With the announcement of two major forest finance initiatives at the climate talks in Belém, Brazil, there is renewed hope that the Congo Basin, home to the world’s second-largest tropical rainforest, could finally secure the sustained, equitable climate funding it has long been promised. The first was the Tropical Forest Forever Fund (TFFF), unveiled by Brazil, which is backed by $6.7 billion in commitments. A lion’s share of this funding is coming from a $3 billion pledge from Norway. The second was the official launch of the Canopy Trust on Nov. 17. The trust, operationalized by the Switzerland-based Catalytic Finance Foundation, has already raised $93 million, with a goal of mobilizing $1 billion by 2030 to support sustainable enterprises and early-stage, high-impact forest projects in the Congo Basin. It does so by leveraging public and philanthropic money to attract private investments. Over the past two decades, the Congo Basin has attracted financing from a growing constellation of forest funds, often with big ambitions but with uneven delivery and results. Early efforts included the African Development Bank-hosted Congo Basin Forest Fund established in 2008, which mobilized about $186 million, followed by the Central African Forest Initiative (CAFI), now the dominant player, channeling performance-based finance and much of the $1.5 billion pledged at COP26 held in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2021. Newer instruments such as the Global Environment Facility’s Congo Basin Sustainable Landscapes Program add to this crowded landscape. Finance also flows from other channels like the World Bank, the European Union-backed ECOFAC…This article was originally published on Mongabay

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