Food & Climate
Several issues came to the fore at the UN Climate Change Conference (COP30), with talks in the Amazon focusing on the threat of deforestation to large parts of South America and Africa, and the resulting frustration over insufficient funding for the Brazilian-proposed mechanism.
Brazil’s initiative to stem the loss of forest ecosystems – the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) – was one of the key talking points heading into COP30, according to a report seen by Food & Climate.
The concept is based on both governments and private investors putting money into an investment fund. Some of the proceeds of this fund will then be used to reward countries that maintain low rates of deforestation and to support forest communities.
Over the course of two weeks of negotiations in the Brazilian city of Belém, the gods appeared to send multiple signs imploring global powerbrokers to take action on climate change. As well as the fire in the Africa pavilion, a biblical downpour briefly flooded the Pacific islands pavilion. Yet there is only modest evidence that negotiators got the message.
The most important carbon sink on the Earth’s land surface
DR Congo and neighbouring countries that are carpeted by the Congo Basin Rainforest – the most important carbon sink on the Earth’s land surface, absorbing more carbon dioxide than even the Amazon rainforest – could be key beneficiaries of the TFFF.
The non-profit TFFF Watch estimates DR Congo could net a maximum of $460m a year if the TFFF were fully operational and if it halted deforestation entirely.
However, commitments to the TFFF have been underwhelming. Brazil hopes to raise $125bn for the fund, and bringing COP30 to the Amazon provided a unique platform to solicit contributions. Just $6.7bn in pledges were announced before and during COP30, however, of which $3bn comes from Norway. The total pledges mean the TFFF is still far below the $25bn needed to bring the initiative into full-scale operation.
“I think there’s some degree of concern in terms of what we are seeing about the future of TFFF, especially when you look at the implications of not being able to secure the initial pledges,” says Tiago de Valladares Pacheco, Africa forest lead at The Nature Conservancy.
“There’s a cautious approach to it, which is not encouraging,” Pacheco adds, referring to the reticence of some governments to invest in TFFF. Without a significant ramp-up in contributions before next year’s COP, Pacheco fears the TFFF could prove to be a “missed opportunity”.
COP30 was able to reach consensus on tripling finance for adaptation
COP30 was never expected to see a major breakthrough on setting new climate finance goals. That milestone came a year ago in Baku, when negotiators controversially agreed to a ‘new collective quantified goal on climate finance’ of $300bn a year by 2035.
More positively, COP30 was able to reach consensus on tripling finance for adaptation to climate change – a goal that Richard Muyungi, chair of the Africa Group of Negotiators, described as a “red line” for the continent during the final stages of negotiations.
Adaptation finance is one segment of climate finance; it focuses on helping countries to become more resilient to the impacts of climate change, for example by building sea walls to reduce the damage from coastal flooding. It is distinct from “mitigation” finance, which aims to lessen the extent of global warming, for example by replacing fossil fuels with renewable energy.
In the final deal, negotiators agreed to “call for” adaptation finance to “at least” triple by 2035. This only partially satisfied the Least Developed Countries group, which had sought a tripling by 2030. There is also some ambiguity about exactly what is being tripled, since no specific figure was included in the text. Extrapolating from the 2025 adaptation goal of $40bn produces a figure of $120bn a year.
Catherine Koffman, Africa director for the UN-backed Green Climate Fund, tells African Business that COP30 saw “a movement towards accelerating implementation.”
Koffman adds that African governments are increasingly recognising that the private sector will be part of the solution on climate finance.
“There was definitely an acknowledgement that we cannot reach these targets without engaging the private sector to make sure that we, from inception, are ideating and designing investment platforms that will be investable.”
She lists a number of “non-traditional” financial instruments that African countries could use to raise finance. As well as earnings revenues through the carbon markets, Koffman points to sustainability-linked bonds and loans, climate resilience bonds and “debt-for climate” swaps. The latter involve restructuring a country’s debt to reduce its debt servicing costs, in return for a commitment to use part of the savings to fund adaptation. Barbados became the first country to launch such an instrument in 2024.