Rainforest protection is not a profit machine: Stop the TFFF!

The TFFF is a market-based mechanism. According to its logic, tropical rainforests provide environmental services that have a financial value that can be traded.

The fund, however, does not recognize rainforests as living systems that have their own rights, such as the right to life, the preservation of their life cycles and their capacity for regeneration, and the right to integrity and remediation.

In this model, the money is not meant to be raised through carbon markets or carbon offset payments, but through global financial markets. It is to come from bonds that countries in the Global South can issue. These could then be used to finance large infrastructure and energy projects or other activities in rainforests that destroy nature.

Behind the fine words is a proposal that would make wealthy investors even richer at the expense of people in countries in the Global South, who already suffer under their countries’ crushing and illegitimate debt burdens.

Seventy-four countries along the equator, plus China, are earmarked for TFFF financing. The participating countries are to submit reports to the fund’s board, and the development of the rainforests is to be monitored by satellite.

Financing of TFFF

The TFFF fund is to be endowed with the equivalent of around 108 billion euros (125 billion US dollars), of which donor countries are to contribute 22 billion euros (25 billion US dollars) in public funds. These public funds are to serve as collateral in order to attract 86 billion euros (100 billion US dollars) in investments from private financiers.

The money is to be used on global financial markets to finance bonds issued by countries in the Global South. The funds invested in this way are expected to generate a return of 7 percent, although this is by no means guaranteed. If the bonds are not serviced, it could even result in a total loss of the money invested.

With these bonds, countries in the Global South could finance large infrastructure and energy projects or other activities that put tropical rainforests and their inhabitants at risk.

The interest is first to be used to pay private investors a fixed 3 percent per year. The remaining return of around 4 percent is to be transferred to the governments of rainforest countries. The precondition for this is that they keep their annual deforestation rate below 0.5 percent. 

In concrete terms, this means that TFFF is intended to generate annual revenues of around 3.5 billion euros (4 billion US dollars) to finance the protection of approximately ten million square kilometers (1 billion hectares) of rainforest. This corresponds to around 3.50 euros (4 US dollars) per hectare of rainforest per year.

Of this sum, people in rainforest regions are to receive one fifth per year, the equivalent of around 700 million euros (800 million US dollars) in total. Per hectare – which is 10,000 m² – this amounts to around 80 cents. That is less than one cent for 100 m² of rainforest per year.

Countries that exceed the annual deforestation rate of 0.5 percent are to pay a penalty of 140 US dollars for every hectare of forest cleared.

Further information

• World Rainforest Movement, 11/17/2025. Press release: Organizations around the world are demanding a halt to the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF)
• Global Forest Coalition, 11/17/2025. The Tables Turn Against the TFFF  
• Asamblea Mundial Amazonia, 11/2025. NO to TFFF, YES to Forest Rights 
• World Rainforest Movement, 10/15/2025. TFFF: A new trap for peoples and forests in the Global South 

To: the Parties to the COP30 United Nations Climate Conference

Ladies and Gentlemen,

We reject the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) launched at the COP30 climate conference because it will further worsen problems in tropical rainforest regions.

Instead of addressing the root causes of deforestation such as land grabbing, plantations, logging, and mining, the TFFF packages rainforest protection as a financial product and relies on market-based incentives.

While investors and banks profit, the true forest guardians – Indigenous peoples and local communities – are largely left empty-handed. They were also excluded from the design of the TFFF. The fund likewise fails to recognize the rights of nature and tropical rainforests.

The TFFF is a colonialist plan that will make the rich even richer by exploiting the Global South. It ultimately reinforces the existing capitalist, racist, colonialist, and patriarchal world order, further intensifying current injustices and multiple crises.

Over 240 organizations and Indigenous peoples reject the TFFF for these reasons. Instead, they call for direct, publicly funded measures that combat the root causes of rainforest destruction, restore forests, recognize and prioritize the rights of local and Indigenous communities, and guarantee the rights of nature.

Yours faithfully,