Birth Announcement: A Sovereign Wealth Fund to Protect Tropical Forests
uckily, good ideas have long half-lives. An idea developed here at CGD in 2018 to protect tropical forests forever (literally forever) will be born officially at COP30 in Belém.
At a side meeting during the UN General Assembly in New York in September, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that Brazil would contribute $1 billion to a new climate fund, the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF)—which will be officially launched next week at COP30 in Belém.
Operating like a sovereign wealth fund, the TFFF will mobilize additional public, private and philanthropic capital, reinvest these resources in a diversified investment portfolio, and use resulting earnings to reward tropical forest countries for their stewardship of a global public good. By paying countries a fixed annual amount per hectare of conserved or restored forest, it will be funding carbon removal, a heretofore unfunded “ecosystem service”. And it will operate as a “payment-for-performance” model, using satellite monitoring to measure countries’ changes in forest cover. Finally, to ensure its long-term sustainability, it will maintain its capital base.
The idea for the TFFF was developed by a team (Michele de Nevers, Patricia Bliss-Guest, Kenneth Lay and Michael Wolosin) here at the Center for Global Development in 2018 with funding from the Government of Norway. Its launch illustrates and vindicates the role of think tanks: to come up with innovative policy proposals, and work to get them translated into on-the-ground programs.
One of us (Nancy) congratulates the other of us (Michele) and Kenneth Lay—the TFFF’s mother and father—and President Lula, the baby’s midwife.
The TFFF has also been named a 2025 Earthshot Prize Finalist in the category of Protect and Restore Nature. We hope for a win—which to help attract smart investors.
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