What to Know About COP30’s Tropical Forest Forever Facility

By Rob | December 10, 2025 |

Tropical forests matter a great deal for the climate. According to the Drawdown Explorer, protecting tropical forests has the potential to slash annual global greenhouse gas emissions by nearly 4%. Moreover, forest protection is an emergency brake climate solution, meaning it has a sizeable and immediate impact on emissions from the moment it’s implemented.

Given all of this, and the fact that the conference took place in Brazil, it should come as no surprise that COP30 shone a spotlight on tropical forests. One of the biggest announcements from this year’s event was the creation of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility, or TFFF, which aims to accelerate tropical forest protection around the world.

But how does the facility work, what are the next steps, and what could improve its impact? For the answer to these questions and more, check out this recent Insights post from Project Drawdown Senior Scientist Paul West, Ph.D., who was on the ground at COP30.

Tropical deforestation is a leading driver of climate change and biodiversity loss.

Annual emissions from clearing forests, among the most carbon- and species-rich ecosystems on Earth, are about 11% of global emissions, which is roughly equivalent to yearly emissions from the United States. Protecting forests is an emergency brake climate solution since it has an immediate effect on the atmosphere by preventing the pulse of emissions that results from deforestation.

Current protection efforts, based largely on carbon markets, voluntary sustainability standards, and other mechanisms, have made some progress, yet levels of deforestation remain disastrously high. At COP30, the Brazilian COP Presidency launched a potentially game-changing new funding lever aimed directly at turning the tide on deforestation. Let’s take a closer look at the Tropical Forest Forever Facility – what it is, where it stands, and what might determine whether or not it succeeds.

What is the Tropical Forest Forever Facility?

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) aims to provide funding that would make it more economical for countries to protect tropical forests rather than clear them. The TFFF estimates that it could permanently protect about one billion hectares across 70 countries. That’s about the size of Canada.

TFFF includes an investment fund with a target of US$125 billion, with one-fifth of that amount coming from countries and the rest from institutional investors. Investment returns will be used for a fixed payment to countries per hectare of protected forest, adjusted for inflation. Countries (and thus landowners) may get lower payments in years with lower investment returns, with make-up payments in better years.

Where does it stand now?

Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva officially launched the TFFF earlier this month in Belém, Brazil, at the start of COP30, which is the 30th annual meeting where official representatives of (nearly) all countries discuss shared goals and approaches for stopping climate change. The TFFF has been under development since the Brazilian government proposed the idea at COP28 in Dubai two years ago.

At the end of COP30, US$6.7 billion was pledged from Brazil, Indonesia, Norway, France, Portugal, the Netherlands, and Germany, and is endorsed by 53 countries. In addition to the funding falling well short of expectations, questions remain around the legal, operational, and financial mechanisms that will underpin the facility.

Despite these outstanding issues, the TFFF still holds tremendous promise. Let’s turn now to the impact the facility could have – and what would make it even stronger.

Why does the TFFF matter?

TFFF will be the largest source of funding ever for tropical forest conservation. Current funding for tropical forest conservation is less than US$6 billion per year, and relies heavily on grants (38%) and loans (15%). In many of the 70 eligible countries, the target annual funds will increase conservation funding several-fold above the country’s entire annual conservation budget.
Curbs overall deforestation. Eligible countries are required to have a deforestation rate of less than 0.5% per year. This limits “leakage” that can occur when protection through legal and voluntary mechanisms leads to clearing in other places. Deforestation and degradation reduce the funding a country receives from the TFFF.
Designed by the Global South for the Global South. Led by Brazil, the TFFF was designed with Indonesia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Malaysia, and Colombia, as well as with higher-income countries and the “valuable contributions of Indigenous Peoples and local communities.” This puts the decision-making in the hands of tropical countries rather than high-income countries in the North, defining what is needed and how programs should be designed and implemented.
At least 20% of the funding is earmarked for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Indigenous Peoples are the original stewards of the land, yet often lack a voice in land conservation. Land tenure security ensures sovereignty for Indigenous Peoples. Plus, research shows that Indigenous Peoples’ lands have lower rates of deforestation and similar – or higher – biodiversity than other protected areas. Similarly, land tenure security for local communities is linked to increased income, food security, and higher-quality natural habitat.
It’s measurable. Area-based measures can be monitored using satellite imagery. Current tools, such as Global Forest Watch, already provide weekly alerts on possible deforestation and annual maps at higher resolution.
The fund is designed to be additive. Therefore, the TFFF is not replacing existing funding for climate mitigation and adaptation.

