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. The long-term goal is to create a $125 billion endowment fund for the TFFF. Current pledges add up to roughly $7.8 billion. The TFFF was launched by Brazil at the 30th U.N. Climate Change Conference in November 2025. It’s a partnership between tropical countries that need funding to protect their forests, investors and donor countries that want to address climate change and biodiversity loss through mitigating deforestation. The collaboration includes the private sector, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, the World Bank, scientists, economists, finance experts, and civil society partners. The TFFF is modeled like a sovereign wealth fund in which governments and private investors contribute to an investment fund and those investment gains, or profits, are then distributed to tropical countries to keep...

The agreement was signed by Dr. Grethel Aguilar, Director General of IUCN, and Ms. Sheam Satkuru, Executive Director of ITTO, at the IUCN Pavilion during the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 17) in Yerevan, Armenia. “Tropical forests hold more than half of the world's species and support over 1.6 billion people. Biodiversity conservation and managing these forests sustainably have to go hand in hand,” said Ms. Satkuru. “This MoU with IUCN builds on decades of shared work and gives us a clear framework to turn evidence into practical tools. The updated guidelines are the first step. Our aim is to see them applied on the ground, so that production forest landscapes keep delivering for nature, climate and people.” “IUCN and ITTO have long worked to promote the conservation of tropical forests, both for the benefit of biodiversity and the people who depend on them,” said Dr. Aguilar. “This agreement and the resulting knowledge products will go far in ensuring these critical tropical ecosystems are sustainably managed and that Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are better equipped to meet their 2030 goals.” A framework for joint action Running...

The agreement was signed by Dr. Grethel Aguilar, Director General of IUCN, and Ms. Sheam Satkuru, Executive Director of ITTO, at the IUCN Pavilion during the 17th meeting of the Conference of the Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD COP 17) in Yerevan, Armenia. “Tropical forests hold more than half of the world's species and support over 1.6 billion people. Biodiversity conservation and managing these forests sustainably have to go hand in hand,” said Ms. Satkuru. “This MoU with IUCN builds on decades of shared work and gives us a clear framework to turn evidence into practical tools. The updated guidelines are the first step. Our aim is to see them applied on the ground, so that production forest landscapes keep delivering for nature, climate and people.” “IUCN and ITTO have long worked to promote the conservation of tropical forests, both for the benefit of biodiversity and the people who depend on them,” said Dr. Aguilar. “This agreement and the resulting knowledge products will go far in ensuring these critical tropical ecosystems are sustainably managed and that Parties to the Convention on Biological Diversity are better equipped to meet their 2030 goals.” A framework for joint action Running...

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. The long-term goal is to create a $125 billion endowment fund for the TFFF. Current pledges add up to roughly $7.8 billion. The TFFF was launched by Brazil at the 30th U.N. Climate Change Conference in November 2025. It’s a partnership between tropical countries that need funding to protect their forests, investors and donor countries that want to address climate change and biodiversity loss through mitigating deforestation. The collaboration includes the private sector, Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities, the World Bank, scientists, economists, finance experts, and civil society partners. The TFFF is modeled like a sovereign wealth fund in which governments and private investors contribute to an investment fund and those investment gains, or profits, are then distributed to tropical countries to keep...

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The enormous climate, water, and biodiversity benefits generated by tropical forests accrue to the entire world. But hardly any of the economic value created is captured by the countries and communities that safeguard them. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) was launched at last year’s United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30) in Belém to start correcting this imbalance. For too long, it has been more profitable to destroy tropical forests than to conserve them, even though they provide services essential for the survival of many countries and for the welfare of us all. The Amazon recycles nearly half of its rainfall and exports moisture that shapes precipitation patterns across South America and beyond. The Congo Basin, with its peatlands that store roughly 30 billion tons of carbon, is one of the planet’s great carbon reservoirs, while many of the plant and animal species in Borneo are found nowhere else on Earth. Moreover, across the tropics, forests support the livelihoods of hundreds of millions of people—including Indigenous communities whose stewardship is often essential for maintaining them—while also sustaining local cultures and bolstering food and water security. “ For decades, the international community has acknowledged the extraordinary value of tropical forests while...

