Today, Wood Central spoke to Malcolm Scott, the long-time chair of the New Zealand Tropical Timber Importers Group (NZTTIG), who has been working closely with local timber processors and exporters for more than a decade to help meet the PEFC controlled-source criteria.

“NZITTG has, since 2015, been pushing hard to source third-party legally verified timber products from the Solomons,” Scott said, “so it was with great relief that PEFC terms and conditions have now been met by three exporters…with another three or four likely to join later this year or next.”

According to Simon Dorries, CEO of Responsible Wood (PEFC’s national governing body in Australia), the milestone is a “monumental” achievement for the development of sustainable forest management and timber legality not only in the Solomon Islands but across the wider Pacific region.

“Whilst the Solomons do not have a sustainable forest management standard (yet), the Soil Association (the independent certification body) have conducted due diligence on the sites, allowing the products to be sold as PEFC-controlled source,” he said.

“Importantly, PEFC controlled source is recognised under the Australian Illegal Logging Prohibition Regulation and the New Zealand Legal Harvest Assurance (LHA) system,” Dorries stressed, which in effect means that the Solomons now have a clear pathway into the Australian, NZ and global markets too. “In addition to SITPEA, a group scheme that captures small-sized timber companies in the Solomon supply chain, Top Timber is a medium-sized processor and exporter.”

It comes as Wood Central last year reported on the growing momentum for certification not only in the Solomon Islands but also across the wider Pacific. “Sawn timber is an important source of income and jobs for Solomon Islanders, and SITPEA is positioning Solomon Islands as a trusted source of certified, high-value timber,” according to Rod Hilton, Australian High Commissioner for the Solomon Islands, with PEFC (and/or FSC) certification instrumental in gaining access to Australia, New Zealand as well as into Asia, Europe and America.

The push for certification comes amid rising Chinese engagement in the Solomon Islands’ forestry sector, which accounted for more than 87% of the Solomon Islands’ log trade in 2016. Already, China is using timber and bamboo diplomacy to deepen its economic and strategic ties with the Pacific nation, which in July saw eleven Solomon Islands forestry officers—including Chief Forester Christina Gabuvai—return from a two-month intensive training program in China aimed at strengthening the country’s downstream timber processing capacity.

“In Solomon Islands, forest coverage is around 90%, and most of the country’s revenue comes from logging, with limited development of downstream products,” Gabuvai told China Daily. “I joined this seminar because the government of Solomon Islands recognised the importance of this training. Here, I’ve gained new ideas and skills, including how to transform timber into value-added products.”

• For more information about timber opportunities in the Pacific, a $1 billion-plus market for tropical timber, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from October 2023.

Brazilian president Luiz Inàcio Lula da Silva suggests the so-called Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) is innovative because it is “an investment fund, not a donation mechanism”. This, in theory, means investors can benefit too, providing a long-term stability that isn’t affected by political cycles.

Turning to private markets is not in itself all that innovative. But years of efforts to mobilise private finance for climate action have routinely failed to attract sufficient investment.

The reasons for this are pretty simple. Many necessary activities simply aren’t “good” investments. Even commercial renewable energy projects often struggle to offer returns high enough to compete with other assets.

All of these problems are particularly pronounced for forest conservation. There aren’t many ways to generate income by leaving forests alone, and clearing them for timber or agriculture is generally more profitable. Indeed, this is one of the key drivers of deforestation.

Back to the future?

The TFFF is designed to work around these constraints. Rather than investing directly in conservation projects, it functions like a large endowment or trust fund. It aims to raise US$25 billion in “sponsor capital” from government and philanthropic donors.

Brazil has pledged US$1 billion. Norway followed suit, promising about US$3 billion. The fund also plans to sell US$100 billion in bonds to private investors.

Eventually, the full US$125 billion will be invested in financial markets. After paying interest to investors and sponsors, the remaining returns will be used to pay participating countries around US$4 per hectare of standing tropical forest, minus penalties for forest loss.

By separating investors’ returns from conservation success, the TFFF does potentially create a more appealing offer for private investors than previous climate finance schemes.

However, this model has been tried before.

Trust funds for conservation

In the early 1990s, around the time of the first global negotiations on climate change, the World Bank’s Global Environment Facility financed a trust fund for biodiversity conservation in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan. It was followed by similar projects in Uganda, Mexico, Peru, Brazil, and Poland, Slovakia and Ukraine.

