Fucking Brazil Prepares To Unveil Another Fucking Carbon Offset Proposal At Fucking Climate Summit [View all]

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The TFFF’s backers see the fund as a potential jewel in the crown of green capitalism, with bond markets coming to the rescue of the rainforests. Brazilian environment minister Marina Silva told a London Climate Week audience in June: “It will mobilize large-scale capital with sustained financial flows to conserve our biodiversity.” For Zac Goldsmith, British senior fellow at the Bezos Earth Fund, a potential funder, “the TFFF is the only game in town for forest finance… We will not have this opportunity again.” The World Bank will now become the administrative headquarters of the facility, as well as eventually overseeing transference of its anticipated profits to tropical countries. “With this foundation in place, the TFFF is now ready for countries to follow Brazil’s lead by making their own pledges,” said Brazil’s finance minister Fernando Haddad.

But there are concerns. Forest ecologists warn that the plan’s rulebook is so loose that it could allow payouts for forests even as they are being logged. Rights activists warn that Indigenous peoples could lose control of their forests. Meanwhile, some economists argue that the project’s proposed financial architecture is both risky and inherently unfair. Much of the money for forest protection would come from the high interest rates charged on volatile loans to the very countries whose forests it promises to benefit. Without those hefty payments, says Max Alexander Matthey of the University of Witten/Herdecke in Germany, “there is no money for the forests.”

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It has strong backing from major environmental groups such as the WWF and Conservation International. But there are concerns among forest ecologists that the small print defining what counts as standing forest worthy of rewarding could create perverse incentives for further destruction. Most intact moist tropical forests have canopy cover greater than 80 percent. Much less usually indicates they are badly degraded, for instance by loggers, says environmental scientist Brendan Mackey of Griffith University in Queensland, Australia. Yet the TFFF’s criteria for full payment currently require only 20 percent cover. “This is not scientifically credible” he says.

The most recent Brazilian briefing on the project argues that this loose definition recognizes the value of all standing tropical forests, “not only those classified as intact, high integrity, or primary.” Mackey agrees that such degraded forests are worth protecting and restoring, but believes that there should be a premium for forests with “high ecosystem integrity.” Otherwise, as presently drafted, says Kate Dooley, an expert on forest governance at the University of Melbourne, the TFFF “would allow payments even where industrial logging is occurring in primary forests.”

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https://e360.yale.edu/features/tropical-forest-forever-facility-cop30