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...

Pan, Y. et al. The enduring world forest carbon sink. Nature 631, 563–569 (2024). Baccini, A. et al. Tropical forests are a net carbon source based on aboveground measurements of gain and loss. Science 358, 230–234 (2017). Yan, Y. et al. Satellite-based evidence of recent decline in global forest recovery rate from tree mortality events. Nat. Plants 11, 731–742 (2025). Yao, Y. et al. Declining tradeoff between resistance and resilience of ecosystems to drought. Earths Future 12, e2024EF004665 (2024). Tang, Z., Miralles, D. G., Guo, Z. & Maes, W. H. Fast response of satellite fluorescence-derived plant physiology to drought stress. Nat. Commun. 17, 2886 (2026). Forzieri, G., Dakos, V., McDowell, N. G., Ramdane, A. & Cescatti, A. Emerging signals of declining forest resilience under climate change. Nature 608, 534–539 (2022). Smith, T. & Boers, N. Reliability of vegetation resilience estimates depends on biomass density. Nat. Ecol. Evol. 7, 1799–1808 (2023). Brando, P. et al. Tipping points of Amazonian forests: beyond myths and toward solutions. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 50, 97–131 (2025). Chu, Y. et al. Increasing climate variability makes Southeast Asian forests more vulnerable to anthropogenic and environmental stressors. Glob. Planet. Change 256, 105138 (2026). Brando, P. et al. Droughts,...

Covering 45% of Earth’s forested area, tropical forests store a large amount of carbon equivalent to about one-third of the carbon present in the atmosphere, with old-growth forests holding a large amount of it in their aboveground biomass (AGB)1,2,3,4,5,6. Moreover, they host over 50% of terrestrial species, with unparalleled biodiversity and endemism7,8,9,10,11. Preserving these carbon-rich and ecologically vital ecosystems is imperative, as they are heavily threatened by deforestation, forest degradation, defaunation, and climate change12,13. Despite their well-recognized role in the global carbon budget, tropical forests remain the most uncertain component1. A major challenge in mapping and predicting tropical forest carbon stocks globally lies in our limited understanding of how abiotic factors influence the spatial distribution of AGB. Old-growth tropical forests, approaching structural equilibrium with their local environment, are well suited for investigating this question14. Yet, across studies that have explored spatial relationships between plot-level AGB in old-growth forests and environmental factors such as temperature, precipitation, topography, and soil properties, results vary widely in both magnitude and direction. For instance, it is not clear whether increases in annual precipitation are systematically associated with increases in biomass: some studies report a positive relationship in African and Southeast Asian forests15,16, whereas others in...

Tropical forests need more than trees to stay healthy. Animals help by moving seeds, mixing the forest floor, and helping nutrients from dead leaves and plants return to the soil. When large mammals disappear, the forest may still look healthy, but important changes can begin in the soil and fallen leaves below. A 14-year experiment in Brazil found that ground-dwelling mammals can change fallen leaves and soil, although seasons and local conditions had a bigger influence overall. Large mammals alter the forest floor The research was led by Letícia Gonçalves Ribeiro at São Paulo State University (UNESP). Her team estimated how many mammals were using each area and their total body weight. The study focused mainly on peccaries, red brocket deer, and lowland tapirs. “Most of the mammalian biomass in contiguous areas of the Atlantic Forest consists of peccaries, native wild pigs that live in herds that can exceed 100 individuals,” noted Ribeiro. Peccaries affect the ground through feeding, walking, digging, and leaving waste behind. “They arrive in an area and spend a lot of time trampling and rooting around in the ground, searching for fallen fruits and seeds, as well as defecating and urinating,” Ribeiro said. “As a result,...

