In 2009 C.E., the Brazilian government did something few governments had done before: it built a public financial mechanism specifically designed to reward the protection of a living forest. The Amazon Fund wasn’t a conservation pledge or a policy target. It was money — real, disbursable money — tied directly to verified reductions in deforestation across the world’s largest tropical rainforest.
Key facts
- Amazon Fund Brazil: The Fund was created by the Brazilian government and placed under the management of Banco Nacional de Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social (BNDES), Brazil’s national development bank, giving it institutional credibility and the infrastructure to evaluate and disburse funds at scale.
- REDD+ financing: The Fund operates under the international REDD+ framework — Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation — meaning contributions are tied to measurable, independently verified cuts in Amazon deforestation rates rather than promises alone.
- Rainforest project portfolio: Since its launch, the Amazon Fund has supported more than 115 projects across the Amazon Biome, with eligible applicants ranging from federal agencies and Indigenous organizations to cooperatives, NGOs, and scientific institutes.
Why a fund, and why Brazil
By 2009 C.E., the Amazon rainforest had been losing ground for decades. Agricultural expansion, illegal logging, and infrastructure development had pushed deforestation rates to levels that alarmed scientists and governments worldwide. Brazil held roughly 60% of the Amazon basin — and with it, a disproportionate share of responsibility for what happened next.
The Amazon Fund was Brazil’s answer to a specific problem: how do you make conservation financially competitive with deforestation? The mechanism works by attracting donations from international governments and organizations, then deploying those funds into projects that prevent forest loss, strengthen monitoring systems, and support sustainable land use. Norway became the Fund’s largest contributor early on, later joined by Germany and others.
What made the model distinct was its results-based architecture. Contributors don’t simply donate to a cause. They pay for verified outcomes — measured in tonnes of carbon not released into the atmosphere. The more Brazil reduced deforestation relative to a historical baseline, the more funding it could unlock. Conservation became, in effect, an earnable resource.
Who the Fund reaches
The range of entities eligible to submit projects reflects the breadth of the Fund’s ambitions. Federal ministries, state governments, municipal bodies, research universities, Indigenous organizations, agricultural cooperatives, and private companies can all apply. This wasn’t designed as a top-down government program. It was built to channel money toward whoever could demonstrate the capacity to protect forest.
In practice, that has meant support for Indigenous land protection, smallholder sustainable agriculture, environmental monitoring technology, and anti-deforestation enforcement infrastructure. Up to 20% of the Fund’s disbursements can also support deforestation monitoring systems in other Brazilian biomes and in tropical countries beyond Brazil — a recognition that the Amazon’s fate is connected to forest loss patterns across the wider tropics.
A 2019 C.E. study commissioned through GIZ examined the Fund’s record on gender equity and found that women in the rural Amazon were underrepresented in decision-making and as direct beneficiaries across many projects. The Fund’s 2020 C.E. Activity Report acknowledged the findings and began identifying good practices. Some individual projects have shown stronger results — the Dema Fund project reported that 46% of its 5,448 direct beneficiaries were women — but gender integration across the full portfolio has remained uneven.
Lasting impact
The Amazon Fund helped establish a model that would influence forest conservation finance globally. Results-based payments for ecosystem services — paying countries and communities for measurable environmental outcomes rather than activities alone — gained credibility in part because Brazil demonstrated that the architecture could work at national scale.
By the mid-2010s C.E., deforestation rates in the Brazilian Amazon had dropped dramatically from their peak levels of the early 2000s C.E., a reduction attributed to a combination of government enforcement, agricultural supply chain pressure, and funding mechanisms like the Amazon Fund. The connection between financial incentives and measurable forest protection became a reference point for climate negotiators designing REDD+ rules under the Paris Agreement framework.
The Fund also created durable institutional infrastructure — monitoring systems, independent evaluation processes, and a governance body, COFA, that includes Indigenous organizations and civil society groups alongside government and industry. That infrastructure outlasted political changes in Brazil and proved essential when the Fund was revived after a period of suspension following donor withdrawals in 2019 C.E.
Blindspots and limits
The Amazon Fund’s governance structure has drawn criticism for the nature of participation it offers Indigenous and traditional peoples. A 2019 C.E. mid-term evaluation found that while opportunities for participation existed, they were predominantly technical — workshops and committee meetings rather than genuinely inclusive spaces for grassroots organizations. The Fund also lacks a dedicated grievance mechanism for communities affected by funded projects. These are not minor footnotes: the people most directly tied to the Amazon’s fate have not always had meaningful say in how protection money is spent.
The Fund’s effectiveness also depends on political continuity. When Brazil’s federal government shifted priorities after 2018 C.E., major donors suspended contributions and deforestation rates climbed again. A financial mechanism, however well-designed, can only do as much as the political environment allows.
Still, what launched in 2009 C.E. represented something genuinely new: a proof of concept that the world could collectively pay to keep a forest standing — and that the math could be made to work.
Read more
For more on this story, see: Climate Funds Update — Amazon Fund
For more from Good News for Humankind, see:
- Indigenous land rights recognition expands to 160 million hectares ahead of COP30
- Ghana establishes marine protected area at Cape Three Points
- The Good News for Humankind archive on climate
About this article
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