These funds were justified in terms very similar to Lula’s pitch for the TFFF. Private finance was needed, wrote one World Bank official in 1993, “because it is impossible to predict whether the current ‘boom’ in international [government] financing for conservation will last”.

Yet evaluations of these conservation trust funds highlighted recurring problems.

Returns on investment were often lower than anticipated, delaying projects sometimes by years, including the very first one in Bhutan. (And quite how much revenue the TFFF’s investments will actually generate is uncertain.)

The money was tied up in investments and only a small amount was available for conservation. And, while a trust fund can generate a steady trickle of revenue to pay operating costs, it’s much harder to use this model to start new projects.

In Bhutan, the managers of the trust fund struggled with how to finance start-up costs for establishing new conservation areas without eating into the fund itself. Eventually they received a separate grant from the World Wildlife Fund. The TFFF would likely face similar difficulties funding initiatives such as returning farmed land to indigenous communities.

The TFFF inherits these issues, and adds a new one. To attract private investors, interest payments will be prioritised over conservation spending. The TFFF’s concept note is explicit that payments to participating countries will fall if investment income can’t cover payments to bondholders. In other words, there is a real risk that reassuring investors may come at the expense of the fund’s ability to actually protect forests.

There are bigger questions to ask, too. For instance, a coalition of civil society organizations from across the Amazon, as well as Africa and Asia, have already rejected the initiative. They argue it risks turning forests into commodities with a price tag, and that despite claims of centring Indigenous communities, it actually allocates them a paltry amount of money in top-down fashion.

The revival of a mechanism first tried in the early 1990s should give us pause. If private capital can only be mobilised on terms that weaken climate action, then perhaps there’s no longer any alternative to greatly increased public funding and much stronger redistributive measures. Rich countries, corporations, and individuals will need to shoulder more of the cost of mitigating a crisis they’ve played a disproportionate role in creating.

In recent years, activists and researchers have proposed a long list of alternative options. These include diverting some of the trillions currently spent on the world’s largest militaries, reforms to reduce corporate tax avoidance, and debt relief for climate-vulnerable countries.

We can debate whether any of these specific options is effective or appropriate. The TFFF and its limits are a sign that it’s well past time to take such measures seriously.

Nick Bernards, Associate Professor of Global Sustainable Development, University of Warwick. This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

The review, unveiled last week, will assess seven sawmills in Austria, Czechia, Poland, and Lithuania with a combined annual production capacity of 3 million cubic meters, along with three cross-laminated timber (CLT) mills and their associated sales networks. The company stated that the assessment could lead to divestments as it sharpens its focus on renewable packaging, a sector it views as crucial to its long-term growth.

“Whilst the business in scope has a strong position in an attractive market, it does not bring strategic or operational synergies for Stora Enso’s core renewable packaging operations,” the company noted in its announcement.

The move underscores a broader shift in the Nordic forestry giant’s portfolio. While Central European operations are under scrutiny, Stora Enso’s sawmills and processing units in Northern Europe—including Sweden, Finland, Estonia, and Latvia—remain strategically important and are excluded from the review. These facilities, the company said, continue to align closely with its packaging and renewable materials strategy.

Wood Central understands that any potential changes will be subject to co-determination negotiations and other legal procedures in the affected countries. Stora Enso emphasised that operations will continue as usual throughout the process, with a commitment to maintaining customer service and product quality.

The announcement comes amid heightened competition in the European timber market, where demand for engineered wood products such as CLT remains strong. Analysts say the review reflects Stora Enso’s determination to streamline its portfolio and concentrate resources on areas with the highest growth potential, particularly renewable packaging solutions.

Founded in Finland and Sweden, Stora Enso has long been a bellwether for Europe’s forestry industry. Its decision to reassess half of its Wood Products segment highlights both the challenges and opportunities facing traditional timber operations in a market increasingly shaped by sustainability and packaging innovation.

• The company plans to provide an update on the strategic review in 2026.

That is according to the London-based advocacy group, which says that these communities — deliberately isolated after generations of violence, slavery and disease — are under intensifying pressure from both legal and illegal incursions, and that half of the groups “could be wiped out within 10 years if governments and companies do not act.”

“These are what I would call silent genocides — there are no TV crews, no journalists. But they are happening, and they’re happening now,” said Fiona Watson, Survival International’s research and advocacy director.

The new tally reveals that the human crisis is a collision between commercial interests and communities that maintain autonomous lifeways through hunting, fishing, and small-scale cultivation. The groups are not “lost tribes” frozen in time, Watson said. “(Instead) they’re happy in the forest. They have incredible knowledge and they help keep these very valuable forests standing — essential to all humanity in the fight against climate change.”