Tropical forests absorb vast amounts of carbon and provide homes for more than half of Earth’s land vertebrates. These forests also support the lives and livelihoods of about 1.5 billion people. But restoring huge cleared areas by planting trees can be too expensive for many governments and communities. A global analysis suggests that letting forests regrow naturally, with only limited human help, could benefit the climate and wildlife. The best places for forest regrowth depend on the goal, such as storing carbon, lowering costs, or protecting different species. Forests can regrow naturally Natural regeneration does not mean simply leaving the land untouched. Forests may still need nearby seed sources, removal of invasive plants, fencing, fire protection, and protection from grazing animals or further clearing. The analysis was led by Jiaqi Li, a doctoral candidate at The University of Queensland. “Nature is a great gardener, sometimes we just need to get out of its way while providing a bit of support,” Li said. Planting carries higher costs In suitable places, natural regeneration can be up to 96 percent cheaper than active restoration, which uses planted seedlings. “For tree planting, you need to purchase the seeds and hire workers or recruit volunteers...

· The rate of destruction inside protected areas is around nine times higher since 2016 · Protected status does reduce the chances of wildfires in most of the regions studied, but does not shield forests from the worldwide trend of worsening wildfire activity · Researchers from the University of Sheffield say protected area planning must now factor in future wildfire risk if these measures are to remain effective as the impact of climate change intensifies They found that wildfire-driven destruction of protected tropical forests is not only substantial, but accelerating. The annual area burned inside protected areas has been roughly nine times higher since 2016 compared to previous years, with nearly a third of all 24-year losses occurring in 2024 alone. The vast majority of the destruction — around 89 per cent — occurred in the tropical Americas, particularly in Brazil, which alone accounted for almost two-thirds of global losses. Bolivia and Indonesia also recorded substantial losses. To test whether protection actually makes a difference, the researchers compared protected forest plots with very similar unprotected plots nearby, matched for factors known to influence wildfire risk, such as temperature, rainfall, how many people live in the area, and how much forest...

Picture a tropical forest, and you probably see one thing: a dense, dripping, impossibly tall green wall repeating itself from the Amazon to the Congo to Borneo. A massive new satellite study says that picture is wrong in a scientifically important way. Forests on different continents don’t just look different. They also respond to heat, drought, and soil conditions in fundamentally different ways. This means the climate rules that govern an Amazonian forest don’t necessarily apply to forests a few thousand miles away in Africa or Southeast Asia. The research comes from a team affiliated with the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, the University of Maryland, NASA, and Brazil’s Universidade Federal dos Vales do Jequitinhonha e Mucuri. Millions of measurements from space The team pulled together 16 million satellite estimates of aboveground biomass. NASA’s GEDI mission collected the estimates in 2020 by firing laser pulses at forest canopies to map their three-dimensional structure from orbit. The dataset covered the Amazon, the Congo Basin, and Southeast Asia. It gave researchers something no ground survey could match: a genuinely global comparison of how environmental conditions shape forest carbon storage. “This study definitively shows that tropical forests on different continents respond differently to climate,”...

Tropical forests are some of Earth’s largest carbon reservoirs, yet they differ enormously in how much biomass they produce, and therefore in how much carbon they store1. Understanding this variation is important to predict how these ecosystems might respond to climate change, and whether they will keep slowing the accumulation of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. But despite decades of research, ecologists still disagree about which climate factors matter most for tropical forests. Writing in Nature, Nunes et al.2 show that climate effects on tropical-forest biomass differ from one region to another. And even within regions, the main driver changes depending on local conditions. The findings suggest that ecologists’ disagreements have arisen because these researchers have been looking for the wrong thing: a single rule that explains how climate affects biomass in tropical forests. doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-02291-0 Reprints and permissions Competing Interests The authors declare no competing interests. Subjects Ecology Environmental sciences...

