By Witness Radio team
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), unveiled with great fanfare on November 6th, 2025, as a pre-event ahead of the 30th UN Climate Conference in Belém, is already facing a storm of criticism from civil society and environmentalists.
More than 200 civil society organizations, Indigenous networks, and environmental justice groups from every corner of the globe are demanding an immediate halt to the initiative, calling it “a false solution that will deepen forest destruction rather than stop it.”
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) is a proposed global financing mechanism intended to support the long-term protection of tropical forests. Its goal, according to those behind it, is to offer stable, ongoing funding to countries that preserve or expand their forest cover, using investment-generated returns to reward practical conservation efforts.
But activists warn that the facility is being promoted as a bold new funding model for forest conservation. Yet, in reality, it is built on a financial structure that they say will benefit wealthy investors while burdening tropical forest nations with more debt, potentially leading to their further exploitation.
While in Belém, Brazil, on November 6th, global leaders officially launched the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), with a collective investment of USD $5.5 billion following an initial US$1 billion committed by Brazil in September this year.
COP30 is the United Nations Climate Change Conference taking place in Belém, Brazil, from November 10th to 21st, 2025. UN Climate Change Conferences (or COPs) take place every year, and are the World’s only multilateral decision-making forum on climate change that brings together almost every country.
According to the Fund promoters, the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) emerges as an innovative, essential, and strategic financing solution designed to permanently protect tropical forests, the biological and climatic pillars of our planet, through addressing the climate crisis, combating biodiversity loss, and recognizing Indigenous Peoples and traditional Communities in climate justice.
The TFFF’s governance is split into two parts: The Tropical Forest Investment Fund (TFIF), run by the World Bank under its own governance system, responsible for managing investments and deciding how much money is available for forest payments, and the TFFF Secretariat, which oversees monitoring, reporting, and the distribution of those payments to participating countries.
But environmentalists argue that this financial model reveals a more profound, more troubling logic. They say the initiative is a colonial plan by Northern elites, for Northern elites, and designed by wealthy investors who get paid first. At the same time, forest peoples receive only “what is left.”
“TFFF is yet another trap that will not stop deforestation. TFFF is a colonial plan of Northern elites, by Northern elites, and for Northern elites that will make the rich richer by extracting wealth from the global South. Initiatives like this one end up reinforcing a capitalist, racist, colonialist, and patriarchal vision of the world that only deepens the current injustices and manifold crises,” they wrote in a petition calling individuals to join efforts to stop the initiative.
The TFFF claims to be a “new hope” for tropical forests worldwide. However, it’s not designed to address the drivers of deforestation, but to benefit investors in financial markets that are actually driving deforestation.
Far from protecting forests and their communities, this new market-based initiative will actually reinforce a capitalist, racist, colonialist, and patriarchal worldview that only deepens current manifold crises and injustices. It could lead to the displacement of indigenous communities and the loss of their traditional lands, a direct violation of their rights, and a significant social injustice.
The World Bank is set to host the TFIF and influence daily fund management. Activists argue that this Bank has a long record of financing projects that violate community rights, promote industrial plantations, and deepen debt crises in the global South. For instance, the Bank’s support for large-scale infrastructure projects has often led to the displacement of local communities and environmental degradation.
For critics, this is proof that the TFFF is yet another top-down, Northern-led mechanism destined to repeat past failures. Similar initiatives in the past have often failed to address the root causes of deforestation, instead focusing on market-based solutions that benefit investors more than local communities.
It is high time to address the root causes of deforestation: unjust economic relations and trade, land grabbing by agribusiness, and expansion of mining and other extractive industries. These are the systemic issues that perpetuate deforestation and environmental degradation. Our commitment is to resist struggles against large-scale projects that destroy forests and fuel climate chaos. TFFF will undermine solidarity among communities protecting their territories.