Experts and advocates warn that the problem is exacerbated by government indifference and misconceptions. Because uncontacted peoples do not participate in formal politics and their lands are often coveted for timber, minerals, and agricultural expansion, they are frequently treated as politically marginal or seen through reductive stereotypes that either romanticise them or portray them as impediments to development.

“A simple cold that you and I recover from in a week … they could die of that cold,” said Dr Subhra Bhattacharjee, director general of the Forest Stewardship Council and an Indigenous rights expert, who last week was in Panama City for the FSC General Assembly, who said contact can destroy livelihoods, belief systems as well as health, and that international law’s requirement of free, prior and informed consent — FPIC — cannot be meaningfully satisfied for groups living in voluntary isolation. “No FPIC means no consent,” he said, adding that his organisation follows a strict policy: “No contact, no-go zones.”

Drivers of the recent surge in danger range from state-built infrastructure that opens frontier zones to settlement to the expanding reach of organised crime. Watson traced early threats to colonisation and state-led development projects, noting that highways built during Brazil’s military dictatorship “acted as a magnet for settlers,” followed by loggers and cattle ranchers whose incursions brought disease and violence that wiped out communities. Today, she warned, drug traffickers and illegal gold miners now penetrate deep into Indigenous territories across Peru, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela, and Ecuador, bringing infectious disease and firearms to confrontations once fought with bows and arrows.

“Any chance encounter runs the risk of transmitting the flu, which can easily wipe out an uncontacted people within a year of contact,” Watson said. “And bows and arrows are no match for guns.”

Religious incursions have also had deadly consequences. Watson recalled that under former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, an evangelical pastor was placed in charge of the government’s unit for uncontacted peoples and was given access to their coordinates. “Their mission was to force contact — to ‘save souls,’” she said. “That is incredibly dangerous.” The stakes extend beyond the fate of isolated communities. Protecting uncontacted peoples, they argue, is also a frontline strategy for preserving carbon-rich forests. “With the world under pressure from climate change, we will sink or swim together,” Bhattacharjee said.

Policy failures and uneven enforcement make protection fragile. International instruments, such as the International Labour Organisation’s Convention 169 and the U.N. Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, recognise the right to self-determination and to remain uncontacted; however, practical enforcement varies widely. Recent political developments illustrate the volatility: Peru’s Congress rejected a proposal to create the Yavari-Mirim Indigenous Reserve, which Indigenous federations say leaves isolated groups exposed, while President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s government in Brazil has sought to rebuild protections weakened under his predecessor by boosting budgets and patrols. The Inter-American Court of Human Rights recently ruled that Ecuador had failed to protect the Tagaeri and Taromenane peoples, who live in voluntary isolation in Yasuni National Park.

Recommendations from advocates include:

• Legal recognition and enforcement of territories — Governments should formally recognise and enforce Indigenous territories as off-limits to extractive industries, and prosecute crimes against isolated peoples.
• Cautious mapping and monitoring — Approximate mapping of territories can allow authorities to create protective buffers, but must be carried out from a safe distance to avoid risking the groups’ health or autonomy.
• Supply-chain accountability — Corporations should trace sourcing to ensure commodities such as gold, timber and soy are not produced on or near uncontacted territories; consumers and public pressure should reinforce corporate action.

Survival International is also calling for the immediate suspension of mining, oil, and agribusiness projects in or near these lands. Watson singled out logging as the biggest single threat and mining as close behind, citing the case of the Hongana Manyawa on Indonesia’s Halmahera Island, where nickel extraction for electric-vehicle batteries threatens an uncontacted people. “People think electric cars are a green alternative,” she said, “but mining companies are operating on the land of uncontacted peoples and posing enormous threats.”

In South America, illegal gold mining in Yanomami territory in Brazil and Venezuela continues to contaminate rivers with mercury, poisoning fish and undermining traditional livelihoods. “The impact is devastating — socially and physically,” Watson said.

Advocates argue that protecting uncontacted peoples requires a dual approach: stronger laws and enforcement are essential, but so is a shift in public perception, treating these communities as autonomous citizens of the planet whose survival impacts the global future. “Public opinion and pressure are essential,” Watson said. “It’s largely through citizens and the media that so much has already been achieved to recognise uncontacted peoples and their rights.”