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Indigenous leaders and government officials express strong support for pathways to channel TFFF finance to accelerate tropical forest conservation. At Climate Week NYC 2026, WWF and the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) brought together tropical forest country government representatives, Indigenous leaders, philanthropic organizations and other partners to discuss implementation of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) and pathways to scaling impact. The event featured discussion of an eligibility support program for tropical forest country governments, Indigenous Peoples and local communities to access future TFFF funding. The session explored how governments, Indigenous Peoples, local communities and supporting institutions can work together to advance readiness, strengthen governance arrangements and design inclusive pathways for direct financing. The session also featured leaders from countries making strides to understand and meet the TFFF eligibility criteria and explored how early, large-scale results-based payments can accelerate tropical forest conservation. The message was clear: Countries want to conserve their tropical forests, but they need dependable, long-term funding to do so, and they view the TFFF as a key mechanism to deliver on that. Juan Carlos Jintiach, Executive Secretary, Global Alliance of Territorial Communities (GATC): “The 20% [minimum of TFFF funding for Indigenous Peoples and local communities] is very...

Rising fire activity across Africa’s tropical forests is raising concerns that the Congo Basin could face a fate similar to the Amazon and Indonesia, where fires and deforestation have driven up carbon emissions. Newly compiled data from Greenpeace’s Global Mapping Hub suggests that significantly more areas of Africa’s tropical forests experienced rising fire activity than declining activity between 2001 and 2025. The findings are based on modelling of satellite-detected fire hotspots, which tracks changes in fire activity across tropical forest regions. The warning comes amid concerns over a potentially record-breaking El Niño, which could heighten the risk of extreme weather events into 2027. Meanwhile, cuts to foreign aid by the United States and other countries have raised concerns about funding for scientific research, climate monitoring and firefighting programmes. Dr Jean Bakouma, country manager for the World Resources Institute (WRI) in the Republic of Congo, said forest loss remained persistent in parts of the Congo Basin, with fire becoming an increasingly important factor. “When primary forests and peatlands in the region burn, the carbon they store can be released, and put the region at risk of turning from a carbon sink into a carbon source,” Bakouma said. He warned that increased...

Around 252 million years ago, the continents sat fused into one landmass, Pangea. Then its tropical forests died. The planet stayed in a hothouse for roughly five million years afterward, and a study led by the University of Leeds and the China University of Geosciences in Wuhan says the dead forests kept it there. The research, published in Nature Communications, rebuilds maps of plant productivity across the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction from fossil records. It then feeds those maps into a climate model. Without the vegetation loss, the model cools within a few hundred thousand years. With it, the heat stays. Earth is about halfway through its current supercontinent cycle. The same modeling group has already projected what happens when the continents reassemble into Pangea Ultima some 250 million years from now. The Permian is the only time in the rock record when a supercontinent and a forest collapse overlapped. Five million years of hothouse Siberian Traps volcanism poured carbon dioxide into the air at the end of the Permian. Nobody disputes that part. Normally Earth cleans up after a volcanic pulse within about 100,000 years. Rock weathering and carbon burial pull the CO2 back out of the air. That did...

During the 2023–2024 El Niño, about 75% of the world’s tropical forest areas experienced at least six months of unprecedented simultaneous drought and heat. According to a study due to be published in the October 7 issue of the journal Earth’s Future, this scenario offers more than just a snapshot of an extreme event; it offers a preview of the “new normal” for the next two decades if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced. The Amazon is the region that is most vulnerable to this new climate pattern, raising the greatest concern. If global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the likelihood of the biome experiencing droughts as severe as those of the past two years will increase ninefold by the end of the century, even in years not influenced by El Niño. Under thermal stress of this magnitude, tropical forests undergo functional collapse. According to the researchers, instead of absorbing the gases that warm the planet (acting as sinks), these areas temporarily begin to emit carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this vicious cycle, the study reinforces the urgency of rapidly and sustainably reducing global emissions. The need for mitigation is even more urgent in light of the impending...

