As South America’s most heavily forested country, Brazil has also received the largest amount of funding in the region for reducing deforestation. Its Amazon Fund, launched in 2008, was the world’s largest programme for financing the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions from deforestation and forest degradation (REDD+).
Suspended in 2019, when former Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro rolled back many environmental protections, the fund was revived in January 2023 when his successor, President Lula da Silva – who was also chief executive when the Amazon Fund was first established – took office.
Between 2008 and 2017, the fund received more than USD 1.2 billion in donations and committed USD 667.3 million to finance 96 projects ranging from the development of a national satellite monitoring system to helping smallholders implement more sustainable farming methods. But assessments of the effectiveness of projects and programmes financed by the fund have been mixed.
That led researchers from CIFOR-ICRAF’s 14-year, 22-country Global Comparative Study of REDD+ to take a closer look at how Brazil’s REDD+ financing has been used as the Amazon Fund begins receiving donations again. They discussed those findings as part of a science-policy dialogue on 10 March 2023, which brought together researchers, policymakers and project implementers.
“When you look at different evaluations of REDD+ projects, you get different conclusions,” said Richard Van der Hoff, Brazilian Country Coordinator of CIFOR-ICRAF’s Global Comparative Study on REDD+ and visiting professor at the Federal University in Minas Gerais. “We need to look more closely at what we want to measure. Now that the new government has revived the Amazon Fund, we need to look at the lessons we can learn to get better results.”
