Branching Into Tropical Forests

One of the best parts about working at Living on Earth is that you learn something new every week. It’s the ultimate workplace for nerds, people with fractured attention spans, and anyone who enjoys a Wikipedia deep dive. And for me, who experiences shades of all three, it works out perfectly!

Just last week, a story I worked on led me into a few fields: international relations, Indigenous land management, and economics. Fellow producer Paloma Beltran and I explored all of these topics and more when we entered full-on research mode to learn about the Tropical Forest Forever Facility. This is a new proposal that came out of 2025’s COP30 in Belém, Brazil, with a simple overall concept: bring together the public and private sectors to seed an investment portfolio whose profits can be used to incentivize countries to maintain their vulnerable tropical and subtropical forests, all while dedicating around 20% of the final earnings to Indigenous groups.

Okay, did I lose you? If you felt that wasn’t so simple, you’re not alone. Even after doing the research, it’s not easy to sum it up in one sentence, so I’ll hit it point by point. When we first covered this story back in November 2025, we spoke with Michael Coe, who’s a Senior Scientist and tropical forest expert at the Woodwell Climate Research Center. Coe emphasized the importance of tropical forests. They’re massively biodiverse, they store a lot of carbon, and they even have a cooling effect on both local and global scales. By the end of the interview it was easy to see why scientists are looking to protect these areas, especially given how much deforestation, degradation, and specifically wildfire are devastating such a delicate biome.

But it wasn’t as easy to understand the mechanism of the fund, or where the money would actually be going in the end. So Paloma and I split the research up. To learn more about the financial setup, Paloma spoke with Chip Barber, the Director of Natural Resources, Governance and Policy at the World Resources Institute.

“So, this is paying for keeping standing forest. That's why it's got “forever” in the title. Once you’ve got good management and you're managing your forest, [...] how do you do that over time and do it in a way that provides sufficient incentives so that it's more worth your while to keep the forest standing than to cut it down and plant soybeans or palm oil or something else?” - Chip Barber

As he explained it, the goal of the fund is to keep tropical forests intact by paying countries for every untouched hectare. But how does the money get there? TFFF’s proposal plans to start off with a pool of $125 billion dollars, with $25 billion coming from governments and major private foundations and the remaining $100 billion from the private sector. The Tropical Forest Forever Facility will pay a low interest rate in order to use that money, and they’ll invest it in a diversified portfolio (specifically, one that doesn’t contribute to environmental degradation) that will ideally earn more than TFFF pays in interest. If the investment is profitable, that money will be split among eligible countries. The TFFF says it hopes to earn around $3 to $5 billion per year, and roughly 70 nations will be considered for their share in the pot. Of course, those nations will need to prove that they have been keeping their forests standing, but that will be managed with satellite data and international discussions about what an intact forest looks like.

My research, on the other hand, looked into this pledge from the TFFF to allot 20% of their profits to local and Indigenous groups. In so many cases, Indigenous communities are the people on the ground doing the actual land management and forest protection. A 2025 report from the Environmental Defense Fund that found between 1985 and 2020, 90% of Amazon deforestation occurred outside of Indigenous lands. And during my research, I had a conversation with Juan Carlos Jintiach of the Shuar people — an Indigenous leader from the Ecuadorian region of the Amazon. He emphasized how Indigenous people have historically been excluded from these discussions, and how it’s still hard for them to get a seat at the table. From his perspective, 20% is a good start, but it doesn’t match the effort and the impact Indigenous communities have on land management in these regions. And near the end of our conversation, Juanca underlined the importance of collaboration among these Indigenous peoples. 

“We need to change the narrative but we cannot do that alone. We need solidarity, we need partners that we can trust. [...] We are going internationally to bring our concerns and petitions [...] At the end of the day, we need to work together, to strategize with all the regions.” - Juan Carlos Jintiach

As the TFFF gets off the ground, I’m especially curious to see the way countries and these local and Indigenous groups use the money they receive from the fund. How often will it get put right back into forest protection and preservation, making a feedback loop? I suppose that would be the ‘forever’ part of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility — if all goes as planned, this system could become a perpetual fund to protect some of our world’s most vulnerable lands.

Again, one of the best parts of working here at Living on Earth is that not only have I spent a week learning all this new information, but now I have a new fascinating story sitting in the back of my mind, and I can keep up with it as it progresses. Plus, it’s so fun to find one story (a new fund announced at COP30 for protecting forests) and learn about so many different topics branching out from there (investment funds, geopolitical agreements, Indigenous rights). I can’t wait to see what I learn next week.

Aynsley O'Neill

Producer