By Abdullahi Lukman
The Africa Make Big Polluters Pay (MBPP) Coalition has denounced the newly launched Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) at COP30 in Belém, calling it a dangerous attempt to turn forests into financial assets rather than protect them.
The $125-billion Brazil-backed facility promises annual payments to countries for maintaining forests, but the coalition argues it offers no real support to climate-vulnerable nations.
In a statement issued November 17, the coalition—representing more than 32 organisations including CAPPA, Gender CC Southern Africa and the Global Forest Coalition—said the TFFF empowers financial institutions while undermining Indigenous stewardship and climate justice.
The financial model, they warned, prioritises investor returns, reduces forests to tradable assets and risks worsening inequality.
The coalition said the initiative threatens African nations that host some of the world’s most biodiverse forests, placing them in a system that deepens financial dependence and erodes sovereignty over natural resources.
Countries such as Nigeria, Angola, Ghana, Liberia, Mozambique and Uganda, it noted, could end up locked into external bureaucracies rather than receiving genuine climate finance.
The TFFF’s proposed payment of roughly $4 per hectare of standing forest annually was described as tokenistic and insufficient compared with the ecological and economic value of tropical forests.
The group also criticised the fund’s reliance on investment performance, saying payments to countries would only flow after investor obligations are met—effectively privatising forest finance.
The coalition condemned the decision to appoint the World Bank as trustee, citing a history of centralised control, delays and exclusion of frontline communities.
Leaders from CAPPA, Gender CC Southern Africa and the Global Forest Coalition warned that the World Bank’s involvement risks marginalising Indigenous knowledge and transforming forest protection into another profit-driven scheme.
According to the coalition, the TFFF’s governance structure fails to represent the Global South and replaces public accountability with private financial interests.
It argued that even a small redirection of global military spending would mobilise far more climate funds than the facility’s market-based approach.
The MBPP urged world leaders to reject the TFFF and instead support transparent, community-led climate finance systems that strengthen local rights, sovereignty and environmental justice, insisting that real climate action must come from the communities that have protected forests for generations.