The Africa Make Big Polluters Pay, MBPP, Coalition has rejected the newly inaugurated Tropical Forest Forever Facility, TFFF, describing it as a dangerous and misleading attempt to financialise nature under the guise of forest protection.
The position was contained in a statement issued in Abuja by Robert Egbe, Media and Communication Officer at the Corporate Accountability and Public Participation Africa, CAPPA, The coalition announced its rejection during the ongoing United Nations Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil.
Africa MBPP, which consists of more than 32 organisations including CAPPA, Gender CC Southern Africa, and the Global Forest Coalition said the TFFF offers no real relief to climate-vulnerable nations and threatens to undermine decades of community-led environmental stewardship.
Spearheaded by Brazil, the TFFF is being promoted as a $125 billion blended-finance mechanism that would pay countries annually for conserving tropical forests. But the coalition warned that the facility effectively reduces forests to “tradable assets” controlled by powerful financial institutions.
“The excitement trailing the launch of the TFFF is misplaced. Rather than safeguarding forests, it commodifies living ecosystems and erodes the principles of climate justice it claims to uphold,” the coalition said.
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According to the group, Africa faces the greatest risk. The continent’s tropical forests home to some of the world’s richest biodiversity and most climate-vulnerable communities could become further exposed to external control. Countries such as Nigeria, Ghana, Liberia, Cameroon, Côte d’Ivoire, Mozambique, Rwanda and others, it warned, are being drawn into a system that places investor returns above community needs.
One of the coalition’s major concerns is that investor profits are prioritised before any payments reach participating countries. At about $4 per hectare, the payment model is described as tokenistic and disconnected from the real socio-economic and ecological value of forests.
The group also criticised the appointment of the World Bank as trustee of the facility, arguing that the Bank’s record shows a tendency to centralise power, delay funding, and exclude local communities from decision-making.
Akinbode Oluwafemi, Executive Director of CAPPA, said climate finance must resist corporate capture. “The World Bank must not be allowed to turn forest protection into another business model,” he said.
Representatives from Gender CC Southern Africa and the Global Forest Coalition echoed concerns that the TFFF would marginalise Indigenous knowledge, deepen inequality, and weaken local stewardship.
The coalition urged global leaders to reject the TFFF and instead support transparent, community-centred climate finance systems that protect both people and the planet.
