Rainforest protection is not a financial product!

Experts and environmental groups warn against turning rainforest protection into a profit-driven business. The latest model, called the “Tropical Forests Forever Fund” (TFFF), is intended to work as follows: 

Countries and other donors would provide $25 billion for TFFF. Encouraged by this, private investors would add another $100 billion to the fund. Most of the money would be invested in government bonds from emerging economies – profitably. A share of the profits would then go to rainforest protection.

This might eventually generate $4 billion a year, or perhaps less, depending on how the markets, government bonds, and global economy develop. Funding for rainforest protection would flow only if the returns are strong – and only after investors have taken their share.

A yearly premium of only $4 per hectare of preserved forest

In the run-up to the COP30 World Climate Conference in Belém, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz promised “a significant contribution” to the fund without naming an amount. It is rumored to be around €1 billion.

Human rights and environmental organizations have sharply criticized TFFF. Marianne Klute, Co-Chair of Rainforest Rescue, says:

TFFF is purely a market mechanism that ignores the causes of deforestation – land grabbing for agricultural plantations, logging, and mining.

“Investors and banks will enrich themselves – the very forces whose drive for profit is the main cause of rainforest destruction. Germany must not take part!”

“This kind of rainforest protection benefits billionaires while making poor countries poorer. Instead of promoting justice, TFFF deepens inequality and disregards the efforts of the true forest guardians – the Indigenous peoples.”

“Although forests of the highest biodiversity remain intact within their territories, Indigenous peoples will receive nothing, while rainforest-country governments collect a few dollars per hectare. Even that is uncertain, since investors and bankers will be the first to profit.”

“As a tool for protecting rainforests and the climate, TFFF is not the answer. Markets do not save forests.”

Indonesian environmentalist Muhammad Al Amien, Director of WALHI South Sulawesi, warns:

For us in Sulawesi, TFFF is a disaster. The project will plunge Indigenous peoples and local communities in the Global South who depend on forests into misery. 

“TFFF is the face of green capitalism – an investor-driven project to profit under the guise of protecting forests and supporting the environment and Indigenous peoples. It will not protect forests; it will displace Indigenous peoples and local communities from the forests that have sustained them until now.”

“The solution to protecting tropical forests is to end exploitation and extraction, to reward and fully support Indigenous peoples and local communities, and to protect environmental and human rights activists.”