Action Agenda Reveals How Countries Can Energize Faltering Forest Pledges In Advance Of Climate Summit In The Amazon

Companion brief calls for major reforms to the global financial system to stop incentivizing forest destruction while ignoring the costs of forest loss

Washington, D.C. (March 19, 2025) — A new call-to-action released today by a coalition of forest-focused civil society and research organizations — the Forest Declaration Assessment, prepared for world leaders — provides urgently needed guidance for how governments can revive stalled efforts to reverse large-scale forest loss worldwide ahead of the November COP30 climate summit in Brazil.

“World leaders have committed to protect, conserve and restore the world’s forests by 2030. Just five years remain to deliver on these promises to save forests — a cornerstone of long-term economic prosperity and sustainable development,” said Franziska Haupt, a partner at Climate Focus. Climate Focus coordinated the call-to-action, 2030 Global Forest Vision: Priority Actions for Governments in 2025, under the umbrella of the Forest Declaration Assessment.

The call-to-action provides a vision for what governments can do this year to adopt a more responsible approach to managing the world’s forests. It provides an action agenda for national governments to show ambition and leadership on forest action in 2025, in the vein of the Forest & Climate Leaders’ Partnership (FCLP), a government-led coalition involving more than 30 countries that is committed to pursuing solutions to reversing forest loss and degradation.

The report outlines eight specific actions governments must embrace now to ensure they arrive at the COP30 climate summit in Belém, Brazil — a city that serves as a gateway to the Amazon rainforest — poised to deliver on bold commitments made nearly four years ago at COP26 to save the world’s forests by 2030.

Despite the fact that some 140 governments signed on to the pledge, forest loss and degradation have intensified. A recent assessment found that in 2023 alone, 6.37 million hectares of forests were destroyed — an area equivalent to about 9 million soccer fields.

Éliane Ubalijoro, CEO of the Center for International Forestry Research and World Agroforestry (CIFOR-ICRAF), one of the organizations that contributed to the report, said, "CIFOR-ICRAF supports this very pragmatic vision for forests which, with its focus on finance, subsidies, governance and national planning, and more, shows that with multiple efforts, the ambitious goal of zero deforestation in 2030 can still be achieved. The process will gain strength by tracking progress and by ensuring that substantially more funds reach the communities that safeguard forests — especially Indigenous peoples and local communities. Aligning ambition with accountability will help turn commitments into lasting impact, even in an uncertain global landscape."

Tomasz Sawicki, head of land at CDP, another contributing organization, said: “Governments can add momentum to the COP30 climate talks before they even reach Belem by taking opportunities to put forest protection goals first.” The actions they can take include building partnerships between importer and exporter countries that focus on the economic benefits of healthy forests and boosting financial support for forest protection initiatives and forest communities.

The Priority Actions for Governments in 2025 was released alongside a brief from the Forest Declaration Assessment examining the perverse incentives baked into the global financial system that encourage forest destruction — and what can be done to correct course.

The Transforming Forest Finance brief warns that even the most ambitious efforts to protect forested lands and communities will falter absent reforms to public and private sector financing packages that “pressure countries” to meet short-term economic needs via “extractive or exploitive” industries that destroy forests. For example, the report notes that in 2023, US$6.1 trillion in private financing flowed to companies that cleared tropical forests to support industrial-scale agriculture production.

There is evidence that globally, forests generate up to US$150 trillion a year in economic benefits — twice the value of the global stock markets. Maintaining healthy forests also creates jobs that support billions of livelihoods. However, the Transforming Forest Finance brief finds that financing, whether from corporations, government subsidies or multilateral development banks like the World Bank, tends to favor economic activities that “exacerbate ecosystem collapse” while failing to calculate their costs.

According to the brief, “Most financial institutions have yet to implement any deforestation-related safeguards for their investments,” despite a strong economic rationale for doing so. It calls for protecting and properly valuing forests by embracing a series of financial reforms targeting development banks, private sector investors, sovereign lenders and governments (with a focus on government agriculture subsidies). The authors note that the goal is to spark a “transformational shift in the way nature is factored into business decision-making.”

