Belem’s Big Idea: Using Debt to Repay Nature’s Guardians

The Belem climate summit’s “big idea” is a new financial-social contract: using the tool of debt to repay the guardians of nature. Brazil’s “Tropical Forests Forever Facility” is a $5.5 billion plan that not only funds forest preservation but also mandates that 20 percent of the money goes to Indigenous peoples.
This two-pronged approach is the brainchild of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva. First, it re-imagines conservation finance. Instead of donations, it uses interest-bearing loans from wealthy nations and investors to pay 74 developing countries to halt deforestation.
Second, it formally recognizes Indigenous tribes as the most effective stewards of the land. The 20 percent allocation is a direct payment for their millennia-long role in preservation, moving them from the margins of climate talks to the center of the financial solution.
The fund has already secured $5.5 billion in pledges, with a major $3 billion contribution from Norway. This provides a strong financial base for a plan that aims to make preservation more profitable than the destructive industries of logging and mining.
This new model of “debt-for-nature-and-people” is a hopeful initiative at a summit otherwise shadowed by the absence of top polluters (US, China, India) and dire warnings from the UN chief about “moral failure.”