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Climate Leadership Initiative

Climate Leadership Initiative

The climate crisis touches every aspect of human life

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Impact Ending Tropical Deforestation by 2030

Ending Tropical Deforestation by 2030

Philanthropy is advancing Forests, People, Climate (FPC), a global coalition to stop tropical deforestation by 2030 while delivering just, sustainable development.

Geographic focus: Brazilian Amazon, Congo Basin, and Indonesia

As crucial carbon sinks, tropical forests absorb nearly 1.5 times more carbon than the U.S. emits annually, but are being lost to deforestation at a rate equivalent to 10 soccer fields per minute. The result is a double threat for climate: cut forests lose their natural capacity as carbon “sinks” and release stored carbon, contributing 10 to 15 percent of global emissions. Every climate model tells us that stopping tropical deforestation is critical to keep global warming below 1.5 degrees Celsius.

FPC’s field-led approach comprises Indigenous, grassroots, and community-based groups to advance equitable and enduring solutions that safeguard forests and provide direct support to those working to defend them, while ending the financial incentives that drive deforestation and ensuring the integrity of supply chains and carbon markets.

Because ending tropical deforestation is essential to reaching our climate goals, philanthropy has an unprecedented opportunity to catalyze the social, political, and economic conditions necessary to make forests more valuable standing than cut—setting the stage to unlock public and private sector funding at the scale required for success.

Philanthropic funding is key to the success of this initiative. It can be nimble, it can support things that governments otherwise won't, and we can take a systems approach so that we're supporting all of the strategies that culminate in ending deforestation by 2030."

Lindsey Allen, Climate and Land Use Alliance (CLUA)

How Change Happens:

Strategic Pathways for Philanthropy

Safeguard standing forests and the communities that defend them.

  • Establish and secure legal recognition of territorial rights for Indigenous Peoples and local communities (IPLC).
  • Bolster forest and community protections by providing tools and technical assistance.
  • Push for government accountability on forest protection commitments.
  • Shift finance and markets.

  • End subsidies, incentives, and investments that promote deforestation.
  • Eliminate deforestation from production and supply chains.
  • Ensure carbon markets have high environmental and social integrity.
  • Strengthen public support and advance strong policy.

  • Support research and think tanks to support a sustainable development vision.
  • Invest in strategic communications to build the case for protecting standing forests.
  • Build local leadership and capacity to scale locally-led solutions.
  • Establish and enforce policies to end illegal deforestation and environmental crimes.
  • Goals

    2.5 billion

    Ending tropical deforestation could keep 2.5 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere annually.

    675,000

    FPC aims to increase the amount of forested lands recognized as owned or designated for use by IPLC by 50 percent, protecting an additional 675,000 square miles of land.

    $1.2 billion

    FPC has capacity to absorb $1.2 billion over the next five years in philanthropic funding to meet the urgent goal of ending tropical deforestation by 2030.

    Contact:
    [email protected]
    [email protected]

    www.forestspeopleclimate.org

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