Over 75 per cent of the world’s tropical forests experienced drought and heatwaves that were more extreme than usual during the El Niño years of 2023 and 2024. Researchers have warned that under probable emission scenarios, widespread heat experienced during the 2023-2024 El Niño could become the ‘new normal’ for tropical forest regions in less than 20 years. The findings, published in Earth's Future, used multiple data sets of measured climate between 2000 and 2024 spanning a total area of 15.9 million square km. This included pantropical forests across the Americas spread over an area of 8.4 million sq km, Africa (3.6 million sq km), and Asia (3.9 million sq km). The researchers used the data to project conditions from 2025 to 2100 to assess how extreme the 2023 and 2024 events were, compared with past and future climates. The study noted that over three quarters of tropical forests endured an average of 6 months of anomalous drought and heat during the 2023-2024 El Niño. “When assessing the occurrence of compound hot‐dry periods during the two El Niño years, we found that the American and African tropical forests were most affected by compound hot‐dry events with on average 88 per...

The 2023-24 El Niño was brutal for tropical forests. Extreme heat and drought hit three quarters of them at the same time for months. A new study suggests that what felt like an exceptional disaster may be a preview of normal conditions within two decades, even in years when there is no El Niño. The research was led by Johanna Van Passel, an ecologist at Ghent University. A record event against a record background El Niño events are driven by a buildup of unusually warm water in the central and eastern tropical Pacific. They disrupt weather across the tropics, bringing heavy rain to some places and hotter, drier conditions to others. The 2023-24 event unfolded against record-breaking global temperatures, making its impacts even more severe. Van Passel and her team analyzed 12 datasets of heat and drought observations across the past 25 years. They covered nearly 16 million square kilometers of tropical forest around the globe. Tropical forests experienced unusually high temperatures for an average of roughly 18 months. Four-fifths of forests were drier than normal, receiving 22 to 56 fewer millimeters of rain each month. Parts of the Amazon endured a full two years of anomalous drought. At the...

Ozone pollution from fires, along with extreme heat and drought, is further weakening the Amazon rainforest’s ability to absorb carbon dioxide, new research shows. The Amazon and other forests absorb more than a quarter of human-caused CO2 emissions each year, more than 11 billion metric tons. But in recent decades, increasingly larger areas of forests have begun releasing more CO2 than they absorb, especially during droughts and heat waves. One study, published Monday in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, documents how smoke from wildfires, agriculture and forest-clearing burning contributes to leaf-damaging ozone formation far from the flames. This means fires in the Amazon have a double impact on the climate. They directly release climate-warming CO2 as vegetation burns and reduce the ability of remaining trees to absorb and store CO2. The reduction is equal to about 24 percent of the carbon released by the fires. That “hidden effect is a significant loss to the Amazon’s carbon budget that hasn’t previously been considered,” said lead author Flossie Brown, an atmospheric chemist at ETH Zürich, a university in Switzerland. The second study, published Monday in the American Geophysical Union journal Earth’s Future, found that the extreme heat and drought that gripped...

Sean Cummings, [email protected] (UTC-7 hours) Researcher contact: Johanna Van Passel, Ghent University, [email protected] (UTC +2 hours) WASHINGTON — The 2023-24 El Niño brought simultaneous extreme heat and drought to 75% of tropical forests for months on end. Now, a new study indicates that those conditions may have been a preview of annual norms for future tropical forests just a couple of decades away, even under moderate-emissions scenarios, and even outside of El Niño years. Marked by a buildup of unusually warm water in the eastern Pacific, El Niño events disrupt normal weather patterns across the broader equatorial region, bringing heavy rain to some places (like Chile and Argentina) and hotter, drier weather to many others (like northern South America and much of southeast Asia). The El Niño lasting from June of 2023 through roughly the same time in 2024, however, took place against the background of the warmest global year on record, amplifying hot and dry conditions. As the climate continues to warm, the stress of ever-more-frequent heat and drought could kill trees, limit forests’ carbon-storing abilities and trigger self-perpetuating rainfall losses. It could also cut off trade routes and food sources for people in tropical forests. “Many...

During the 2023–2024 El Niño, about 75% of the world's tropical forest areas experienced at least six months of unprecedented simultaneous drought and heat. According to a study due to be published in the October 7 issue of the journal Earth's Future, this scenario offers more than just a snapshot of an extreme event; it offers a preview of the "new normal" for the next two decades if greenhouse gas emissions are not reduced. The Amazon is the region that is most vulnerable to this new climate pattern, raising the greatest concern. If global greenhouse gas emissions continue to rise, the likelihood of the biome experiencing droughts as severe as those of the past two years will increase ninefold by the end of the century, even in years not influenced by El Niño. Under thermal stress of this magnitude, tropical forests undergo functional collapse. According to the researchers, instead of absorbing the gases that warm the planet (acting as sinks), these areas temporarily begin to emit carbon into the atmosphere. Faced with this vicious cycle, the study reinforces the urgency of rapidly and sustainably reducing global emissions. The need for mitigation is even more urgent in light of the impending...

