Nations are not spending enough to ensure that the forests that cover nearly a third of the planet remain healthy, according to a new United Nations report. To meet various international climate, biodiversity and land restoration goals, annual global spending needs to triple to $300 billion by 2030, the report found.
Forests are the “quintessential definition of a public good,” because of the benefits they provide, said Gabriel Labbate, who leads the climate mitigation unit at the U.N. Environmental Program and is one of the lead authors of the analysis.
By providing habitat to more than 80 percent of all animals, plants and insects on land, healthy forests are key to sustaining life on Earth. They also help regulate weather patterns and the global climate. Trees and other plants absorb atmosphere-warming carbon dioxide as they grow, which offsets some of the greenhouse gases that are emitted from the burning of fossil fuels and are dangerously heating the planet.
The report estimated that roughly 25 million acres are destroyed each year for human industries and extreme wildfires, which are increasing in frequency and intensity as the planet warms. In 2023 and 2024, wildfires consumed some 78 million acres — an area roughly three times the size of Iceland — worldwide. As a result, during those years forests absorbed only a quarter of the carbon they captured 100 years ago.
Governments from more than 140 countries signed a declaration at a U.N. climate conference in Glasgow in 2021 agreeing to halt or reverse deforestation by 2030. In 2023, the world spent some $84 billion protecting forests.
The new report used a wide range of data to analyze as many sources of funding as possible, from governments and private institutions, that protect all forest types, from tropical rainforests to boreal forests in the Arctic.
There are many ways money can help a forest. For example, governments, aid programs or conservations groups may pay to protect wilderness areas from logging or to support tree-planting efforts.
The report found that private institutions, like banks, venture capital firms and corporations, contribute less than $1 out of every $10 that goes toward protecting or restoring forested areas. Governments provide all the rest. This means forests depend on “a lot of taxpayer money,” Mr. Labbate said.
Most money for forest conservation and restoration comes from wealthier countries, with China and the United States accounting for nearly half of all funding, according to the report.
Tropical countries, which tend to be less wealthy but harbor some of the world’s most vulnerable forests, spent the least. Many are burdened by debt and can’t invest in conservation, said Frances Seymour, a senior policy adviser with the Woodwell Climate Research Center, a nonprofit organization. Farmers trying to make a living or politicians trying to stimulate the economy may end up supporting industries that cut down trees.
“It is in everybody’s interest to protect the forest,” said Ms. Seymour. “But nobody gets paid for protecting a forest.”
International aid to help tropical countries is also lacking, the report found. Tropical countries spend on average 36 times as much money as they receive from the World Bank and various other global programs to save forests. The report found governments tend to spend within their borders, meaning countries prioritize conservation at home.
In the private sector, companies that the U.N. considers likely to increase deforestation attract nearly $9 trillion in investment annually, more than 1,000 times the amount of private money spent protecting forests, according to the report.
Agriculture, for instance, received some $400 billion in subsidies in 2023, but causes a lot of deforestation. In the Amazon rainforest, the equivalent of a football field is lost every six seconds to make room for expanding cattle ranches and soy farms.
Carbon markets have emerged as a potential way to fund conservation. These are unregulated systems that let businesses offset a portion of their greenhouse gas emissions by paying for projects that protect or restore natural areas. But carbon credits represent only less than 2 percent of the money spent on forests, the report found.
At the end of September, a coalition of 34 governments released a plan for financing forest conservation, meant to steer conversations at next month’s U.N. climate conference in Brazil, known as COP30. The plan includes recommendations for improving carbon credits.
The same week, Brazil announced it would invest $1 billion into the Tropical Forests Forever Facility, a fund that would compensate countries for preserving tropical forests setting aside 20 percent of the money for Indigenous groups.
The U.N. report found Indigenous and local groups have been the most effective at protecting the world’s forests, managing over a third of them. But they have received only 13 percent of global money for forest conservation.
Sachi Kitajima Mulkey covers climate and the environment for The Times.
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