Brazil officially launched a new financial market fund, called the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, or TFFF, at a Nov. 6 event ahead of the COP30 climate summit it will host in Belém. Countries with significant amounts of tropical forest cover can receive up to $4 per hectare ($1.62 per acre) of standing forest per year under the fund’s rules. But with penalties of up to $800 per hectare ($324 per acre) of deforestation, payments shrink fast, meaning even small increases in deforestation can amount to hundreds of millions lost. “Forests are worth more standing than cut down. They should interact with the GDP of our nations,” Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said at the event. “The ecosystem services they provide to humanity must be compensated, as should the people who work to protect them.” Tropical forest countries must allocate 20% of payments to Indigenous and local communities, but it’s up to governments to decide how; it may not even be in the form of direct cash payments. Every hectare of forest cleared can have a big impact on how much a country gets paid. If deforestation rates are low (less than 0.3%), each hectare deforested faces a discount of $400, or the equivalent of 100 hectares if the price per hectare falls below $4. For higher deforestation rates (0.3-0.5%), each hectare cleared is discounted at the value of 200 hectares. Forests degraded by fire are counted as 35 hectares lost. In 2021, the Brazilian Amazon’s worst deforestation year…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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