A new civil society roadmap has been launched under the 2030 Global Forest Vision, setting out Priority Actions for Deforestation- and Conversion-Free Finance. Coordinated by World Wide Fund for Nature, The Nature Conservancy, Climate High-Level Champions, Climate Focus, and the Forest Declaration Assessment – the framework urges policymakers, central banks, and financial institutions to redirect capital away from destructive land-use practices and into sustainable food and agriculture systems. The launch comes as deforestation rates remain stubbornly high, threatening global climate targets and the livelihoods of millions, particularly in Africa.
The report argues that finance is at the heart of the problem and must also be the driver of solutions. It outlines three pillars of action: reforming subsidies and fiscal policies to end perverse incentives, empowering central banks and supervisors to integrate deforestation into risk oversight, and requiring financial institutions to align portfolios with deforestation-free supply chains. Unlike previous high-level pledges, this roadmap anchors its recommendations in practical case studies from around the world, showing that systemic change is not only possible but already underway.
One example comes from Brazil, where the Central Bank has developed environmental and social risk guidelines that make compliance with rural credit programs conditional on meeting land-use requirements. This approach directly links access to finance with sustainable land practices, providing a regulatory model that African financial supervisors could adapt to their own contexts. Similarly, the report cites Bhutan, where subsidies for chemical fertilizers were replaced with incentives for organic farming, demonstrating how fiscal reform can shift entire agricultural systems toward sustainability.
Another case study is drawn from Costa Rica, which successfully combined public financing with payments for ecosystem services to reverse decades of forest loss. This model underscores the roadmap’s call for catalytic public finance, money that de-risks private investment and channels it into sustainable agriculture and restoration. In China, green credit guidelines have pushed banks to screen lending for environmental risks, proving that regulatory guidance can scale across vast financial systems.
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The roadmap also highlights Indonesia’s blended finance facilities that have mobilized both public and private capital for sustainable palm oil and reforestation efforts. These facilities show that when financial tools are structured properly, they can attract private investors while safeguarding natural capital.
For Africa, these case studies are more than distant examples, they offer templates. The continent continues to record the fastest rates of forest loss worldwide, with the FAO estimating annual net losses of nearly four million hectares between 2010 and 2020. Nigeria has some of the highest annual deforestation rates globally, while the Democratic Republic of Congo loses close to half a million hectares of primary forest each year in the Congo Basin, the world’s second-largest rainforest. Yet Africa has not been featured prominently in many global finance reform experiments to date. This roadmap challenges African policymakers, central banks, and financial institutions to seize the tools already proven elsewhere.
The debt–deforestation cycle is another issue flagged in the report, highly relevant to Africa. When countries face heavy debt burdens, they often resort to exploiting forests for quick fiscal returns, whether through logging, charcoal production, or expanding agricultural frontiers. The roadmap argues for debt relief and restructuring tied to forest protection, echoing recent debt-for-nature swaps in other regions. For African economies, many of which are struggling with unsustainable debt loads, such mechanisms could provide both fiscal space and ecological security.
The report also places responsibility on financial institutions themselves. It calls for banks, investors, and insurers to embed deforestation-free requirements into client engagement, strengthen portfolio resilience, and advocate for enabling policy frameworks. In practice, this would mean that African commercial banks and development finance institutions must move beyond voluntary ESG policies to binding commitments, ensuring their capital does not finance deforestation-linked sectors.
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For our continent, where agriculture employs more than 60 percent of the workforce and forests provide critical ecosystem services, aligning finance with conservation is not a luxury but a necessity. Without reform, African farmers and exporters risk being locked out of emerging markets where sustainability standards are tightening. With reform, however, the continent could position itself as a leader in sustainable agriculture and land use, leveraging its vast renewable energy potential and youthful labor force to attract green investment.
As the world edges closer to COP30 in Belém, the timing of this roadmap is deliberate. It signals that halting deforestation cannot be achieved through pledges alone, it requires concrete financial rules and incentives that change the way capital flows. The case studies cited in the report prove that such change is achievable, but scaling it to Africa will require both political commitment and international support.
The launch of the Priority Actions for Deforestation- and Conversion-Free Finance therefore marks a pivotal moment. It provides not only a set of recommendations but a library of tested approaches that can be adapted to African realities. The challenge now is whether governments, regulators, and banks across the continent will act with the urgency needed to ensure that finance becomes an enabler of Africa’s forests, rather than their undoing.