Aleixo, I. et al. Amazonian rainforest tree mortality driven by climate and functional traits. Nat. Clim. Change 9, 384–388 (2019). Uriarte, M., Lasky, J. R., Boukili, V. K. & Chazdon, R. L. A trait-mediated, neighbourhood approach to quantify climate impacts on successional dynamics of tropical rainforests. Funct. Ecol. 30, 157–167 (2016). Leitold, V. et al. El Niño drought increased canopy turnover in Amazon forests. N. Phytol. 219, 959–971 (2018). Powers, J. S. et al. A catastrophic tropical drought kills hydraulically vulnerable tree species. Glob. Change Biol. 26, 3122–3133 (2020). Rosas, T. et al. Adjustments and coordination of hydraulic, leaf and stem traits along a water availability gradient. N. Phytol. 223, 632–646 (2019). Anderegg, L. D. L. et al. Aridity drives coordinated trait shifts but not decreased trait variance across the geographic range of eight Australian trees. N. Phytol. 229, 1375–1387 (2021). López, R., Cano, F. J., Martin-StPaul, N. K., Cochard, H. & Choat, B. Coordination of stem and leaf traits define different strategies to regulate water loss and tolerance ranges to aridity. N. Phytol. 230, 497–509 (2021). Alon, A. et al. Acclimation limits for embolism resistance and osmotic adjustment accompany the geographical dry edge of Mediterranean species. Funct. Ecol. 37,...

Peatland fires in Indonesia pose a major threat to habitats, wildlife and people. That risk is exacerbated by the country’s periodic El Niño warming phases, which bring prolonged drought. Massive fires have occurred in all the recent El Niño years, including 2015, 2019 and 2023. With a major El Niño building this year, there are serious concerns that Indonesia is in store for another severe fire season. Preventing these fires requires more than just an emergency response. It depends on restoring degraded peatlands and reducing the conditions that allow fires to spread. As climate change intensifies wildfire risk globally, Indonesia’s experience offers important lessons for protecting vulnerable ecosystems and communities around the world. The national restoration programme was established just after the major droughts brought about by the El Niño of 2015. That year, Indonesia experienced severe land and peat fires which saw around 2.6 million hectares of land burn. Pollution and emissions from months of fires affected millions of people across Southeast Asia. Economic losses were estimated at more than US$16.1 billion (£9 billion), not including the enormous environmental and health consequences. Those major fires weren’t caused solely by drought triggered by El Niño. They were also the result...

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Spracklen, D. V., Baker, J. C. A., Garcia-Carreras, L. & Marsham, J. H. The effects of tropical vegetation on rainfall. Annu. Rev. Environ. Resour. 43, 193–218 (2018). This review presents the mechanisms by which tropical forest change influences precipitation through land–atmosphere exchanges, boundary-layer circulation and moisture recycling. Smith, C., Baker, J. C. A. & Spracklen, D. V. Tropical deforestation causes large reductions in observed precipitation. Nature 615, 270–275 (2023). This paper reports pan-tropical observational evidence that forest loss reduces precipitation, with reductions becoming more pronounced at larger spatial scales. Zhang, Y. et al. Asymmetric impacts of forest gain and loss on tropical land surface temperature. Nat. Geosci. 17, 426–432 (2024). This paper reports that tropical forest loss has stronger biophysical effects than forest gain, including larger changes in land surface temperature and evapotranspiration. Su, Y. et al. Asymmetric influence of forest cover gain and loss on land surface temperature. Nat. Clim. Change 13, 823–831 (2023). This paper reports that in tropical and temperate forests, tree cover gain can produce stronger cooling than the warming caused by tree cover loss, mainly through enhanced evapotranspiration...

The study published in Science helps us understand the role of this little-studied type of vegetation in climate change. One percent of the tallest trees store more than half of the carbon in tropical forest ecosystems. The giant trees of tropical forests are important allies in the fight against climate change due to their ability to store carbon, yet they are still poorly understood by science. However, a study published July 2, 2026, in the journal Science reveals a crucial survival mechanism: these trees, which exceed 70 meters in height, have no difficulty transporting water to their tops and are no more vulnerable than smaller trees. They have developed internal adaptations that compensate for the challenges of transporting water to the highest branches. Furthermore, tests conducted during severe droughts showed that they did not experience a more pronounced decline in growth compared to smaller trees. This contradicts the hypothesis that very tall trees would be more susceptible to water stress. To date, the scientific literature suggests that as trees grow taller, their ability to move water upward is impaired by the greater distance between roots and leaves, as well as by the effects of gravity. This would reduce photosynthesis, limit...

