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The UK will not contribute to a flagship fund for the world’s remaining tropical forests, in a bitter blow to the Brazilian hosts on the eve of the Cop30 climate summit.
Keir Starmer flew to Belém, at the mouth of the Amazon, on Wednesday to join a summit of world leaders hosted by Brazil’s president, Lula da Silva.
The key announcement for Brazil at the leaders’ summit on Thursday, which is taking place a few days before the start of the main Cop30 UN climate summit, will be the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF).
This fund aims to raise $125bn for governments and local communities that protect existing forests, such as the Amazon and the Congo basin. Lula hopes to raise $25bn from public sources, mainly developed countries attending Cop30, with the rest to come from the private sector and financial markets.
But he has had difficulty persuading cash-strapped governments, many of which are already cutting their aid budgets, to provide money. Under Joe Biden, the US was seen as a possible contributor, but with Donald Trump as president that will not happen.
The UK decision will be a major letdown, as Britain has previously played a big role in stopping deforestation. “The Brazilians are fuming,” one source told the Guardian.
However, the Guardian understands Downing Street may consider contributing directly to the fund in future. The TFFF is regarded as being at too early a stage at present, and there are concerns about how it will work in practice. The UK has contributed to the structure financially underpinning the fund, but not directly to the fund itself, despite Brazil urging it to do so for months.
Norway is likely to hold firm to its commitment to the TFFF, but the Guardian understands that the German government may also be wavering.
The UK’s decision will embarrass Prince William, who is in Brazil to present the Earthshot prize, for which the TFFF is nominated.
Zac Goldsmith, the Conservative peer and climate minister under Boris Johnson, who led UK efforts on deforestation at the Cop26 summit in 2021 in Glasgow, told the Guardian the UK was making a mistake. “The UK helped design the fund, having catapulted forests to the top of the agenda when we hosted Cop. But this government seems only interested in one-dimensional carbon accounting and has just walked away,” he said.
Goldsmith believes TFFF is the best way to preserve threatened forests worldwide. “At last there’s a plan on the table to save the world’s remaining tropical forests, on which we all ultimately depend. It doesn’t require grants or aid. It is a fund, with the first tranche provided as an investment by governments, and the remainder – the vast majority – by the private sector,” he said.
“The fund will last in perpetuity and will provide returns to investors as well as annual income to those forest countries that protect their forests. At a time of reduced availability of funds, and increased decimation of the great forest basins, this is as close as you get to win-win.”
He accused the UK government of trying to persuade Germany not to invest, which the UK denies.
Green groups criticised the decision. Tanya Steele, chief executive of WWF-UK, said: “Failing to invest in the TFFF at this stage is a missed opportunity for the UK government. The TFFF is an innovative new finance mechanism that will quadruple the amount of money available to keep the world’s forests standing and ultimately underpin our food security at a time when rising food prices are hitting UK shoppers.”
She added: “It is telling – and concerning – that the UK, as one of the world’s richest countries, has not announced an investment to match those from less wealthy countries. We urge the prime minister to reconsider and invest in the TFFF after Cop30.”
Zoe Quiroz Cullen, director of climate and nature linkages at the conservation organisation Fauna & Flora, said: “Helping Brazil to shape the TFFF but then leaving others to front the initial cash at its launch is an abandonment of leadership by the UK government, while others, including the global south, step up.
“The irony and injustice in this should not be lost. We need all of the tools we can get to tackle the dual climate and nature loss crises, and the TFFF offers an additional way of channelling finance to protecting the lungs of our planet, while promising a financial return on investment.”