• To learn more about the role of Indigenous peoples in managing the Amazon (and Atlantic forests) click on Wood Central’s special feature.

• CLICK HERE TO DOWNLOAD FSC’s RESPONSE TO EARTHSIGHT REPORT

Wood Central understands that the three motions in question, Motion 25, 26, and 28, were part of a suite of motions (the other being Motion 30, considered the crucial linchpin in using compulsory tracking to tackle fraud) presented at the 2025 FSC General Assembly in Panama last week.

And whilst no decision (yet) has been made on Motion 30, Wood Central can reveal that the other motions – including Ensuring & Strengthening Integrity in FSC Certification (Motion 25), Strengthening FSC Auditor Expertise (Motion 26), Oversight and Accountability, and Ensure the Integrity of the FSC Remedy Framework Implementation to Protect FSC’s Credibility (Motion 28) – were not passed by the majority of delegates at the General Assembly.

Last week, Purwadi Soeprihanto, secretary-general of the Association of Indonesian Forest Concession Holders, urged delegates to vote against Motion 28, arguing that the changes to the FSC Remedy Framework Implementation – introduced at the 2022 FSC General Assembly in Bali “introduce unnecessary bureaucratic and procedural requirements that could delay justice for rights holders, weaken the plan-do-check-act principle, and erode trust in FSC as a system that learns through implementation.”

FSC General Assembly opens with a call for shared responsibility

The FSC General Assembly kicked off last week with an Indigenous ceremony led by Guna leader Briseida Iglesias, who invoked gratitude to Mother Earth and emphasised balance and respect for nature. “Mother Earth never abandons us,” she said. “We are children of the Earth.”

Following a traditional Guna dance performed by Indigenous youth, Briseida presented molas — traditional, symbolic textiles made by Guna women — to FSC Director General Subhra Bhattacharjee and FSC Board Chair Stuart Valintine.

FSC Board Chair Stuart Valentine delivered a business report that framed the assembly’s agenda around renewed governance and strategic priorities, noting a programme of work that includes a new Global Strategy, a revision of FSC’s Principles and Criteria, the wider adoption of risk-based approaches, and a clearer demonstration of FSC’s impact. “There is one thing that brings us all into one room today, and that is FSC,” Stu said. “The global challenges are much bigger than FSC, we cannot face them alone. So, we need to look at what can we do as FSC and who do we need collaborate with.”

Mewanhile, FSC Director General Subhra Bhattacharjee opened her remarks by placing the organisation’s mission in the context of deep geopolitical and environmental strain: “In these turbulent times, FSC’s mission of responsible forest management is more relevant than ever before. In a time of polarisation, FSC’s values of democracy, solidarity, and stewardship are just as relevant.”

Bhattacharjee’s business report set out recent institutional reforms and flagship initiatives. Over the past three years, FSC has strengthened global systems and transparency, launched the Climate and Biodiversity Framework, rolled out FSC Trace and the Risk Hub, and reinforced operational foundations. Looking forward, the organisation signalled a commitment to integrity, predictability and measurable outcomes for climate and biodiversity, alongside a push to deepen stewardship through partnerships and expanded national standards.

• To read more about the Earthsight report, and why the vote on Motion 30 holds the key to stamping out fraudulent timber from global supply chains, click here for Wood Central’s special feature from last week.

Minister for Forestry and Fisheries Alitia Bainivalu told MPs that the program has channelled $1.53 million directly to around 1,500 landowners, funds she said have been spent on home construction, school fees, small businesses, and village improvements. The payments follow a $16 million government commitment to planting programs and transport subsidies designed to connect island harvests with mainland markets.

“Transport support has been pivotal,” Bainivalu said. “Since the project began 26 barge voyages have carried 24,000 tonnes of pine to Lautoka, converting long-delayed harvests into immediate cash for families and enabling previously stranded timber to reach buyers.”

New access roads in Kadavu and storage yards at Vunisea and Narocake are now servicing more than 1,400 people, officials said. The ministry has also signalled plans to harvest jetties at Ono in Kadavu and at Lakeba in Lau to speed up loading and reduce handling costs.

It comes as officials report that some 26,000 seedlings have been planted across 22 hectares, with youth groups and sporting clubs joining the replanting efforts. Bainivalu highlighted local reinvestment of forestry earnings, citing the Kadavu Rugby Union’s use of proceeds to support its 2026 Skipper Cup campaign.