Mitchard, E. T. A. The tropical forest carbon cycle and climate change. Nature 559, 527–534 (2018). Tang, Y. et al. Tropical forest carbon offsets deliver partial gains amid persistent over-crediting. Science 390, 182–187 (2025). Bonan, G. B. Forests and climate change: forcings, feedbacks, and the climate benefits of forests. Science 320, 1444–1449 (2008). Ellison, D. et al. Trees, forests and water: cool insights for a hot world. Glob. Environ. Change 43, 51–61 (2017). Hansen, M. C. et al. High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science 342, 850–853 (2013). Krogh, A. State of the Tropical Rainforest (Rainforest Foundation Norway, 2021). Alkama, R. & Cescatti, A. Biophysical climate impacts of recent changes in global forest cover. Science 351, 600–604 (2016). Zhang, M. & Wei, X. Deforestation, forestation, and water supply. Science 371, 990–991 (2021). Baker, J. C. A. et al. Climate benefits of Amazon secondary forests—recent advances and research needs. Environ. Res. Lett. 20, 043001 (2025). Williams, B. A. et al. Global potential for natural regeneration in deforested tropical regions. Nature 636, 131–137 (2024). Chazdon, R. L., Blüthgen, N., Brancalion, P. H. S., Heinrich, V. & Bongers, F. Drivers and benefits of natural regeneration in tropical forests. Nat. Rev. Biodivers...

Tropical forests are being increasingly pushed beyond their threshold limits, affecting their ability to perform photosynthesis and thus their capacity to absorb carbon dioxide, a new study has found. The study, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, noted that plants have a safety margin of about 15 degrees Celsius where they can perform photosynthesis. But extreme weather events along with droughts and global warming narrow down their safety margins drastically. Human bodies get affected by heat waves, making them unable to function efficiently. Similarly, trees reach their limits as temperatures exceed beyond tolerance capacity. “Above a certain critical temperature, photosynthesis, the process by which plants produce their own nutrients, release oxygen and absorb CO2 from the atmosphere, starts declining, reducing growth and increasing the risk of plant mortality,” said a statement issued by the researchers. In the study by École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (translated as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne), EPFL, researchers compared the critical temperatures cataloged for 200 species with satellite-derived temperature measurements collected across tropical forests between 2001 and 2020. “Over two decades, the area of tropical forest experiencing treetop temperatures above the average critical threshold increased from 43 million...

The usual picture of primate origins is warm, leafy and tropical: small tree-dwelling mammals evolving in forests where fruit, flowers and insects were available year-round. A 2025 study in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences asks whether that picture starts in the wrong place. Jorge Avaria-Llautureo and colleagues reconstructed the early geography and climate history of primates and concluded that the common ancestor of crown primates was most likely living in North America, in a cold seasonal climate, not in a stable tropical forest. This is one study, not settled consensus. The result does not mean the first primates were running across ice sheets, and it does not erase the importance of tropical forests in later primate evolution. It does something more specific. It suggests that the earliest radiation of primates may have happened across a wider and harsher climate range than the standard warm-forest story allows, with cold, temperate and arid environments playing a much larger role. A northern start to a tropical story For decades, many explanations of primate evolution have leaned on what the authors call the warm tropical forest hypothesis. In broad terms, this idea ties primate origins, dispersal and diversification to exceptionally warm forests...

Tropical forests draw down and store large quantities of CO₂ from the atmosphere. The Amazon rainforest in South America, for example, stores approximately 123 billion tonnes of carbon — more than is stored in any other terrestrial ecosystem in the world. But these forests are facing a critical challenge. Research from 2023, which was carried out by me and more than 100 colleagues, found that tropical forests in South America are vulnerable to climate extremes. We determined that during an El Niño event, the warm phase of a natural fluctuation in the Earth's climate system, South American tropical forests may fail to act as a carbon sink. This finding becomes even more alarming when we consider the increasing frequency and intensity of El Niño events. There have been twice as many "very strong" El Niños in the last 60 years as there were in the 60 years before that. And the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has recently confirmed that such an El Niño is currently underway. Tropical forests absorb CO₂ through the process of photosynthesis and convert it into biomass. However, the balance between photosynthesis and respiration is delicate and depends on two factors: temperature and water availability...