How could the TFFF be improved?

How forests are defined is the biggest flaw in the TFFF – for biodiversity, people, and climate. The TFFF defines forests as areas with more than 20% canopy cover. Tropical forests typically have more than 80% canopy cover. Setting such a low threshold creates incentives to clear or degrade much of the forest before protecting the area through the fund. Instead, there should be a premium for protecting areas with high ecological integrity, which provide more diverse habitat, support more species, maintain the natural processes that sustain the ecosystem, and provide more ecosystem services, such as reduced flooding, cleaner water, diverse foods, and carbon storage.
The strength of area-based monitoring is also a weakness. The landscape patterns of a forest matter. In general, bigger blocks of forest are more diverse than smaller ones. Connected forests are generally more diverse than isolated areas, allowing species to move more easily among forest blocks. Landscape patterns can be measured, but “good” landscape patterns are difficult to define. General guidelines should be established to determine which areas are more connected and should therefore be priorities for funding by the TFFF.
The proposed administration could lead to conflicts. The World Bank will likely administer the TFFF and distribute funds to countries. Although there is movement toward more integrated planning and funding for projects across a country, in practice, World Bank-funded projects focused on human and environmental well-being typically occur in isolation, which can lead to conflicts among goals for improving people’s lives, protecting nature, and mitigating climate change. Further, country-level decisions will need to be made in consultation with provincial governments to define priorities for protection and implementation.
Payments per hectare are too low for most countries. The payments per hectare will need to vary widely across countries. The estimated annual payment of US$4 per hectare is far too low in many countries to adequately incentivize private landowners. Clearing forested land for cattle grazing or soybean farming is worth hundreds of dollars per hectare each year. How will this gap be filled if private landowners are to play an active role? Or will the forests all be protected reserves managed by federal and local governments? Such low payments could lead to a focus on forest protection in remote areas at the lowest risk of deforestation. To limit deforestation to less than 0.5% per year, protection needs to happen in the frontier, not just remote areas.
The deforestation rate threshold is biased toward larger countries. One million hectares of forest is a much smaller percentage of total forest cover in Brazil or Indonesia than in Ghana or Rwanda. For biodiversity conservation, protected areas need to be distributed across all tropical forests, not only concentrated in the largest countries.
Target action to be most effective. Regardless of funding levels, a few key guidelines will increase TFFF’s impact. First, the order of priorities for action is: protect high-quality forests that have never been cut, protect or restore high-quality forests that were previously cleared or degraded, and then restore degraded forests. This order of priorities will yield the greatest benefits for climate and nature and provide the most ecosystem services for people. Second, these actions need to be targeted in particular places. In general, the greatest climate and ecological benefits will occur by targeting areas that expand, buffer, or connect existing high-quality areas. Third, to represent diversity across tropical forests, priorities should be set within large regions (the Americas, Africa, and Asia) and countries. Tools like the Drawdown Explorer can help identify where tropical forest protectionand restoration will have the highest impact.

What comes next for the TFFF?

Secure the funding. The pledged US$6.5 billion is far below the target US$25 billion for launching the TFFF. The current level will accomplish little, as the annual payments per hectare of forest would be 96% lower than the projected amount in a fully operational program. The TFFF will need to meet the US$25 billion threshold quickly to be considered lower risk for private investors.

Ensure funding is additive. The TFFF is designed to be additive, yet there is no mechanism to ensure that happens. Relatedly, mitigation funding and loss and damage funding are grossly underfunded. Most countries are already not contributing the needed or pledged amounts for mitigation or loss and damage, which could make it less likely that additional funding for the TFFF will materialize.

Operationalize the TFFF. The TFFF needs to finalize its operational, financial, and governance plans. The TFFF will work with governments, Indigenous Peoples, Local Communities, and investors to further develop, implement, and fund the facility within and across 70 tropical countries.