Stepping Stones to a COP30 That Works for Forests

The specific recommendations in the Priority Actions for Governments in 2025 provide a detailed blueprint for governments to implement in the coming months to ensure COP30 breathes new life into the global forest protection pledge — with an emphasis on actions that align healthy forests with healthy economies. They include:

Incorporating forest goals into key aspects of global climate and biodiversity agreements. For example, countries can show leadership on forest commitments by updating their emissions targets for the agriculture sector to account for emissions generated by converting forests and other natural ecosystems into farmlands.

Expanding partnerships between importer and exporter countries with a focus on promoting trade in legal forest products and severing the link between commodity production and forest destruction and degradation. All countries — including major markets like China and India —share an interest in ensuring trade of legal products, because illegal deforestation robs countries of billions of dollars in tax revenue each year. For example, trade agreements should include forest conservation provisions and language supporting legal prohibitions against deforestation. Meanwhile, importing countries should take further steps to eliminate trade in illegally produced commodities.

Significantly increasing financial support for forests that have delivered through initiatives like the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) and REDD+ (which stands for reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation in developing countries). Brazil is leading the development of the TFFF as a mechanism that can increase funding for tropical forests and properly value both standing and restored forests.

“The TFFF may offer the best chance of a major nature and climate finance success this year, and industrialized country governments should play a critical role in catalyzing finance in its initial phase,” said Damian Fleming, deputy practice leader for forests at WWF.

Meanwhile, REDD+ payments should reflect the true costs of both forest protection and forest loss. For example, to be cost-effective, payments for carbon sequestration should rise substantially from current levels, which are now about $5-10 per metric ton of carbon dioxide (CO2).

Increasing financial support for lands and territorial rights of Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendant peoples and local communities, given the fact that they consistently sequester carbon on their lands at higher rates than other lands. For example, donor countries should mobilize a five-year commitment of at least $3 billion for these forest communities. Forest countries should pledge financing as well while also intensifying efforts to establish and expand land rights.

“We’ve been selling ourselves short for decades with narrowly focused solutions to addressing the complexity of forest degradation and loss in equally diverse countries and regions,” said Alain Frechette of the Rights and Resources Initiative, a contributing organization. “The 2030 Global Forest Vision aims to radically shift the stalemate of progress by identifying the critical pillars of change that must be tackled interdependently and collectively to create a more just, inclusive and climate-resilient world.”

Using regulatory authority to ensure financial institutions calculate social and environmental costs as part of their formal assessment of investment decisions. For example, the European Union must hold the line with regulations that require financial institutions to consider social and environmental impacts of their investments. They should resist efforts to have the regulations weakened, which was a concern during recent discussions of the European Commission’s “Simplification Omnibus,” which seeks changes in how businesses disclose the potential environmental impacts of their investments.

Government should re-examine the US$470 billion they spend on agricultural subsidies that harm forests and other natural ecosystems and contribute to biodiversity loss. Repurposing ineffective and unsustainable agricultural and forestry subsidies could lead to significant fiscal savings while contributing to more resilient, sustainable and equitable food and wood product production systems. Examples of beneficial activities include strengthening nature-positive agricultural production and restoring degraded farmland to productivity.

Government should review and strengthen laws — and their enforcement — that protect forested lands and forest communities. By reinforcing institutions, clarifying and securing land rights and upholding the rule of law, good governance helps protect and conserve forests and other ecosystems while empowering local communities to shape forest policies.

Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and international public finance institutions should increase finance for forests and sustainable rural development, while addressing the vicious cycle of sovereign debt. For example, development banks, particularly the World Bank, should restructure the sovereign debt of low- and middle-income countries that hold an abundance of natural resources — building on recent debt-relief efforts and growing calls from international civil society — in exchange for actions to protect and restore critical ecosystems. These reforms should support efforts to include forests as “natural capital” on country balance sheets.

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