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Brazil was “a bit surprised” Britain hasn’t contributed to a new investment fund to protect tropical forests, despite having helped to design it, a senior official has told Sky News.
The Amazon nation has used its role as host of the COP30 climate talks to tout its new scheme, which it drew up with the help of countries including the UK and Indonesia.
With Britain’s budget day looming, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer decided against chipping in when he visited the Amazonian city of Belem this month.
The news came out the day before Brazil was about to launch it.
“The Brazilians were livid” about the timing, one source told Sky News.
Lush rainforest and waterways in the Brazilian Amazon
A waterfall in Kayapo territory in Brazil
Garo Batmanian, director-general of the Brazilian Forestry Service and coordinator of the new scheme, said: “We were expecting [Britain to pay in] because the UK was the very first one to support us.”
The so-called Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) was drawn up with the help of “very bright people from the UK”, according to Mr Batmanian.
“So we are a bit surprised, but we expect that once internal situations get better, hopefully they will come through,” he added.
The UK’s climate envoy, Rachel Kyte, told Sky News: “The PM agreed the decision was about not doing it now, as opposed to not ever.
“We will look at the TFFF after the budget and are carefully tracking how others are investing.”
Forest growing back from a fire (bottom left) and deforestation alongside healthy sections of Amazon rainforest
The fund has been hailed as a breakthrough – if Brazil can get if off the ground.
Paul Polman, former Unilever boss and now co-vice chair of Planetary Guardians, said it could be the “first forest-finance plan big enough to change the game”.
Why do tropical forests need help?
At their best, tropical forests like the Amazon and the Congo Basin provide food, rainfall and clean air for millions of people around the world.
They soak up carbon dioxide – the main driver of climate change – providing a cooling effect on a heating planet.
But they are being nibbled away at by extractive industries like oil, logging, soy and gold.
Parts of the Amazon rainforest already emit more carbon dioxide than they store.
Other pockets are expected to collapse in the next few decades, meaning they’d no longer be rainforests at all.
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Greenpeace says deforested land could be better used, which would save the need for more land to be cleared
Cristiane Mazzetti, senior forest campaigner at Greenpeace Brazil, said: “Science is saying we need to immediately stop deforestation and start restoring what was once lost.
“And in Brazil, we already have enough open land that could be better used for agricultural expansion… There is no need [to open up] new areas.”
Can Brazil’s new investment fund save the world’s rainforests?
For decades, forests have been worth more dead than alive.
Successive attempts to save them have fallen flat because they’ve not been able to flip the economics in favour of conservation, or ensure a long-term stream of cash.
Brazil hopes the TFFF, if it launches, would make forests worth more standing than cut down, and pay out to countries and communities making that happen.
Mining is a lucrative industry in the Amazon. Pic: Reuters
“We don’t pay only for carbon, we are paying for a hectare of standing forest. The more forests you have, the more you are paid,” said Mr Batmanian.
The other “innovation” is to stop relying on aid donations, he said.
“There is a lot of demand for overseas development assistance. It’s normal to have that. We have a lot of crisis, pandemics, epidemics out there.”
Instead, the TFFF is an investment fund that would compete with other commercial propositions.
Mr Polman said: “This isn’t charity, it’s smart economic infrastructure to protect the Amazon and keep our planet safe.”
How does the TFFF raise money?
The idea is to raise a first tranche of cash from governments that can de-risk the fund for private investors.
Every $1 invested by governments could attract a further $4 of private cash.
The TFFF would then be able to take a higher amount of risk to raise above-market returns, Brazil hopes.
That means it could generate enough cash to pay competitive returns to investors and payments to the eligible countries and communities keeping their tropical trees upright.
At least 20% of the payments has been earmarked for indigenous communities, widely regarded as the best stewards of the land. Many, but not all, have welcomed the idea.
Will the TFFF work?
The proposal needs at least $10-25bn of government money to get off the ground.
So far it has raised $5.5bn from the likes of Norway, France, and Indonesia. And the World Bank has agreed to host it, signalling strong credibility.
But it’s a hard task to generate enough money to compete with lucrative industries like gold and oil, many of which governments already invest in.
Dr Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, director, Brazil Institute, King’s College London
Dr Andreza Aruska de Souza Santos, director of King’s College London’s Brazil Institute, said TFFF has the potential to make it “very financially viable to have a forest as a forest”.
“But the problem is that TFFF would need to compete with these very profitable industries… because you need to capture as much money from governments, from investors.
“And so far it’s not quite balancing the competitiveness of other sectors that are potentially harmful for forests.”
Hot, humid, loud and proud: the climate protest in the city of Belem was the embodiment of the Amazonian rainforest that surrounds it.
Hawkers brought carts selling bananas, mangoes and coconuts – while demonstrators bore umbrellas, hats and fans to shelter from the scorching tropical sun.
After a week of dreary negotiations at the COP30 climate talks, the streets were alive with the drumming of maracatu music and dancing to local carimbo rhythms on Saturday.
It was a carnival atmosphere designed to elevate sober issues.
The climate protest in the city of Belem
Among those out on the streets were Kayapo people, an indigenous community living across the states of Para and Mato Grosso – the latter at the frontier of soy expansion in the Brazilian Amazon.
They are fighting local infrastructure projects like the new Ferrograo railway that will transport soy through their homeland.
The soy industry raises much-needed cash for Brazil’s economy – its second biggest export – but the kayapo say they do not get a slice of the benefit.
The climate protest
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Uti, a Kayapo community leader, said: “We do not accept the construction of the Ferrograo and some other projects.
“We Kayapo do not accept any of this being built on indigenous land.”
Many Brazilian indigenous and community groups here want legal recognition of the rights to their land – and on Friday, the Brazilian government agreed to designate two more territories to the Mundurucu people.
It’s a Brazilian lens on global issues – indigenous peoples are widely regarded as the best stewards of the land, but rarely rewarded for their efforts.
In fact, it is often a terrible opposite: grandmother Julia Chunil Catricura had been fighting to stay on Mapuche land in southern Chile, but disappeared earlier this year when she went out for a walk.
Lefimilla Catalina, also Mapuche, said she’s travelled two days to be here in Belem to raise the case of Julia, and to forge alliances with other groups.
The protest in the city of Belem
“At least [COP30] makes it visible” to the world that people are “facing conflicts” on their land, she said.
She added: “COP offers a tiny space [for indigenous people], and we want to be more involved.
“We want to have more influence, and that’s why we believe we have to take ownership of these spaces, we can’t stay out of it.”
They are joined by climate protesters from around the world in an effort to hold governments’ feet to the fire.
Louise Hutchins, convener of Make Polluters Pay Coalition International, said: “We’re here to say to governments they need to make the oil and gas companies pay up for the climate destruction – they’ve made billions in profits every day for the last 50 years.”
After three years of COPs with no protests – the UAE, Egypt, and Azerbaijan do not look kindly on people taking to the streets – this year demonstrators have defined the look, the tone and the soundtrack of the COP30 climate talks – and Saturday was no different.
Whether that will translate into anything more ambitious to come out of COP30 remains to be seen, with another week of negotiations still to go.
For now, the protests in Belem reflect the chaos, the mess and the beauty of Brazil, the COP process, and the rest of the world beyond.
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