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The emphasis on forests as a crucial aspect of climate change mitigation is once again gaining traction in multilateral fora. The ‘Tropical Forest Forever Facility’ initiative introduced by Brazil, for instance, aims to establish a global fund to support the conservation of tropical forests.
Then, the 20th session of the United Nations Forum on Forests (UNFF) was organised in New York during May 5-9, 2025. It held technical discussions on the implementation of the UN Strategic plan for forests (2017-2030), where one of the targets is to increase the global forest area by 3 per cent by 2030.
The final example is the recently concluded fifth global dialogue under the Sharm el-Shaikh Mitigation Ambition and Implementation Work Programme (MWP) held in Panama from May 19-20, 2025. MWP was established at the 26th Conference of Parties to the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (COP26). The subsequent COP established a set of actions that would provide a framework to the programme. As part of it, at least two global dialogues per year were agreed upon by the parties.
The focus of this year’s dialogue at MWP was on enabling mitigation action in the forest sector, where countries exchanged views on best practices, opportunities and challenges. Interestingly, this magnification of forests vis-a-vis mitigation takes place against the backdrop of COP30 that will be held in November this year in the Amazonian city of Belem in Brazil.
Specifically, this year’s MWP dialogue addressed several cross-cutting sub-themes under forests, such as halting and reversing deforestation, sustainable management of forests, various approaches for financing forest conservation initiatives, role of data and technology and enabling conducive policy environment for implementation.
A diverse set of policy initiatives were shared by countries. For instance, mapping fragile ecosystems and prohibiting industrial mining and large scale agriculture in those territories. Another example was the establishment of a public trust fund with a legal backing that is managed by the government and designed to channel national and international financial resources to support initiatives such as payments for environmental services, prevention of forest fires, reforestation and capacity building of people working at the grassroots.
From the perspective of some of the developed economies, policies on forests should be reflected in a country’s nationally determined contributions (NDC) to attract investments by the private sector. The European Union and Norway shared that long-term predictability with regard to forest management needs to be ensured so that there is an enhanced flow of funds by the private sector.
However, the least developed countries (LDC) argued that with the increase in extreme weather events, it is getting more difficult to predict the state of forests, as the risks are also more frequent. They further mentioned that conserving forests in the long run requires sustained funding, and there is already a dearth of finance, especially during the initial stages of implementation. Thus, they emphasised the need for predictability from both ends.
The LDCs, along with some of the developing countries from Latin America such as Mexico, Colombia, Dominican Republic as well as Southeast Asia such as Singapore and Indonesia, advocated for interventions under reducing emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+) as one of the more effective means to leverage climate finance for a sustained period of time.
However, several developing countries including the small island developing states (SIDS), highlighted the difficulty of monitoring, reporting and verification (MRV) mechanisms under REDD+ apart from the challenge of ensuring transparency of data such as in estimating carbon stocks. Resolving this would require cutting-edge technologies that can track the changes in land use with enhanced accuracy in addition to the financial and technical resources needed for building capacity of the people who are directly involved in such initiatives.
Zimbabwe, on behalf of the African countries, mentioned that REDD+ has been a well-established channel to receive funds. However, these are inadequate and do not necessarily serve the purpose of enhancing livelihoods for the people.
It added that most of the African countries are highly indebted and operate on limited budgets. Thus when health and education is prioritised, for instance, it leaves little room for management of forests through public finance. This, in turn, exacerbates the situation of communities on ground who are conserving without any means.
According to The State of the World’s Forests report published by the Food and Agriculture Organization in 2022, less than 2 per cent of the global climate finance has gone to smallholders, indigenous peoples and local communities (IPLC) in the developing countries.
The IPLC representative, while stressing on this point, also stated multiple reasons for disparity. These include the burden of donor compliance that entails increased administrative work as well as complex reporting.
In this context, some of the Latin American and African countries expressed a need to enable direct financing for IPLCs that would support their livelihoods and aid the alignment of development priorities with long term conservation of forests.
Countries in the Global North highlighted that they are prioritising their share of climate finance on sustainable value chains of forest-based commodities such as coffee, cocoa, among others, in addition to exploring various kinds of market and non-market based mechanisms such as nature bonds and biodiversity credits to enable financing of forests.
During the dialogue, several countries echoed the importance of integrating community engagement and traditional knowledge systems in defining local policies and regulations across different levels of government as the local communities are in the frontline of forest management. The structural barriers in access to finance for the developing countries was underscored across various sessions, highlighting its interlinkages with other aspects of sustainable forest management.
Another important aspect of forest governance in the future would be the use of technology in mapping forests and its resources as well as carbon stocks in real time through artificial intelligence and geographic information systems.
While MWP’s fifth global dialogue provided a window in understanding how the world is envisaging the role and use of forests in climate change mitigation, it also emphasised some of the structural bottlenecks such as the lack of capacity to access needs-based finance, especially for poor countries, in addition to the increasingly cumbersome MRV process that exists when receiving climate finance through most channels.