Global Forest Finance Gap Requires $216 Billion Annually
- 21 Oct 2025
On 14th October 2025, the first edition of the State of Finance for Forests (SFF) 2025 report titled Unlock. Unleash. highlights a significant global underfunding in forest conservation, estimating a $216 billion annual finance gap needed to achieve climate, biodiversity, and land degradation targets by 2030.
Key Points
- Forest Finance Gap: Achieving the Rio Convention targets to limit global warming, halt biodiversity loss, and achieve neutral land degradation by 2030 requires tripling annual forest investments from $84 billion in 2023 to $300 billion by 2030, and further scaling to $498 billion by 2050.
- Public vs Private Funding: Public investment dominates forest finance, with less than 10% coming from private investors, highlighting the need for mobilizing both public and private capital to close the funding gap.
- Nature-Based Solutions: Expansion of nature-based solutions (NbS) is crucial, with an additional 1 billion hectares needed by 2030 and 1.8 billion hectares by 2050 to mitigate climate change and preserve biodiversity.
- India’s Role: India ranked third globally in domestic public forest spending with $7.1 billion in 2023, while receiving $81 million in international public forest finance, underscoring the importance of internal funding in tropical forest countries.
- International Contributions: Governments contributed 91% of total global forest funding in 2023, with domestic spending accounting for $75 billion and international public finance only $2.9 billion, of which 80% came as concessional aid or official development assistance.
- Tropical Forest Funding Needs: Tropical forest countries will require an estimated $67 billion annually by 2030 for NbS including avoided deforestation, reforestation, agroforestry, protected areas, and forest peatland protection, plus $16 billion to protect existing forests.