Opposition MP Semi Koroilavesau, whose electorate includes affected communities, welcomed the initiative as the fruition of a decades‑old “green gold” vision. Koroilavesau, chair of the Yawe Pine Scheme, told Parliament that the transport subsidy has enabled communities to move two recent barge consignments, totalling 2,000 tonnes, and begin local infrastructure projects, such as roads and a wharf.

Government officials said the program’s next phase will focus on completing planned jetties, upgrading storage and handling facilities, and scaling planting and transport support so more island communities can access national markets. They argued that those steps are necessary to turn temporary cash flows into sustained income streams.

The projects, chosen in London from more than 400 case studies across 38 countries, form the backbone of McCloud’s film. They span dense urban housing, retrofit conversions, disassemblable prototypes, large‑scale affordable housing, place‑based civic works and resilient public infrastructure:

• Appelweg, Amsterdam (Moos for client Ymere) — A four‑storey hybrid that stitches CLT into a concrete urban block, specifying roughly 1,350 m³ of timber to deliver density with lower upfront carbon.
• The Black and White Building, London (Waugh Thistleton) — A six‑storey post‑and‑beam retrofit that demonstrates how adaptive reuse and engineered timber cut embodied emissions while extending a building’s life.
• Circular Two‑Bedroom Home, Kampala (Easy Housing Concepts Uganda) — A 76 m² prefabricated, disassemblable house that translates circularity into an affordable, repairable prototype.
• Heartwood, Seattle (atelierjones) — An eight‑storey hybrid mass‑timber residential scheme showing that multi‑storey timber can meet scale, cost and embodied‑carbon targets for volume housing.
• La Maison de la réserve écologique, Épinay‑sur‑Seine (Archipel Zéro) — A two‑storey civic project pairing glulam with straw, compressed earth and recycled cellulose to reduce timber demand and strengthen local circular supply chains.
• Queensland Fire and Emergency Services North Coast Regional Headquarters & Maryborough Fire and Rescue, Maryborough (Baber Studio) — A two‑storey, 2,695 m² prefabricated CLT and glulam civic complex praised for rapid assembly, cyclone resilience and measurable carbon savings.

All six winners were judged under the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction, a global framework requiring full disclosure on materials, whole‑life carbon, certification and reuse strategies. Judges narrowed a 28‑project shortlist and were tested against five criteria: extending the life of existing buildings; accounting for whole life; ensuring sustainable forest management; maximising timber’s carbon‑storage potential; and promoting a timber building bioeconomy.

According to Paul King, Built by Nature’s CEO and chair of the judging panel, the Prize celebrates the organisations driving real change around the world, transforming construction for a regenerative future. “The ambition of this year’s winners and commendations speaks volumes about the progress being made in timber construction globally,” he said. “These are not just buildings; they are bold, real‑world demonstrations of what’s possible when design, material, and purpose align with the Principles for Responsible Timber Construction.”

Meanwhile, McCloud put the winners to the test of practice and policy: “These projects challenge outdated assumptions and show that timber is not only safe and sustainable, but also socially transformative. From fire stations to social housing, they prove that wood can be the material of resilience, beauty, and bold innovation.” Whilst Mae‑ling Lokko of Yale, a fellow judge, said each project shows how circular design and local ecosystems can come together to create buildings that are regenerative, inclusive, and deeply rooted in place. “They are blueprints for a future we urgently need.”

Our Future: Built by Nature will screen at the Museum of Art in São Paulo on 8 November before its COP30 premiere in Belém, where the Principles — already endorsed by more than 260 organisations — will be presented to ministers, negotiators and procurement leaders.

“Every year, the gap between commitments and reality grows wider, with devastating impacts on people, the climate and our economies. Forests are non-negotiable infrastructure for a livable planet. Continued failure to protect them puts our collective prosperity at risk,” said Erin Matson, a lead author of this year’s Forest Declaration Assessment. “We already know what works to stop forest loss, but countries, companies, and investors are only scratching the surface. And even those initial efforts are facing strong pushback from the standard bearers of an economic system built on forest destruction.”

The assessment, produced by a coalition of civil society and research organisations, tracks pledges by countries, companies and investors to eliminate deforestation and restore 350 million hectares of degraded land by 2030. It measures reductions in forest loss against a 2018–2020 baseline and evaluates progress under the Glasgow Leaders’ Declaration on Forests and Land Use (2021) and the Kunming‑Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework (2022).