Paul West, Ph.D., is an ecologist developing science-based solutions for sustaining a healthy planet for people and nature. At Project Drawdown, Paul assesses how climate solutions can create win-wins and trade-offs for conserving biodiversity, creating a sustainable food system, and otherwise improving planetary health and human well-being.

The Tropical Forests Forever Facility Could Finally Finance Nature Conservation. Will Funders Back It?

November 26, 2025 By Charles (Chip) Barber, Edward Davey, Viviana Zalles and Mariana Oliveira

Explainer from World Resources Institute

Topic

Forests

A Potential Breakthrough: The Tropical Forest Forever Facility

Now, Brazil is once again playing a critical role, leading the development of an innovative new forest finance mechanism that could offer a breakthrough and flip the economics in favor of conservation. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), which formally launched on Nov. 6, is designed as a “payment-for-performance” model that uses agreed satellite monitoring standards and systems to reward tropical forest countries with a continuing source of funding as long as they preserve their forests.

While other forest conservation mechanisms such as REDD+ and carbon markets focus on rewarding emissions reductions, the TFFF takes a different approach. It aims to pay tropical forest countries directly for each hectare of standing forest they maintain, with payments decreasing based on any deforestation or fire-related forest degradation.

WRI’s experts are closely following the UN climate talks. Watch our Resource Hub for new articles, research, webinars and more.

With Brazil’s leadership, the momentum of the 2025 annual United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), which took place in the Amazon, and with effective new satellite monitoring technologies, the TFFF could finally turn forest conservation into an investment that benefits countries, investors and the planet.

Following several years of technical and diplomatic work, Brazil published the latest iteration of the TFFF Concept Note in October 2025. Brazil set the initial target of $125 billion in funding for the TFFF. However, only a handful of countries — including Brazil itself, Indonesia, France, Germany and Norway — pledged a total of $6.7 billion for the fund. This means that the fund has yet to reach Brazil’s $25 billion for government investments, which are intended to secure investor confidence and unlock an extra $100 billion in private financing.

While the initial financial pledges were limited, investments from other countries may continue to grow over time. For example, China and the U.K. signaled that they may come through with funding pledges next year. The TFFF’s success now depends on these and other nations, as well as private sector investors, making the investments necessary to get the TFFF fully operational.

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility is an innovative fund designed to reward countries for keeping their forests standing

How Exactly Will the TFFF Be Funded?

Unlike most previous international assistance to conserve tropical forests, the TFFF will not be financed by donor grants. If the facility reaches its $125 billion target, it would be the world’s largest “blended finance” mechanism of its kind, designed to pay eligible, participating tropical forest countries annually for maintaining their deforestation rates below 0.5% per year, as measured by agreed geospatial monitoring standards and systems.

The TFFF will borrow an initial capital base (targeted at $25 billion, currently at $6.7 billion) from traditional “donor” nations and other countries in a position to invest, such as Brazil and China, and potentially philanthropic foundations, too. These “sponsors” would provide 40-year loans (the facility’s capital), or other comparable investment modalities, at an interest rate comparable to the yield of U.S. Treasury bonds (a 30-year bond is currently less than 5%) and would be the first to take responsibility over any losses in what’s known as a junior position in the debt structure.

This arrangement creates a safety net that enables the fund to raise an additional $100 billion from private, corporate and philanthropic investors. The combined $125 billion would then be invested in fixed income emerging markets and other sovereign and corporate bonds (excluding fossil fuels and other environmentally destructive sectors), which would earn a higher return.

The return is ultimately expected to generate some $3 billion to $4 billion per year — enough to make payments of around $4 per hectare of conserved forest to eligible countries which maintain deforestation rates below 0.5% over the long term. (Even in the short term, with a much lesser sum than $125 billion, the payments generated would still be significant.)

The TFFF governance structure is divided into the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF), managed by the World Bank under a separate governance structure that would manage the investment fund and determine the availability of funds for forest payments; and the TFFF itself, which would coordinate monitoring and reporting, and distribute forest payments to countries.

Where Would the Money Go?

The current TFFF proposal includes 74 UN-listed developing countries that combined are home to more than 1 billion hectares of moist, broadleaf tropical and sub-tropical forests.

