PARTNERING WITH INDIGENOUS PEOPLE AND LOCAL COMMUNITIES TO
KEEP RAINFORESTS STANDING
PROJECTS
COUNTRIES
HECTARES
FUNDED
Despite hundreds of companies making commitments to deforestation-free sourcing, forests are being destroyed at a record rate.
We can’t wait for corporate policies to trickle down through supply chains. The Forest Conservation Fund links companies and consumers with high-impact conservation projects on the forest frontier, moving these forests into better protection and management.
For just $40 per hectare per year, communities, consumers and suppliers can protect forests in their supply chains and become not just deforestation-free but forest positive! Protecting an area of forest equivalent to the plantation area needed to grow commodities like cocoa, palm oil, timber, pulpwood, rubber, or coffee can typically be done for just 1-2% of the cost of purchasing those commodities.
This is just a minor investment by the industry and consumers, and can generate real change and some much-needed positive outcomes for forests.
What is the forest conservation fund?
FCF is a not-for-profit Foundation, aiming to decentralize conservation by empowering local communities and private sector actors to protect forest under their control. We are registered in Switzerland with staff in Africa, Asia, and Europe, and are governed by an independent Board of Directors and an expert Grants Committee responsible for approving projects based on strict quality requirements.
Commodity buyers or other donors pay $40 per year to the Fund for each hectare of forest they want to conserve. The FCF connects them to conservation projects in their sourcing landscapes, for maximum impact.
FCF disperses funding based on field results, and provides coaching and support on conservation management to ensure that the forest stays standing and that conservation goals are being achieved. We report back to companies about how their donation is being used and use satellite imagery, field-based biodiversity monitoring tools and activity reports to minimise spending on overheads and direct a maximum amount of donations into the field. At the end of their annual cycle, each project also undergoes an annual financial audit.
Supporting communities and suppliers to become
Forest Positive
In their supply chains and deliver deforestation-free products
The FCF Philosophy:
‘Insetting’ not ‘Offsetting’
Whether you’re an individual, a company or an institution, you have a footprint in tropical forests. Each plantation that you source products from in the tropics was once forested. Our solution is to inset your annual footprint by protecting an equivalent-sized area of forest for one year in an area your business or organisation is sourcing from, that may otherwise have been converted.
Perhaps you’re the CEO of a coffee house and purchase 45,000 tonnes of coffee beans per year, requiring 9,495 hectares per year (at average yield rates). Through the Forest Conservation Fund you could compensate this by supporting the conservation of 9,495 hectares of tropical forest. This is a great way for companies to support the Nature Needs Half movement - using half of the Earth for humans’ needs, and protecting half for nature.
Or maybe your favourite shampoo contains palm oil? FCF can help connect you to a project protecting forest that may otherwise be converted to oil palm. Click here for more information on how FCF can work for individuals!
The state of forests
forests are in trouble …
Forests cover almost a third of our planet’s ice-free land, but we are losing them fast. In 2017, 29 million hectares disappeared, more than half of them in tropical forests. Less than a quarter of forests are inside protected areas; from Brazil to the Congo Basin, hundreds of millions of hectares of forest exist outside of parks and forest reserves, at risk of deforestation for agriculture. In Indonesia alone, over six million hectares of rainforest are not protected and have been slated for conversion to farming. Indigenous people, who have lived in the forests for millennia and are the best protectors of their land, are unable to conserve these areas because they lack support and their land rights are not respected.
Even when forests are legally recognised, more than half of protected areas globally do not have enough funding to hire guards and wardens to effectively protect them. This leads to illegal logging, poaching, and even conversion to farming.
Companies could save all of this forest for less than 2% of the cost of the commodities they are buying from these landscapes through a simple mechanism: the Forest Conservation Fund. We link companies to high-quality conservation projects in their sourcing landscapes, helping them become Forest Positive.