The report finds remote and pristine tropical forests fared particularly poorly in 2024. Devastating fires destroyed 6.73 million hectares as they ripped through Latin America, Asia, Africa and Oceania, leaving leaders 190% off track from protecting these carbon‑rich forests and releasing an estimated 3.1 billion metric tons of greenhouse gases into the atmosphere.

Fires — most of which are intentionally set to clear land and therefore preventable — were also a significant factor in soaring degradation in 2024. Combined with logging, road construction and fuelwood collection, degradation damaged but did not fully clear 8.8 million hectares of moist tropical forest. Degradation often precedes full clearance and yields significant carbon emissions; leaders are 234% off track from halting it.

“Degradation — including the devastating impacts of forest fires — is pushing forests closer to dangerous tipping points by undermining the very ecological functions they depend on for survival,” said Ivan Palmegiani, biodiversity and land use consultant at Climate Focus. “Research shows that degraded forests are more likely to be deforested, providing a hint of the losses to come. Yet, because forest degradation is harder to track than outright forest clearance, its dynamics often go undetected or poorly reported. Policymakers must bring degradation into focus to truly safeguard forests and the vital services they provide.”

In the Amazon region, emissions linked to fires reached an estimated 791 million metric tons of carbon dioxide equivalents (Mt CO2e) in 2024 — seven times the average of the previous two years (117 Mt CO2e) and more than the total greenhouse‑gas emissions of many industrialised countries.

On restoration, the report finds active reforestation initiatives cover at least 10.6 million hectares of deforested and degraded land — about 5.4% of global reforestation potential and only 0.3% of the broader biophysical restoration potential — falling far short of the 30% target set in the Kunming‑Montreal framework. Roughly two‑thirds of this area (about seven million hectares) is in tropical regions, 3.3 million hectares are in temperate zones, and 250,000 hectares are in boreal forests.

The assessment identifies clearing for agriculture — crops, timber and livestock — as responsible for about 85% of forest loss over the last decade. It also highlights a profound finance gap: international public finance for forest protection averaged just USD 5.9 billion per year, while the report estimates USD 117–299 billion is needed annually by 2030. At the same time, large‑scale industrial agriculture benefits from about USD 409 billion in subsidies per year, meaning public funding for forest protection is roughly 1.4% of harmful agricultural subsidies.

“Efforts to protect forests don’t stand a chance as long as our economic system keeps rewarding quick profits from forest destruction,” said Franziska Haupt, partner at Climate Focus. “Too often we see only surface‑level solutions — such as tree‑planting campaigns or voluntary commitments with no follow‑through — that look good on paper but do nothing to change the underlying system.”

“When leaders do make genuine efforts to stop forest loss, whether through supply chain engagement or passing a new regulation, they often do so in isolation. Progress can unravel with the next political or economic shift. To truly tackle deforestation, leaders must work collectively to implement bold, binding reforms that will transform the system that still generously rewards forest loss. Isolated successes won’t be enough; we need lasting, systemic change.”

The report notes several initiatives under discussion at COP30 that could help close the funding gap. Brazil’s proposed Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF) is designed to de‑risk private investment in tropical forests and could unlock billions in long‑term funding.

“Thirty-four countries have shown leadership by recently launching a Forest Finance Roadmap for Action, which echoes a similar call from civil society to align finance and forest goals by targeting structural barriers, like harmful subsidies and sovereign debt,” said Jillian Gladstone, lead consultant at Climate Focus. “A renewal of the Forest Tenure Funding Pledge would also signal a sustained commitment to direct crucial funding to the Indigenous and local communities who manage most of the world’s intact forests.”

Across tropical regions, governments and communities are also stepping up. Brazil has rolled out national cattle traceability systems to support supply‑chain accountability. In 2025, the Democratic Republic of Congo adopted its first national land‑use planning law, recognising customary community land rights and introducing environmental safeguards across much of the Congo Basin. The Escazú Agreement has now been ratified by 18 Latin American countries, and Uruguay and Chile have advanced national implementation plans to strengthen environmental transparency and protections for environmental defenders. New Indigenous‑ and community‑led funds are beginning to scale and channel resources to local forest guardians.

“Brazil’s recent progress in rolling back deforestation under the leadership of President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva shows how determined leadership can deliver rapid results,” said Kerstin Canby, senior director of Forest Trends’ Forest Policy, Trade, and Finance Initiative. “As the host of COP30, Brazil is also pushing other countries to focus on implementing existing pledges instead of announcing new commitments they will not deliver on in time to stabilise the climate.”

