Countries Financially Encouraged to Keep Their Forests

Brazil has proposed a 125 million dollar fund to help conserve tropical and subtropical rainforests in developing countries.

“The aim of the Tropical Forest Forever Facility is to reward countries that are already controlling their levels of deforestation, but still need to invest to keep forests standing,” says Garo Batmanian, director-general of the Brazilian Forest Service.

The Tropical Forest Forever Fund will pay nations to preserve their forests and reduce payments for every area of land they deforest during a year. The fund differs from others in that it “create[s] an incentive that includes a disincentive in the mechanism itself,” explains one of the architects of the original idea, Tassa Azevedo. The fund comes after recent figures estimate that 25 per cent of the world’s forests have already been destroyed, and less than 30 per cent of these areas are officially protected. The idea is still being developed, but countries that receive money from the fund would be obligated to use the money for further conservation and restoration programs and initiatives that would benefit Indigenous populations.