Summary

The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) and its members and allies from Brazil and across the world reject the new proposal of Tropical Forest Forever Facility presented by the Brazilian government at the Leaders Summit being held in Belem from 6-7 November 2025. TFFF is a false solution that deepens the financialisation and commodification of forests rather than protecting them.

Indigenous peoples and civil society from Brazil and across the world reject TFFF

Reactions from members and allies of Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice

6 November 2025

Belem, Brazil

The Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) and its members and allies from Brazil and across the world reject the new proposal of Tropical Forest Forever Facility presented by the Brazilian government at the Leaders Summit being held in Belem from 6-7 November 2025. TFFF is a false solution that deepens the financialisation and commodification of forests rather than protecting them. Behind the rhetoric of conservation, the TFFF hands control of forest governance to global financial actors and institutions like the World Bank, with a documented history of human and environmental rights violations in so-called “conservation” and “development” projects. The TFFF is based on raising funds in capital markets, with promises of compensation to tropical countries conditioned on the generation of profit from these investments. Forests are living territories, cultural homelands and political spaces of resistance and not carbon stocks for investors to profit from and the peoples who protect the forest cannot be made hostages to the volatility of global markets.

The TFFF mirrors the same extractive, profit-driven logic that created the climate crisis. It fails to deliver on its mandate of equitable and rights-based forest protection, instead embedding the control of global capital over Global South territories. It risks funnelling money through national elites and carbon-accounting systems that have already failed, while providing no guarantees for land rights, self-determination or direct access to resources for the Indigenous Peoples and local communities who are the real stewards of the land and the world’s forests.

This proposal further allows the rich countries to avoid their legal responsibility to provide new, grant-based public finance as real climate finance. Rather than providing new resources, it deepens financial dependence and masks Global North obligations and allows them to escape the historical reparations owed to the Global South. DCJ stands with Indigenous Peoples, grassroots movements, and Global South communities in rejecting this facility and in demanding real climate finance and real solutions rooted in justice, equity and peoples’ power and sovereignty.

Member analysis

Review of Tropical Forest Investment Fund, Third World Network TFFF: False solution for Tropical Forests, Global Forest Coalition Position of the Amazon Working Group (GTA) on the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) No to TFFF, Yes to Forest Rights: Indigenous groups and Brazilian civil society

Quotes 

Chief Jonas Mura, Village Chief, Gavião Real Village

The government talks about saving the forests, but what they’re doing with this so-called TFFF is putting a price on our lives. The forest is not a commodity. What the world needs is not more funds, but respect for the peoples who have kept the forest alive for millennia.

Nelson Bastos, Fisherman, Marajó

Creation of the TFFF is more of the same. Who will that money go to? Will it reach the people who are in the territory? It won’t. This is just another way for the government to say it’s in the territory collaborating in the defense, while in reality, it’s turning nature into capital for the financial market.

Sila Mesquita Apurinã, Coordenadora Geral, Rede de Trabalho Amazônico – GTA

English: “TFFF is the old colonization dressed in green.” “They want to convince us that selling the forest is saving it, but what they are doing is handing it over to the control of financial capital. No fund can buy the spiritual, social, and political value of the Amazon. Our fight is for climate justice, not for business deals disguised as salvation.”

Portuguese: “O TFFF é a velha colonização vestida de verde”. “Querem nos convencer de que vender a floresta é salvá-la, mas o que fazem é entregá-la ao controle do capital financeiro. Nenhum fundo pode comprar o valor espiritual, social e político da Amazônia. Nossa luta é por justiça climática, não por negócios travestidos de salvação.”

Pedro Sergio Vieira Martins, FASE, Brasil

English: “The government introduced a policy of social participation that helped structure climate guidelines, but it undermined the entire process in its haste to deliver the mechanism at COP 30. The drafting of the TFFF was not sufficiently participatory. Although some groups worked on drafting the mechanism, we cannot say that there was a broad debate process. And it is no exaggeration to ask for participation, as the logic of financing is being profoundly changed by prioritizing investments over donations. While we are still debating in Brazil the problems caused by REDD projects, the jurisdictional systems of REDD, and the implementation of the SBCE, the government already has a global financial mechanism. This worries us.”

Portuguese: “O governo trouxe uma politica de participação social que ajudou a estruturar diretrizes para o clima, mas pôs todo o processo abaixo com a pressa para entregar o mecanismo na COP 30. A elaboração do TFFF não foi suficientemente participativa. Embora alguns grupos tenham trabalhado na elaboração do mecanismo, não podemos dizer que houve um processo amplo de debate. E não é exagero pedir participação, pois se está mudando profundamente a lógica de financiamento ao priorizar investimentos em detrimento das doações. Enquanto ainda debatemos no Brasil os problemas causados por projetos de redd, os sistemas jurisdicionais de redd e a implementação do SBCE, o governo já vem com um mecanismo financeiro global. Isso nos preocupa.”

