Can Brazil’s new forest fund rewrite the economics of destruction?

Paul Polman is the former CEO of Unilever and co-author of the book “Net Positive: How Courageous Companies Thrive by Giving More Than They Take”.

Standing in Belém, at the edge of the Amazon, you feel two things at once: the power of a living system that keeps the world habitable, and the terrifying ease with which that power could unravel. One political cycle. One market signal. That’s all it takes to tip a living system past the point of return.

Scientists warn that seven of nine planetary boundaries are already breached or at risk. Climate, biodiversity, freshwater and land use are all under strain. These are not abstract diagrams but the boundaries of a stable, liveable civilisation. And nowhere is that pressure more visible or consequential than in the world’s tropical forests.

The Amazon, the Congo Basin, and the forests of Southeast Asia cool the planet, drive rainfall, store vast amounts of carbon and support hundreds of millions of people. Yet it remains more profitable, in the short term, to cut them down than to keep them standing.

We are treating vital organs of the Earth like disposable assets. If we are serious about a “net positive” future - one where we give more to the world than we take - then that equation must change.

Forest nations cannot be expected to protect a global public good while the benefits are captured elsewhere, and the costs fall on them alone. Anyone who has run a company knows that such an unbalanced contract will eventually break.

That is why Brazil’s new Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), launched at COP30, matters. It is not a silver bullet, but it may be the boldest attempt yet to flip the economics of deforestation at scale.

The concept is simple. TFFF is a mechanism that turns forest protection into a reliable, long-term income stream for forest countries. It works much like a fixed-rate savings account: investors put in capital for a guaranteed return, the fund invests that money in low-risk, sustainable bonds; and the margin between those two rates, the “profit”, is redirected.

The difference is that, instead of that profit going to a bank’s shareholders, it goes to global forest protection. Payments rise or fall based on actual forest cover, tracked through satellite data. In short: profit, repurposed for planetary good.

At least 20% of those funds must flow directly to Indigenous peoples and local communities, those who have long protected forests with little recognition, and even less reward.

At a time when foreign aid budgets are shrinking, creating a model based on investment rather than grants is a significant breakthrough.

More than $5.5 billion has already been pledged, including from Brazil, Indonesia, France, Norway and from philanthropy such as the Minderoo Foundation. Over 50 countries have endorsed the launch declaration, 34 of them home to over 90% of the world’s tropical forests.

Each year we lose tropical forest equivalent to the size of Britain. The costs of allowing that to continue are enormous. If the tropical forests tip toward savannahs, it could destabilise rainfall, food systems, and economies around the world.

In that context, investing to keep forests standing is not charity or generosity. It is self-preservation, and a bargain compared to the cost of failure.

Like any ambitious new mechanism, there are rough edges that need to be smoothed out to command scientific trust and global credibility. Questions remain around how “intact” forest is defined, whether payment levels are sufficient to compete with pressures from agriculture and mining, and how effectively the system will address degradation.

And there is a larger truth: no fund can outspend bad policy. If governments continue to subsidise deforestation and fail to enforce zero-deforestation supply chains, we will pay for protection with one hand while fuelling destruction with the other.

The task, then, is to shape the TFFF it to ensure that integrity, transparency and justice are built in from the start. That forest nations, Indigenous peoples, and local communities hold real power in its governance, and the 20% community share is treated as a floor, not a ceiling.

It also means using public money in a truly net positive way. When governments back TFFF, they should encourage strengthened equity and environmental integrity, and ensure their capital is catalytic and additional, not simply rebadged.

If Britain wants to strengthen its position as a credible global leader on forests, this is the time to act. It helped launch a global forest declaration at COP26 in Glasgow and allocated the finance it pledged, but has so far failed to invest in the TFFF.

Business must also play its part. Companies that rely on stable rainfall, healthy soils, and deforestation-free supply chains should see TFFF as a strategic investment in the resilience of the very systems they depend on.

For years, I’ve argued that the only viable model of leadership in the 21st century is net positive leadership, that takes responsibility for your full impact, that builds long-term value by solving the world’s problems, not causing them, and that restores the very systems on which prosperity depends.

TFFF is one of the clearest tests yet of whether we are ready for that kind of leadership.

The science is clear. The economics are compelling. What remains is the moral question. Forest nations have put forward a serious proposal. Civil society and Indigenous leaders are working to strengthen it. Are those in London, New York, Brussels and beyond willing to match that courage with real capital and real reform?

Children born today will not remember the communiqués of COP30, but they will live with the consequences of the decisions taken there. Either they inherit intact forests that continue to cool and stabilise the planet, or they inherit savannahs, supply shocks and spiralling risks.

TFFF will not, on its own, determine which path we take. But it may be the moment we prove whether we are finally prepared to give more than we take from the world that sustains us.