COP30: Forests are life, not Wall Street assets – voices from the front lines
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), an investment fund introduced at the COP30 global climate conference, claims to support rainforest protection. However, many Indigenous groups and environmentalists dispute this, arguing that it promotes financialization and profit rather than true conservation.
Indigenous leader Miriam Tembé is attending the People’s Summit with her son, Italo, from the village of I'Ixing in Pará.
“At the COP, there is no discussion about respecting the rights of Indigenous people, honoring the boundaries of Indigenous territories or respecting free, prior, and informed consent,” she says. “Nor is there any discussion about protecting all the natural resources we safeguard in our territories. Our rivers, streams, and forests are not relevant.”
Tembé continues, “The COP serves to make capitalism even stronger. If we want to protect our rights, we have to fight for them ourselves. We have to unite the Indigenous people and not wait for the government.”
“We have always protected our rainforest; we don't want to make money from it,” explains Itahu Ka'apor, a member of the Tuxa Ta Pame Indigenous Council in Maranhão. “We are against the commercialization of nature, against REDD+ (Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation) and the TFFF (Tropical Forest Forever Facility). These are projects that aim to sell and destroy the forest.”
Global Forest Coalition: Seminar on the TFFF
As part of the People’s Summit, the Global Forest Coalition hosted a seminar about the TFFF. Here is what several participants had to say:
Mary Louise Malig from the Global Forest Coaliton remarks, “We have come here to Belém to stop the TFFF. The way this project functions is destructive. It will not protect the rainforests but will actually make their situation worse: it was created to do business on the global financial markets.”
“Why should we trust these investors?” she continues. “They are the same people who invest money in mining, logging, and in the oil and agricultural industries – in other words, all activities that destroy forests and fuel the climate crisis.”
Pablo Solange of the Fundación Solange in Bolivia states, “The forests of the earth are life; not an ecological service that can be bought and paid for.”
Kwami Kpondzo from the Centre pour la Justice Environnementale (CJE) in Togo says, “The social and economic impact of the TFFF would be disastrous. The fund is colonial in its structure; the creators of the TFFF want to control tropical forests and the people who live there. They ignore the knowledge of the Indigenous people, they want to restrict their lives in the forests, they drive the people away.”
“If we allow the TFFF, we are allowing our own destruction,” he insists. “We are not interested in improving the TFFF; we are demanding that the TFFF be rejected because the same people who invest in mining, agribusiness, and plantations are supposed to finance the fund. We must say no to false solutions.”
Satrio Manggala from the Walhi network in Indonesia, explains, “Indonesia is a testing ground for World Bank projects such as REDD+. They promise local communities money through REDD+, but then after several months, the funds never arrive. The TFFF is colonial; it is a process of imposing control over the earth’s forests.”
Felipe, a Brazilian participant, notes, “The TFFF is not a policy for protecting nature, but rather for making money, a risky venture masked as environmental protection. This ‘green’ capitalism exploits the earth for money, backed by big banks and investment funds. For them, profit comes before life; nature is bought and sold. The TFFF is harmful because it gives control of the vital forests to a few powerful players.”