Pedro Ivo Bautista, Terrazul

English: We are heading towards the 30th COP amid a situation of global chaos and real danger for human civilization and the planet. Market solutions have shown successive failures, and COP30 was expected to initiate a more effective process to reverse global warming. The combined solution of strengthening the carbon market alliance and the TFFF is to insist on false solutions. It is necessary to protect vulnerable communities and nature and to confront the issue in a lasting way, committing to CO2 reduction and building a just, popular, and sustainable ecological and energy transition. Effectively, the carbon market and the TFFF are not going in that direction.

Portuguese: Estamos indo para 30 COP do Clima numa situação de caos global e perigo real para a civilização humana e para o planeta. As soluções de mercado mostraram sucessivos fracassos e se espera que a COP30 iniciasse um processo mais eficaz de reverter o aquecimento global. A solução combinada de reforçar a aliança de mercado de carbono e o TFFF é insistir em falsas soluções. É preciso proteger as comunidades vulneráveis e a natureza e enfrentar de uma forma duradouro, se comprometendo com a redução de CO2 e construindo uma transição ecológica e energética justa, popular e sustentável. Efetivamente O mercado de carbono e o TFFF não vão nessa direção.

Cacique Jonas Mura, Terra Indigena Gavião Real.

O governo fala em salvar as florestas, mas o que eles estão fazendo com esse tal de TFFF é colocar preço na nossa vida”, disse o Cacique Jonas Mura. “A floresta não é mercadoria. Nós, povos indígenas, não somos guardiões de um ativo financeiro. Somos parte dela. Quando transformam a floresta em produto de mercado, estão vendendo também nossa história, nossa alma e nosso direito de existir. O que o mundo precisa não é de mais fundos, é de respeito aos povos que mantêm a floresta viva há milênios.

Ivonne Yánez, ACCIÓN ECOLÓGICA, Ecuador

Spanish: El TFFF es un mecanismo exclusivamente financiero y basado en la deuda que utiliza la deforestación como pretexto para lucrarse. De hecho, no tiene ningún interés en abordar las causas reales de la pérdida de bosques. Al contrario, es muy probable que los fondos del TFFF provengan de proyectos que destruyen bosques, afectando además a las comunidades locales y contaminando tierras y territorios. El TFFF es una distracción —mientras algunos se enriquecen enormemente— para evitar afrontar las crisis ambientales y climáticas. El TFFF no puede reformarse ni integrarse en la gobernanza; debe eliminarse.

English: 

The TFFF is an exclusively financial and debt-based mechanism that uses deforestation as a pretext to make money. In fact, it has no interest in addressing the real causes of forest loss. On the contrary, it is highly likely that TIFF funds could come from projects that destroy forests, while also affecting local communities and polluting land and territories. The TFFF is a distraction – while some get very rich – to avoid facing environmental and climate crises. The TFFF cannot be reformed or bathed in governance; it must be eliminated.

Uli Siagian, Forest and Plantation campaigner, WALHI / Friends of the Earth Indonesia, Indonesia

Putting a price tag on forests is just colonialism in a new suit. The TFFF hands control of our territories to the same banks and governments that drove deforestation in the first place, while forcing the Global South to guarantee profits for the North. Forests are not carbon assets. They are living homelands cared for by Indigenous Peoples and local communities. We need land rights, reparations, and debt cancellation, not another financial scheme that turns our survival into a business model.

Nathalie Rengifo Alvarez, Campaña Que Paguen Los Contaminadores América Latina

Spanish: El TFFF es sólo otro acrónimo cargado de la falta de compromiso del liderazgo global para abordar la crisis climática; un acrónimo más financiado por el sistema que nos llevó al borde del colapso. Engañoso y profundamente involucrado en los intereses de los contaminadores para mantener el status quo sin cambios profundos, ni sistémicos ni democráticos. Más distracciones empaquetadas en verde y llenas de destrucción y sufrimiento

English: The TFFF is just another loaded acronym for a lack of commitment from global leadership to address the climate crisis—one more acronym financed by the system that brought us to the brink of collapse. Deceptive and deeply involved in the interests of the polluters to continue the status quo without profound changes, neither systemic nor democratic. More distractions packaged in green and filled with destruction and suffering.