The TFFF is not designed to fund countries to reduce their deforestation rates. Rather, it is meant to reward those that already have relatively low deforestation rates, providing a financial incentive to keep their remaining tropical forests standing and prevent any further deforestation. However, if it’s successful, the facility will serve as encouragement for countries with currently high deforestation rates to qualify to join the scheme. A good result would be if countries such as Bolivia, with one of the world’s highest deforestation rates, were able to qualify for TFFF funding in the years to come. The current structure would lead to significant flows of finance to some of the world’s poorest forest countries, including in Africa’s Congo Basin.

The TFFF includes several innovative features focused on where the money should go. The first is that it allows countries to allocate TFFF payments as they see fit on their national policies and programs that, directly or indirectly, contribute to tropical and subtropical forest conservation and forests’ sustainable use. Crucially, the TFFF requires countries to disclose what the funds are used for to ensure transparency and allow for public scrutiny and feedback.

Payments from the TFFF could help protect the rights of Indigenous communities and help them pursue sustainable alternative livelihoods that are not dependent on clearing areas of forest

Another striking and positive feature is a provision requiring 20% of payments to go to Indigenous peoples and local communities engaged in tropical forest conservation in eligible countries. This could be the single biggest source of international finance for Indigenous peoples and local communities, so often at the frontline of conservation. This finance could help these communities protect their rights, secure land tenure, tackle illegal mining and criminality, and pursue sustainable alternative livelihoods that are not dependent on clearing areas of forest.

It is also significant because the TFFF is the only such source of funding that could in some instances be accessed directly by Indigenous peoples and local communities — a provision that they have repeatedly asked for, granting these communities decision-making over the use of the funds.

How Will Forests Be Monitored?

The TFFF can only succeed if it is built on credible, transparent and operational forest monitoring that relies on satellite data. This requires methods and data that are produced in a way that can be verified, applied consistently through time and comparable across countries. Robust and universally applied technical standards must be established from the outset, not only to ensure credibility but also to build investor confidence that will attract the early capital needed for scale.

A core principle of the TFFF is that participating nations are expected to use their own national forest monitoring systems, provided these systems meet established quality and transparency criteria. For countries without a qualifying national system, a compliant third-party system, such as Global Forest Watch (managed by WRI) or the EU’s Joint Research Center tropical forests platform, may be used. Given this diversity in monitoring approaches, establishing agreed common methodological standards and definitions across all systems will be paramount.

The TFFF also proposes a fixed forest definition to be applied across all participating countries, creating a common basis for how forests are measured and valued. By setting a 20% to 30% canopy density threshold, a 5-meter minimum tree height and by excluding plantations, this definition establishes a solid technical foundation for consistent and comparable measurements.

To help tropical forest countries meet these rigorous monitoring standards, the TFFF launched the TFFF Country Access Platform as a voluntary matchmaking and knowledge hub. This platform will connect governments in participating nations with technical partners worldwide who can help them meet the TFFF’s eligibility criteria and access requirements. WRI will serve as one of these technical partners, contributing expertise and information to the hub to ensure countries are well equipped to engage with and benefit from the TFFF.

What’s Next for the TFFF?

First, sponsors need to follow the lead of Brazil, Indonesia, Norway, Germany and others and commit contributions to the initial hoped-for $25 billion tranche of junior capital. If additional sponsors fail to make commitments at COP30, the TFFF may lose momentum in 2026, causing private sector investors to doubt the viability of the model.

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It is therefore vitally important for industrialized nations across the world without tropical forests to make a significant financial commitment to this bold and ambitious idea. The stakes are global: If tropical forests are lost, adaptation costs from the ensuing climate impacts would far exceed these investments. For wealthy nations, investing in the TFFF is not only about justice and responsibility, but also a matter of economic self-interest. Tropical forests are, in addition to being sovereign national assets, a global public good, with a universal responsibility for their protection.

The World Bank Board has agreed to manage the funds as the trustee and interim host of the TFFF and formalized initial arrangements at its October 2025 meeting, which should provide a strong confidence signal for both sponsors and the private sector. But the World Bank will have to move rapidly to establish the TFIF to maintain momentum and move toward an operational phase of the facility.

Once all of that is in place, a key priority will be development of the operations manual that will govern how the TFFF actually works, including work on some of the more difficult technical issues. These include:

Degradation and Leakage

Not all forest loss is caused by deforestation. Forest degradation, which plays a major role in carbon loss and ecosystem decline (and often occurs at smaller spatial scales) can also take place.

