FAQ

How does the Forest Conservation Fund differ from other conservation projects?

The Fund is the first of its kind to offer a simple hectare-for-hectare “footprint” model for commodity users. Brands can simply calculate the plantation footprint they need for their ingredients, and conserve an equivalent area by supporting high-impact, locally-managed projects.

The Fund is not-for-profit and fully transparent about how funds are used. The quarterly and annual financial reports from the projects are available on the project page website, along with the monitoring results of biodiversity protection and other impacts.

The Fund aims to “Uberise” conservation by empowering local communities and private sector actors to protect forest under their control. We will build a knowledge-sharing platform to connect grantees and help them learn from each other, and partner with large environmental NGOs to recommend local projects and share best practice.

What due diligence do you perform on corporate donors?

The FCF Board must approve all corporate partners, including donors and grantees. The Board assesses all potential corporate partners against the following principles :

1. Companies working with FCF can have no business in the manufacturing of tobacco products, armaments, or synthetic pesticides; nor in fossil fuel extraction. An exception could be considered if the company demonstrates a clear and time-bound plan to cease those activities.

2. Companies cannot be engaged in deforestation or land-grabbing, and can have no links with money-laundering, corruption, bribery, tax evasion, or illegal wildlife trade.

3. The company must have and be implementing a No Deforestation policy appropriate to their sector.

4. Any land conflicts linked to the company must be progressing towards resolution.

5. The company must be actively resolving any human rights violations for which it is responsible, and be implementing human rights due diligence in its supply chain as appropriate for its industry.

6. The company must not lobby against adoption of the Paris Climate Accord.

7. The company is a good corporate citizen and does not engage in activities which would represent a reputational risk to FCF through association.

How do you calculate the percentage of projects which are funded?

Our landing page shows a global view of the average operational budget required per project, divided by the total project funding received for this calendar year, then expressed as a percentage.

Each project page shows how much funding the individual project has received of its 1, 3, or 5-year budget, specified at the bottom of the page.

How do you prevent ‘double-counting’, where a project puts up the same hectare or AMOUNT OF carbon savings UP for adoption twice?

Diversifying sources of funding is important for our Grantees, to increase their resilience and long-term viability. To that aim, we encourage and help our projects to find other donors, including for instance through sales of carbon credits, and also to start sustainable forest-friendly businesses that can support conservation costs. If the project finds additional funding and doesn’t need the FCF any more, or needs us less, that is great! Our contract with each Grantee requires them to inform us when they have other funding, so that we can reduce our donation accordingly. We require complete budget transparency from our Grantees from the very start, and an understanding of their past sources of funding and their current fundraising and income-generation strategy.

How can you expect plantation companies to become conservation organisations?

Cocoa companies have had to learn how to ensure the provision of schooling and education for farmers’ children, after child labour scandals. Plantation companies can, and must, learn how to conserve natural areas. The Forest Conservation Fund can help companies identify credible local NGOs to support implementation, but having the plantation company directly engaged will build the long-term sustainability of the project.

Is one global price a bit simplistic?

Protected area costs vary by country and size of area (bigger and more remote areas are cheaper to protect per hectare). 40 USD is an average. It is imperfect in order to achieve simplicity and global application. The amount will have a huge impact, even in more expensive countries.

The Forest Conservation Fund recipients will benefit from being identified as well-run, high-impact projects and can leverage this to attract other donations.

What about the price of buying the land? What about opportunity costs?

Land acquisition is much more expensive. We will focus on working with companies who already have titles to forests, and helping communities gain titles to their forests. Millions of hectares can be saved without having to buy forests.

It’s almost impossible to calculate the real costs and benefits, both environmental and socio-economic, of conservation vs conversion to agriculture. We believe that communities can still thrive while forests are protected, especially if they are involved in protection.

Will you fund government-run protected areas?

Only in a very limited basis, at least in the first years of our work. We recognise that many protected areas are not effectively managed, and are becoming degraded and even sometimes “downgraded”, losing their protected status, often for conversion to agricultural use. Protected areas desperately need funding, even for basic patrols and monitoring. However, given that protected areas are generally managed by governments and that financial traceability and accounting is challenging in such a context, we can only work with government protected areas if there is a local community or NGO partner who has a co-management agreement with the government and who would be responsible for the FCF-funded activities. The project would have to meet our other Eligibility Requirements, including having been established within the past five years. We encourage donor governments to work directly with national parks departments to protect these critically important areas.

What about forest restoration and tree-planting?

Forest restoration can encompass many activities along a spectrum, from building a nursery and actively re-seeding cleared areas with native species, to simply protecting the forest and letting it restore naturally. Trying to re-create natural forest in open areas is very difficult and expensive and can take decades. Tropical forests can contain hundreds of species per hectare, so it is impossible to plant them all. The Fund’s projects will certainly practice both active and passive restoration activities, but will probably focus on protecting high-quality standing forest and letting it restore with little assistance. This is a more certain outcome and creates important carbon and biodiversity benefits at a lower cost. In our view, nature is the best tree-planter.

Will you fund forest reserves (in which timber extraction is permitted)?

We can fund conservation activities for conservation areas inside forest reserves, where commercial harvesting does not occur. Because many donors to The Fund will be agricultural commodity users with a deforestation footprint, we think it is important to offer them projects that stop outright deforestation by moving new forest areas into protection, rather than those that protect existing forest reserves. Nonetheless, we could consider offering wood product users such as pulp and paper companies project options that protect strict conservation areas within forest reserves, for instance for patrols and biodiversity monitoring.