Spoils of a Continuing Colonialism
The Tropical Forest Forever Facility

One source of confusion about action on global warming following the recent UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil is a proposed new institution called the “Tropical Forest Forever Facility” (TFFF).

The TFFF claims to be a new hope for tropical forests worldwide – a historic “breakthrough” and “paradigm shift.”

But even the briefest objective look at the TFFF shows that it needs to be opposed from the very start. No possible design for the TFFF has any chance whatsoever of helping to save tropical forests. On the contrary, the TFFF would be certain to cause even more forest destruction, while adding to South-North injustices and further undermining the struggles of forest peoples and the interests of the global public.

Six reasons why the TFFF must not be allowed to get off the ground:

(1) It would be funded with profits derived partly from the destruction of tropical forests.

(2) The money that it promises to tropical forest governments is small and extremely uncertain compared to the profits that Wall Street could make from the plan. On the whole, the scheme is designed to transfer wealth from South to North.

(3) The TFFF would increase both the South’s financial debt to the North and the North’s ecological debt to the South.

(4) The TFFF is designed in a way that distracts from the underlying causes of deforestation. The bond investment fund at its heart has been designed by Northern bankers who have little experience of tropical forests or their peoples.

(5) The TFFF is based on a false theory of deforestation.

(6) Any money that does reach tropical forest governments under the plan would be very unlikely to be passed on in significant amounts to forest communities themselves. Indeed, the TFFF could end up empowering repressive governments against forest communities.

Portuguese, Indonesian, French and Spanish versions of this paper are available through the links above.