UNEP Report Pinpoints Huge Financial Gap in Forests
- Nov 5
- 2 min read
Wednesday, 5th November 2025
By Paula Perrelli dos Anjos
In the light of the COP30 Brazil, the UN Environment Programme report “The 2025 State of Finance for Forests” set out a straightforward case: protect high‑risk forests, centre local communities, and scale blended public‑private finance to meet urgent conservation and development goals.
For the first time, the document identifies the scale of the financial gap hindering sustainable forest management, despite commitments made under international agreements like the Rio Conventions, the Paris Agreement, and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.
Amazonia Impact Ventures (AIV) has already implemented many of the report’s recommendations in our business strategy. We design impact‑linked finance and blended instruments that de‑risk private capital for smallholder, community‑led forest enterprises and ethical mission companies. To date, AIV has invested more than $11 million across 42 impact‑linked loans, supporting 12 value chains of Non-Timber Forest Products (NTFPs), including brazil nuts, ungurahui, aguaje and açaí.
GOING LOCAL
Furthermore, some incentives hide positive investments: potentially environmentally harmful subsidies in agriculture exceed US$400 billion annually, contributing to the loss of 2.2 million hectares of forest every year, an area more than 30 times the size of Nairobi, host city of the United Nations Environment Programme Finance Initiative headquarters.
The UNEP report underlines the need to reach Indigenous Peoples and local communities and to align finance with on‑the‑ground stewardship. Only 0.4% of total forest finance – US$362 million – was targeting projects involving Indigenous Peoples and local communities. At AIV, 32% of our beneficiaries are Indigenous and 36% are women.
“We prioritise environmental outcomes, pairing finance with technical assistance, market access and traceability tools so farmers can earn more without clearing forest,” detailed our Managing Director, Aldo Soto.
The report also highlights that annual investment in forests must more than triple from US$84 billion in 2023 to US$300 billion by 2030. It must further increase to US$498 billion annually by 2050.
IMPACT INVESTING
AIV welcomes that call and stands ready to partner with donors and investors to mobilise the capital the Amazon needs.
"We want to scale solutions that deliver both resilient livelihoods and forest protection," says Pajani Singah, AIV Co-Founder.
AIV welcomes contributions through CataCap (a platform for tax-deductible giving via donor-advised funds, foundations, or credit cards) to strengthen our Technical Assistance Facility, helping bio-businesses scale sustainable operations.
View our campaign: https://lnkd.in/dtvqT-T2
Read the full UNEP report here:
*Photo by Unsplash
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