The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), which was created to fund long-term conservation of tropical forests, recently received a $500-million pledge, over 10 years, from the Netherlands, a significant boost for forest conservation.
The Netherlands announced the pledge in an Oct 26 press release and estimated that the TFFF has the potential to protect 800 to 900 million hectares (2.0 to 2.2 billion acres) of tropical forest, an area roughly 200 times the size of the Netherlands.
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Contributing countries so far are France, UK, Germany, Indonesia, and Brazil, with Norway having pledged $3 billion under the condition that a $10 billion threshold is reached.
... The United States did not join the Fund when it was announced during the COP30. China, which signaled support and possible contributions, also held back on making an official announcement.
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The recent $500 million pledge came the day after Brazil’s runoff election in which incumbent President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, who has pledged to end deforestation by 2030, beat challenger Flávio Bolsonaro, a climate change denier who pledged to not demarcate any Indigenous land in Brazil.
Harstad noted concerns that governments can reverse their pledge to conserve TFFF-funded forests, “if someone like Bolsonaro should return to power in the future.”
Harstad recommends instead solutions like sustainability-linked bonds (SLBs), which have been used in Uruguay to lower bond interest rates, and attract investments, when deforestation rates are low.
Still, [the Netherlands'] recent TFFF investment has been praised by conservationists including Merijn van Leeuwen, director of Nature Conservation with WWF-Netherlands, who said it is a “major breakthrough for the protection of tropical forests worldwide.”
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