Meena Raman, Head of Programs, Third World Network

A central concern with the TFFF proposal is the paradox in its financing: the returns used to reward tropical forest conservation are largely generated from the developing countries themselves, via their debt servicing and payments to international investors and in this case, the investment arm of the TFFF, the Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF) which controls the TFFF. TFIF seeks to generate its money from the asymmetries intrinsic to the international finance architecture, the same imbalances that keep Global South communities in debt and deprivation and that our peoples have been struggling to abolish for decades. Concerns about the soundness of the economic model, timeline of payments, governance, accountability, community access and scale of returns aside, at the heart of the TFFF are structures and actors that are complicit for the degradation of our forests and forest communities. It is because of these fundamental misalignments and disconnect from ground realities of forest communities, that is a result of the non-consultative process followed in developing this mechanism—indigenous peoples, frontline communities, civil society and climate groups in the Global South consider the mechanism unreformable and reject it as a false solution.

Rachitaa Gupta, Global Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ)

We firmly reject the TFFF. This is the latest repackaging of carbon market schemes that put a price on our forests while deepening control of financial institutions and rich countries over our territories. Forests are living systems, not assets to be speculated on or traded. Our communities have fought against REDD+, offsets, and every mechanism that treats nature as a commodity for decades and shown them as failed tactics of the polluters to continue carbon colonialism. We don’t need more of these greenwashed financial experiments but public, non-debt, grant-based climate finance that flows directly to Indigenous Peoples, local communities, grounded in rights, territorial sovereignty, and self-determination. Justice means reparations from the Global North to the Global South and it needs to be delivered by rights, land, and real solutions rooted in peoples’ sovereignty

Fernando Tormos-Apontes, Policy Lead, Just Transition Alliance

Short quote: The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) epitomizes this problem and carries many of the same harms of REDD+. The TFFF’s structure of granting loans to Global South countries with tropical forests further entrenches Indigenous Peoples and affected communities in a colonial relationship that denies their sovereignty and self-determination.

Long quote: The Just Transition Alliance (JTA) strongly opposes false solutions that allow the Global North and corporate polluters to continue delaying payments toward a loss and damage fund for a just transition and that perpetuate environmental, climate, and energy injustices, violence, and other harms with a greenwashed veneer. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) epitomizes this problem and carries many of the same harms of REDD+. The TFFF’s structure of granting loans to Global South countries with tropical forests further entrenches Indigenous Peoples and affected communities in a colonial relationship that denies their sovereignty and self-determination. The World Bank will have a leading role in overseeing the TFFF and will prioritize wealthy countries, corporate polluters, and investors, with no assurance that Global South countries will receive any funding. JTA rejects neoliberal capitalist schemes that rely on privatization, extraction, and concentrating power. We call out the TFFF for the false solution that it is and view this new project as just the latest move from the same playbook that exploits the Global South to further benefit rich elites. The TFFF implementation will only further fuel the climate colonialism and other harms that created today’s climate injustices in the first place. JTA demands differentiated, non-debt-creating, and direct funding. No TFFF!

Lise Masson, Friends of the Earth International 

It is critical to protect our forests and ecosystems for their intrinsic values, through community forest management efforts that ensures the collective and land rights of forests communities. Transformative change is needed to achieve forest conservation and environmental justice, not business as usual further reinforcing green capitalism and the commodification of nature.

Rachel Rose Jackson, Director of Climate Research and Policy, Corporate Accountability

The world heads to Belém as a deadly typhoon hits the Philippines, and as the climate emergency is wreaking death and destruction on the doorstep of millions around the world. COP30 cannot exist in an ulterior reality–far too much is at stake. Commodifying nature for profit at the expense of people and the planet is what has gotten us here. Whether it’s given snazzy new names like the TFFF or something like that, any proposed solution that continues to effectively put the planet up for sale is a dangerous distraction. The only way forward is real, proven, community-centered solutions. And the time to enact these must be now.

Myriam Douo, Campaigner, Oil Change International

The Tropical Forest Forever Facility is yet another attempt to turn forests into financial assets instead of protecting them as living ecosystems. It promotes the same failed market logic that created the climate crisis, while threatening Indigenous rights and sovereignty. Real forest protection means rejecting commodification and addressing the root causes of deforestation: extractivism and fossil fuels. As the host COP30, Brazil should lead on real climate solutions, not deceptive financial mechanisms that greenwash continued destruction.

David Williams, Rosa Luxemburg Stiftung

Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) perpetuates and enforces neocolonial power structures by placing control of Global South ecosystems in the hands of Global North investors and institutions. These models deepen economic dependency, prioritizing profit and market logic over justice, sovereignty, and fair shares allocation. 

Note: 

For interviews, questions and media engagements, contact Esthappen S, Communications Coordinator, Global Campaign to Demand Climate Justice (DCJ) on Email: [email protected] Or Whatsapp/Mobile/Signal: +91 9820918910