Notícias
ENVIRONMENT
At COP16, five countries commit to Tropical Forest Finance Facility
According to Minister Marina Silva (pictured next to COP16 president Susana Mohammad), the drive to create this fund came from the need to reward those who preserve without deforesting - Credit: Felipe Werneck/MMA
During a panel discussion held on Monday, October 28, with Brazil’s Minister of Environment and Climate Change, Marina Silva, in Cali, Colombia, five countries confirmed their support for the Tropical Forest Finance Facility (TFFF): Germany, Colombia, the United Arab Emirates, Malaysia and Norway. These countries committed to work together to define the architecture of the mechanism, which will be launched at COP30 in November 2025, in Belém.
The TFFF, presented by Brazil during COP28 in Dubai, in the United Arab Emirates, aims to reward developing countries that conserve their tropical forests, allocating capital to green assets and using the returns to keep the forests standing. The initiative will pay for each hectare of standing vegetation, and includes penalties for each deforested or degraded hectare — also guaranteeing additional resources for the protection of biodiversity, traditional territories and the maintenance of environmental services.
"The TFFF offers innovative, large-scale financial incentives for developing countries to conserve their tropical rainforests, paying a fixed amount per hectare of forest that is preserved or restored annually," said Minister Marina Silva. The concept of the Fund, in the minister's vision, came from the need to reward those who preserve without deforesting. It is also a way to guarantee resources for the preservation of Brazilian tropical rainforests after the goal of zero deforestation by 2030 is met, for example.
The Colombian Minister of the Environment and President of COP16, Susana Mohammad, stated that the model will provide for the predictability of resource flows, and ensure that the money will strengthen public initiatives in ecosystems.
"What countries with natural resources want is a flow of sufficient, predictable and constant resources to public institutions so that we can strengthen governance over ecosystems. From there, ecosystems can create value for economic sectors, such as nature-based tourism and agriculture," said the representative of Colombia, who has supported the proposal since its conception.
HOW IT WORKS — The goal is for payments to be made from financial resources that are voluntarily invested in an investment fund to be created and maintained within the scope of the initiative. Resources from countries, sovereign funds, pensions, and other investors who make conservative investments, with good guarantees and low returns, are collected and invested in more profitable operations ensured by the TFFF.
Another innovation is to simplify monitoring and verification mechanisms — through advanced technologies such as satellite images — to monitor and calculate conserved areas. The model will respect each country’s monitoring system, based on predefined criteria.
The mechanism's architecture also proposes that countries define national or sub regional programs to support nature; these will receive additional contributions. Among them are the conserving protected areas, preventing and combating deforestation, promoting the bioeconomy, and guaranteeing financial resources for indigenous peoples and local communities that conserve tropical rainforests.
BIOECONOMY — On Tuesday, October 29, at COP16, the Ministry of the Environment and Climate Change’s [Ministério do Meio Ambiente e Mudança do Clima/MMA] National Bioeconomy Secretariat held the event "Financing the Bioeconomy for Impact at Scale" to discuss the potential of bioeconomy to contribute to biodiversity and to addressing the climate crisis.
During the meeting, the MMA will present the National Bioeconomy Strategy [Estratégia Nacional de Bioeconomia] and its developments, such as the National Plan for the Development of the Bioeconomy [Plano Nacional para Desenvolvimento da Bioeconomia] and the National Plan for the Sociobioeconomy [Plano Nacional da Sociobioeconomia].
Among the topics to be discussed are main innovations such as the program to train credit agents for sociobioeconomy and engage banking agents — so as to facilitate access to low-interest financing for family farming, extractivists, and indigenous peoples and traditional communities — and bioeconomy hubs. There will also be a Pan-Amazonian perspective on the bioeconomy, including topics such as relevant public policies and financing initiatives.
ESPAÇO BRASIL — The panel will take place at Espaço Brasil, a dedicated venue for the country at the Biodiversity COP. A broad program has been planned. The first day of events was focused on debates related to indigenous peoples and traditional communities and their role in combating the climate crisis and preserving biodiversity. Participants highlighted the need for financing and robust public policies for the conservation of ecosystems, among other topics.
The National Policy for Territorial and Environmental Management of Indigenous Lands [Política Nacional de Gestão Territorial e Ambiental de Terras Indígenas/PNGATI] was presented as an example of shared management of territories and the promotion of the sustainable use of biodiversity.
Representatives from the Chico Mendes Institute for Biodiversity Conservation [Instituto Chico Mendes de Conservação da Biodiversidade/ICMBio] and the National Indigenous People Foundation [Fundação Nacional dos Povos Indígenas/FUNAI] reinforced the role of cooperation between government agencies and indigenous peoples in maintaining environmental balance and the importance of policies for demarcating indigenous lands for conserving biodiversity and maintaining climate balance.
With the theme "Endangered Species and Threats to Biodiversity", the second day began with a presentation of the National Forest Inventory [Inventário Florestal Nacional/IFN] platform by the Brazilian Forest Service [Serviço Florestal Brasileiro].
The initiative collects forestry and socio-environmental data in Brazil through samples, morphological characteristics and interviews with communities to understand the relationship with biodiversity. The IFN has already inventoried 63% of the national territory, and identified 18 thousand species, including 13 new species.
The third day of Espaço Brasil was marked by the event "Connecting Agendas: Towards the Integration of Climate and Biodiversity Conventions", which discussed the relationships between the climate and biodiversity crises. The speakers highlighted that greater integration between the themes will strengthen environmental protection efforts and defended the need for intersectoral collaborations that include government, civil society and local communities.
In the panel "Promoting ocean-based climate actions in NBSAPs and NDCs: challenges and opportunities for Latin America", representatives from Chile, Colombia and Brazil shared initiatives to integrate ocean conservation agendas into climate and biodiversity debates. The speakers highlighted the role of the ocean as a climate regulator and presented proposals for achieving biodiversity and climate goals.
DEBATE — There was also a debate on the response to “biodiversity emergencies” in the context of the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework. The session discussed the impact of the climate crisis on worsening biodiversity challenges, and experts from Brazil, Colombia and South Africa suggested the development of a biodiversity governance and financing task force, focusing on subnational needs.
The fourth day of debates was themed “Protected and Conserved Areas”. In the first panel, representatives from the Ministry of the Environment highlighted the panorama of Conservation Units and Indigenous Lands in Brazil, emphasizing their role in preserving biodiversity. In the lecture “Long-Distance Trails: The Role of Infrastructure Restructuring as a Connectivity Tool”, landscape connectivity was highlighted as a central focus of Brazil’s strategy.
One of the highlights of the presentation was the Brazilian Trails Network [Rede de Trilhas do Brasil], an example of synergy between the three levels of government and the private sector and an effective solution for promoting connectivity between protected areas. Another panel addressed the progress of South-South dialogues on Other Effective Area-Based Conservation Measures (OECMs) as a path to achieving Goal 3 of the global framework, which seeks to protect 30% of terrestrial and marine areas by 2030.
The event brought together representatives of governments, Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) and NGOs from biodiverse regions such as South America and Central Africa, in search of joint solutions for conservation.