“The overall numbers are dismal, but the future of forests doesn’t have to be,” said Matson. “This year’s report makes it clear that isolated solutions are never going to be enough. But new finance initiatives such as the Tropical Forest Forever Facility offer a path to transformative change. If COP30 delivers on its promise, we could be reporting a very different story next year — one of real progress.”

Representatives from more than two dozen countries looked on at the United Nations on Tuesday, September 23, as Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva announced that his nation will invest the first $1 billion in the Tropical Forest Forever Facility (TFFF), a planned $125 billion fund that Lula and Brazilian finance experts first described in 2023.

“TFFF is an unprecedented tool in this fight against climate change,” said Lula, emphasizing that Brazil is leading by example. “Tropical forests are critical to keeping alive the [goal] of limiting global warming to 1.5° [Fahrenheit above pre-industrial levels]. The TFFF is not a charity; it’s an investment in humanity and the planet to counter the threat of climate chaos.”

The fund — in which $25 billion is to come initially from sovereign nations, with $100 billion coming later from private investors — is expected to be a centerpiece of the 30^th UN climate summit (COP30) in Belém, Brazil from Nov. 10-21.

Described as a climate-action fund like no other, TFFF will work in ways similar to how banks operate as lenders. Instead of donations, the billions committed will be invested in capital markets with investors receiving an estimated annual return of 5.5%.

Once fully funded, TFFF is projected to spin off as much a $4 billion annually above that paid to investors over the 20-year life of the fund. The interest will be paid on a per hectare basis to qualifying countries to keep their tropical forests intact and protected.

More than 70 developing nations, which collectively have more than 1 billion hectares of tropical forests, are potentially eligible for annual TFFF payments. Regular monitoring will determine which forests qualify and whether they remain intact. If those forests are clearcut or degraded, countries will be required to return far more money than they were originally paid.

Lula’s plan and pledge were widely applauded in New York. With the U.S. under President Donald Trump turning away from the planning and implementation of TFFF, China is stepping up, a significant development which Lula has been personally courting. China’s environmental minister, Huang Runqui, praised Lula’s leadership and endorsed the TFFF, to which China is expected to contribute.

Max Fontaine, Madagascar’s environmental minister, added: “For the first time, a global mechanism declares that protecting a forest is not a burden but a value. For the first time, our nations are recognized as guardians of a common good essential to life on earth.”

But even if successfully launched, TFFF will embark on a daunting mission. According to World Wildlife Fund, the world is “dangerously off track to meet the goal set by over 140 world leaders to halt and reverse” deforestation and degradation by 2030. In 2024 alone, the tropics lost 6.7 million hectares of primary forest; inadequate finance is seen as among the biggest barriers to forest conservation.

Influential Indigenous input

Andrew Deutz, WWF’s managing director of global policy and partnerships, has been consulting with Brazilian finance officials in planning the TFFF and was in New York for Climate Week. He told Mongabay the fund “is almost custom-built for this moment.”

“Multilateral systems seem to be breaking down,” Deutz said, “foreign aid budgets are getting cut and we’re looking for new leadership around the world. So here comes TFFF, which is new and innovative in a number of ways. It’s being led by a developing country, for example, and it’s not asking for grants. It’s asking for loans that will be used to leverage private sector finance.”

Since October 2024 when the TFFF was first described in great detail at the UN biodiversity summit in Colombia, important changes have been written into the fund’s design in response to concerns and criticisms.

Because Indigenous people and local communities (IPLCs) are seen as crucial to tropical forest conservation, 20% of all TFFF payments will be earmarked for them. But rather than routing funds through national governments, where money is often stalled or diverted, TFFF can in some cases be paid directly to qualified IPCLs. To help assure compliance, Deutz said, tropical countries who fail to allocate 20% to IPLCs, will lose their eligibility for future payouts.

To further institutionalize Indigenous involvement, the TFFF will include an Indigenous peoples advisory council to help determine where money should be paid and how it should be used. The Indigenous council will be paired with a technical advisory committee of scientists that will devise systems for monitoring conservation compliance.

The changes thus far in TFFF have earned the support of Juan Carlos Jintiach of Ecuador, head of the Global Alliance of Territorial Communities, an influential Indigenous political advocacy group.

Though not everyone is fully onboard yet. In an interview with Mongabay prior to Climate Week, Jannes Stoppel, a senior policy advisor for biodiversity and climate politics with Greenpeace-Germany, said that while he supports the idea of TFFF, he’s concerned that greater monitoring transparency will be needed to achieve broader forest protections beyond saving trees.

