yet responded to any of the Committee’s notifications, despite several reminders issued by the Committee in this regard”.
Rainforest and renewable energy ambitions
The silence from Congo and Senegal is notable because the former is home to much of the Congo Basin rainforest while the latter has sought billions of dollars in climate finance to support its renewable energy ambitions.
After Brazil, Congo has more rainforest than any country in the world. This forest, and the country’s peatlands, absorb huge amounts of greenhouse gas but are fast being lost to expanding farmland, charcoal production, logging and mining.
Senegal signed a Just Energy Transition Partnership with Canada and wealthy European nations in 2023, to help it meet its renewable energy targets under the-then government of Macky Sall. It was chair of the Least Developed Countries group between January 2022 and December 2023.
Tejas Rao, who is researching the PAICC as part of a doctoral thesis at Cambridge University, said the governments of the three countries should engage with the committee.
“Engagement costs these governments very little and the committee has shown it will listen,” he said.
“Silence leaves the committee with no basis to help, and it leaves the [governments] exposed to the narrative that they are simply disengaged,” he told Climate Home News.
Paris Agreement requirement
The 2015 Paris Agreement requires all parties to publish an NDC every five years outlining their emissions reduction targets, with each plan meant to be more ambitious than the country’s last NDC.
The latest set – the third round of plans, with new targets for 2035 – was due in February 2025. While most countries missed this deadline, all but around 30 – mostly small emitters but including Egypt, Vietnam and Argentina – have now submitted them.
Over the year, the PAICC – which is made up of government climate officials from developed and developing countries – has been communicating with governments that have not submitted NDCs and trying to overcome barriers to them doing so.
Some nations have cited exceptional circumstances as the reason for not submitting an NDC, a process that requires a significant amount of work in tracking emissions and consulting on how to curb them across the economy. For example, a letter from a Sudanese official to the PAICC, seen by Climate Home News, said that the country’s civil war had led to the suspension of its NDC preparation.
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The US and Iran are not signed up to the Paris Agreement and so do not have active NDCs, nor does Taiwan, which is not a UN member state.
Rao said that because the PAICC is “facilitative and non-punitive”, naming the countries “is meant to open a door, not close one – the invited consultation is the point”.
“In recent months, governments that explained their constraints, whether capacity, finance or domestic process, have been met with follow-up and support rather than sanction, and the number of silent governments has fallen sharply,” Rao said.
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Paris Agreement committee names three countries snubbing it over NDCs