Currently, the TFFF proposes to only consider fire-damaged areas (using burn scars as a proxy) as indicators of degradation, subsequently reducing payments by a 1:35 discount rate. But other degradation factors, such as selective logging, roadbuilding, mining and some edge effects, can be detected using 30-meter or 10-meter satellite data. Including both fire and non-fire degradation would strengthen the system’s integrity and ensure payments reflect actual forest conditions.

Deforestation “leakage” is another thorny issue: the TFFF focuses on broadleaf tropical and sub-tropical forests, the most important forests globally for both biodiversity and climate change. However, there is worry that this might cause deforestation to move into other biomes not covered by the TFFF — Brazil’s Cerradoand southern Africa’s Miombo woodlands are good examples — without notice or punitive measures. The TFFF seeks to address this by requiring participating countries to monitor and report forest cover changes in non-TFFF forest areas where significant increases in deforestation could trigger additional scrutiny and potential payment holds. Though this is a good conceptual solution, implementation could be complex given, among other issues, the difficulties associated with monitoring deforestation in drier or sparser forest landscapes. More work will be needed to ensure that the TFFF does not simply displace, rather than prevent, forest loss.

Consideration for Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities

It will also be critical to maintain a strong consultative process with civil society and Indigenous communitiesas the TFFF — particularly its operations manual — is developed and moves toward implementation. Much of civil society is supportive of the TFFF and its efforts to engage Indigenous peoples and local communities; some remain critical and circumspect. There is no formal consensus on the TFFF among the diverse Indigenous peoples’ organizations across the world’s tropical forests. Continuing dialogue, consultation and free, prior and informed consent will therefore be critical in the years ahead.

Developing an Agreed Global Geospatial Monitoring System

Finally, the credibility and longevity of the TFFF will also depend on the quality and reliability of the geospatial monitoring systems that are used to base decisions on eligibility, standing forest area and deforestation rates. It is only in the past decade that credible, affordable satellite monitoring of forest cover has emerged. And there are no international covenants or treaties designating official satellite monitoring standards or systems.

In developing its monitoring standards, the TFFF should consider:

Fine-tuning its measurement standards by aligning the standard minimum mapping unit with the pixel resolution of existing, free satellite data archives (30-meters or 10-meters) to provide a more accurate picture of forest dynamics. Using a finer mapping unit, instead of the proposed 1-hectare minimum mapping unit, would also enable more effective monitoring of forest degradation events like logging and associated roadbuilding.
Ensuring that the monitoring systems that underpin the TFFF’s payment calculations provide open, independently verifiable data; use methods that produce data that are transparent and reproducible; and regularly validate the results using good practice and international reporting guidelines.
Finally, governance will be critical to help ensure that technical decisions remain evidence based. The TFFF’s operations manual will codify the detailed rules and procedures for monitoring, so its development should include structured opportunities for expert and stakeholder input.

In short, there is a clear pathway: strong technical standards, robust degradation monitoring, validation, open data and shared governance. The technology is ready; what is needed now is collective agreement to put it into practice.

The TFFF’s Critical Contribution to the Global Forest Challenge

In summary, the TFFF could make a potentially critical contribution to addressing the world’s forest challenges, which are so closely linked to the biodiversity and climate crises we face. But, as the TFFF proponents themselves have noted, it is not a panacea; other forms of finance will also be needed, and of course there are many other dimensions of tackling tropical forest loss, including governance, legality, regulation, demand and consumption shifts.

The TFFF also inherently faces risks in a volatile world where the future of economies and markets cannot be predicted; it is a bold idea at a time of volatility and instability. But after more than 30 years of forest conservation, forest finance commitments and arrangements that have yet to turn the tide, the TFFF presents an ambitious idea from a major rainforest country that has real potential to make a potentially transformative impact in conserving tropical forests.

It is therefore a pressing global imperative for the international community to contribute generously to its success, starting at COP30, in the heart of the Amazon rainforest — a tropical rainforest, like others, on which the future well-being of humanity so profoundly depends.

This article was originally published on Oct. 27, 2025. It was updated on Nov. 6, 2025 and again on Nov. 26, 2025, to reflect the latest news and information.

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