“If you want to end deforestation and degradation by 2030, you also need to improve your forest monitoring [so] you’re not only looking at hectares,” Stoppel said. “You’re looking at different means of degradation such as road building, logging and so on. I think the more the next iteration of the TFFF aligns with the 2030 forest protection goals, the better.”

Simply put, Stoppel emphasized that monitoring overall ecosystem integrity and ecological health is more important than simply knowing the number of hectares of restored trees.

Likely investors

While the TFFF will initially be managed by the World Bank, Brazilian fund organizers listened to critics and pledged that investments will exclude fossil fuel interests and companies in which deforestation is part of their business model.

“That decision is significant because [policymakers] were looking to solve a complicated math problem,” Deutz said of the evolving investment strategy. “How do they invest this portfolio in a way that generates enough return so that they can pay tropical countries $4 per hectare as promised, and do it so that it gets an AA or AAA credit rating and excludes fossil fuels? They [now] believe they have the answers they need.”

Along with China, Deutz said countries such as Norway, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan and Canada could announce their investments in the TFFF at the UN climate summit in Brazil this November. Oil-rich countries such as the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait — who often veto climate-action plans at UN meetings — have shown an interest in investing as well.

Realistically, Deutz said, it’s possible that the $25 billion from various nations could be committed by year end. It could then take another three or four years to line up the $100 billion in private investment. Some funds could be paid out before 2030.

Unlike so many past empty promises of global efforts to protect forests, Deutz said, “I am optimistic that we will soon launch something called the TFFF. I’m not sure how much money it will have in the initial phase, but I’m confident it will demonstrate a new model of conservation finance.”

Please note: This article was originally published on Mongabay under the Creative Commons BY NC ND licence. Read the original article.

Designed for its Auckland-based fleet, Hangar 4 spans 98 metres—large enough to house a Boeing 777, a Dreamliner 787 or two A320/321s side by side—and stands as the southern hemisphere’s largest single-span timber arch. In total, the structure uses 1,200 cubic metres of mass timber, including laminated veneer lumber (LVL) from Nelson Pine and cross-laminated timber (CLT) from Xlam and can flex up to 300 mm under seismic loads—unlike steel or concrete frames.

“The span is believed to be larger than the wooden hangar in Tillamook, Oregon,” according to Corric. “Timber and geometry do what they do best. It can wobble about in the breeze—it’s a seismic structure. You either make these really rigid structures that constrain everything, or you have structures that move a little bit and allow things to give.”

Each 25-metre-long truss is fabricated by gluing five LVL billets at HTL, then joined with CLT panels at Xlam’s Māngere facility. On site, crews then secured the sections with hundreds of 250 mm screws before lifting each 38-tonne truss with New Zealand’s largest crawler crane and manually winching them upright. The roof was then clad with low-pressure ETFE cushions fastened under aluminium extrusions, providing corrosion-resistant insulation ideal for the coastal airport environment.’

Today, Wood Central spoke with Andrew Dunn, Timber Construct organiser, who stated that this year’s programme will feature developers, engineers, and architects working on many of the world’s most significant timber projects, including the Edison Milwaukee, which is now in a race with Atlassian Central Tower to build the world’s largest hybrid timber tower. “As one of just three mass timber and timber frame‑focused industry conferences, our primary focus is always laser-focused on commercial‑ready applications of timber technology. We focus on materials, design, prefabrication and building techniques.”

That includes new research emerging from CSIRO’s North Ryde facility, which suggests that stone wood insulation could be a significant game-changer in reducing the costs of light-weight timber-frame and cross-laminated timber construction. “The standard requires the temperature to remain below 300°C for critical durations — 45 minutes for external walls, 20 minutes for stairways, lofts and shafts, and 30 minutes for all other areas,” he told Wood Central. “Over the years, I’ve observed numerous timber tests, but the stone wool performance was extraordinary.”

“Dr Louis Wallis, the deputy director at the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Sustainable Architecture with Wood, will chair a panel that will include Jeremy Church and Andy Russell, from Proctor Australia/DTech, during a session which will also look at point‑supported mass timber building systems as well as a rapid fire session looking at commercially ready timber technologies,” he said.

Please note: Timber Construct will be in Melbourne, Australia, on Monday, October 13 and Tuesday, October 14 at the Rydges Melbourne. For more information about the latest program, updated yesterday, click here.