A new alliance for the Amazon and other tropical forests may be forming at the Belem climate summit. Brazil’s President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva is at the center, building a coalition of nations like Norway and Germany to finance his “Tropical Forests Forever Facility.”
This $5.5 billion fund is Lula’s grand strategy to halt deforestation. It aims to pay 74 developing countries to protect their forests, which are critical carbon sinks. Norway has already committed $3 billion, with Germany expected to join, forming the core of this new financial alliance.
The alliance is built on a new model of conservation. It’s not about aid, but about investment. The fund uses interest-bearing loans to make it more profitable for governments to keep their trees standing than to allow their destruction by logging and mining.
A key partner in this new alliance is Indigenous peoples. The fund’s rules mandate that 20 percent of the money goes directly to these communities, recognizing them as the most effective on-the-ground guardians of the forest.
This emerging coalition is a significant development, but its strength will be tested. It faces a backdrop of “reduced participation” from the world’s top polluters—the US, China, and India—and a “moral failure” warning from the UN.