COP31 must put forest finance in the hands of communities: The COP30 presidency presented a voluntary plan to halt and reverse deforestation as the UN climate summit opened in Antalya on 9 November. Its first test is who gets the money to carry it out. A village protecting a forest may have to document its carbon and biodiversity gains, negotiate with intermediaries and wait to be paid. A farmer planting trees or changing how water is used must spend money today for environmental gains that others may buy years later. Governments at COP31 should commit to financing that work upfront and give the people doing it a say in how the money is spent.
The gap in forest finance
Who should pay begins with who has emitted. Carbon Brief estimates that the United States released 542 billion tonnes of carbon dioxide between 1850 and 2025, more than a fifth of the global total over that period. India and other major emitters must also cut emissions. Historical responsibility and the capacity to pay should help determine who bears the upfront cost.
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The money still flows in the opposite direction. The UN Environment Programme estimates that $7.3 trillion went into activities harmful to nature in 2023, including fossil fuel subsidies, while $220 billion supported nature-based solutions. Governments can set restoration targets while continuing to subsidise activities that make those targets harder to reach.
For forests alone, UNEP puts annual investment at $84 billion in 2023 and estimates that $300 billion a year will be needed by 2030 to meet global climate, biodiversity and land restoration goals. There was some progress last year. Global deforestation fell 15% in 2025, according to the Forest Declaration Assessment, though around seven million hectares were still cleared. Keeping that decline going will take years of work, including through droughts and failed harvests when households can least afford to carry the costs.
Who controls the money
The International Institute for Environment and Development examined about 233,000 biodiversity-related development finance records from 2011 to 2024. About a third mentioned local communities or leadership. Only 0.28% explicitly mentioned local leadership. The study counted references in funding records. How much money communities received, and who had the authority to spend it, remain open questions. Donors should be able to answer both.
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A village may conserve a watershed and have little say over how the revenue is used. Households may face restrictions on what they can collect from a forest without a dependable alternative source of income. On farms, seedlings and maintenance have to be paid for well before a carbon payment arrives. Calling people beneficiaries leaves the terms of the deal untouched. Someone still decides who signs the contract, what the intermediary deducts and who bears the loss if a project fails.
Carbon markets can bring money into forests and agriculture. Paying for verified results gives buyers a way to check what their money achieved. That still leaves the farmer’s first bill unpaid. A verified tonne of carbon is no guarantee of a steady income, and a forest can protect a watershed even when it generates no saleable credit. Public finance has a role in covering upfront costs and paying for conservation whose value a carbon market cannot capture.
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What governments can change at Antalya
India has a starting point. Section 3(1)(i) of the Forest Rights Act recognises the right to protect, regenerate, conserve or manage community forest resources. Where these rights are recognised, forest finance programmes should give Gram Sabhas a say in how funds are used. On farms, producer organisations can help smallholders negotiate terms and share the cost of technical work. Both need access to advice before they sign contracts that may bind them for years.
Developed countries and major polluting industries should contribute more to the initial investment. Governments can expand grants and concessional funding and earmark a disclosed share of carbon-pricing revenue for forest protection and agroforestry. Industries that help finance this work still have to cut their own emissions.
Publicly supported programmes should set payment deadlines and disclose how much reaches Gram Sabhas, other community bodies and farmers, after deductions. Budgets should cover local monitoring as well as the work of protecting forests. Reports should track tree survival, forest condition and effects on water and biodiversity alongside emissions. Benefit-sharing agreements should protect existing land and resource rights, spell out how disputes will be resolved and leave communities free to decline a deal.
A village should know before it commits what it will be paid, when the first payment will arrive and who bears the cost if fire or drought destroys the gains. Those terms would tell us more about what Antalya delivered than another headline figure for money pledged.
Sayanta Ghosh is Senior Associate Fellow, Land Resources Division, The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI). Views are personal.