The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a new investment fund launched at COP30 by Brazil, has attracted about $7.3 billion in initial sponsor capital. The initiative aims to compensate tropical forest countries for preserving forest areas. But despite recent pledges, the fund remains short of its $10 billion fundraising goal for the end of 2026. After the 2025 U.N. Climate Change Conference in Belém, TFFF received a wave of political support, with over 60 nations endorsing its launch declaration and five countries announcing investments. Since then, the pace of financial commitments has been slower. Only Luxembourg and the U.K. have made government pledges this year, totaling around $600 million, while the nonprofit The Nature Conservancy committed another $5 million. The fund has now less than four months to raise $2.7 billion and meet its target. The $10 billion benchmark is especially important because Norway’s $3 billion pledge — part of that total — will only be released once the goal is met. “I’m in a period of anticipation right now, but also optimistic that we’ll get there,” Carlos Rittl told Mongabay. Rittl is the director of public policy at the Wildlife Conservation Society (WCS) and has contributed to TFFF’s environmental...

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In some cases, carbon credit projects have been found guilty of “green land grabbing,” as foreigners displaced Indigenous communities – key stewards of biodiverse landscapes. Understandably, conservationists have been eager to explore more viable and ethical alternatives. Safeguarding tropical forests is critically important for tackling climate change because they act as massive carbon sinks. Beyond the environmental benefits, a report from Zero Carbon Analytics estimated tropical forests hold up to $1.2 trillion in untapped value from drug discovery. The TFFF marks a new approach in paying tropical forest countries directly for each hectare of standing forest they maintain. This avoids “greenwashing” whereby companies neutralize their unsustainable operations by spending money, and delivers the subsequent investment directly to the countries maintaining their green spaces. Its current proposal includes 74 UN-listed countries that are home to over 1 billion hectares (3.8 million square miles) of tropical forest. The fund will act as a financial incentive for countries with low deforestation to keep the forests they have standing, while simultaneously encouraging countries with high deforestation to adjust land management so that they, too, can qualify. In turn, this would see some of the world’s poorest forest countries receiving significant flows of finance, such...

The Uk government announced plans to invest in the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), a Brazil-led fund aimed at financing the protection of tropical forests globally through a new £400 million (USD$540 million) loan. Launched in November 2025 at the COP30 climate summit in Belem, Brazil, the TFFF was designed to provide a mechanism to provide long-term, predictable financing to countries that protect and sustainably manage their tropical forests. The facility’s financing model combines public investment with private market borrowing, aiming to mobilize around $4 billion annually, to be distributed among forest countries, which receive payments proportional to their conserved tropical and subptropical broadleaf moist forest area, through satellite imagery-based confirmation. In a letter to the House of Commons announcing the investment, Katie White, UK Minister of State for Energy Security and Net Zero, said: “This summer has seen record-breaking heatwaves and wildfires raging across the UK, and climate phenomena such as El Niño are expected to intensify many of the impacts we are already experiencing around the world. That is why the UK is acting now to protect these vital ecosystems that absorb nearly 30% of greenhouse gas emissions each year – crucial in protecting British families and businesses...

The investment would be made through a loan, subject to finalising the facility’s governance and operational arrangements, completing due diligence and meeting the Government’s conditions. The Government said the use of a loan, rather than a grant, allows the investment to be funded through a different financial transaction budget. The decision follows the Government’s recent announcement that it would reprioritise climate finance funding to support a cap on single bus fares at £2 as part of measures to address the cost of living. Under the TFFF model, tropical forest countries receiving payments would not be responsible for repaying the UK funding. How the facility would work The TFFF is designed as a blended-finance mechanism that would pay countries based on the amount of tropical forest they conserve and the amount of degraded land they prevent from being lost. At least 20% of the funds are intended for Indigenous Peoples and local communities. Countries would need to meet eligibility requirements, including verified reductions in deforestation, monitoring capacity and policies to protect forests and support local communities. The facility differs from conventional carbon market schemes by measuring forest protection rather than relying solely on emissions reductions. Its proposed approach is intended to...

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