Global Forest Coalition at UNFCCC COP 31

We will be following the negotiations closely, working with GFC members and allies from across the world, hosting and participating in side events, coordinating and joining actions, press conferences and creating space for the voices, knowledge and solutions of Indigenous Peoples, local communities, women, youth, small-scale farmers, Afrodescendant peoples, gender-diverse people and other rights-holders.

We will continue to push for an urgent and just phase-out of fossil fuel extraction and for the transformation of unsustainable livestock and food systems that are driving deforestation, land grabbing, biodiversity loss and climate change. We will challenge the extractive, colonial and patriarchal systems that continue to concentrate wealth and power while placing the greatest burdens of the climate crisis on those who have contributed least to it.

Climate finance must support real transformation. We will closely follow initiatives such as the Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF), challenging approaches that seek to turn forests and climate action into financial assets or rely on market-based mechanisms rather than addressing the structural drivers of deforestation, forest degradation and climate change. The Global North must meet its climate finance obligations and provide adequate, predictable and accessible public finance, with decision-making power in the hands of the communities and countries most affected by the climate crisis, and the corporate power fueling the crisis must be dismantled.

We reject carbon markets, offsets, carbon trading and other market-based mechanisms that allow corporations and governments to claim climate action while continuing to extract fossil fuels, destroy ecosystems and undermine the rights of communities. These mechanisms can deepen land grabbing and commodification, threaten Indigenous Peoples and local communities, and distract from the urgent need to reduce emissions at source.

Instead, we are calling for real solutions: protecting and restoring forests through the leadership and stewardship of Indigenous Peoples and local communities; supporting agroecology and sustainable, community-led food systems; defending land and human rights; ensuring a just and gender-just transition away from fossil fuels and other destructive industries; and transforming the economic systems that drive environmental destruction and inequality.

The real solutions are already here. They are rooted in the knowledge, struggles and leadership of communities around the world. What is needed is political will, public finance and an end to the corporate capture of climate policy.

At COP31, we will work with our members and allies to ensure that the voices of those most affected by the climate crisis are heard, and that women, youth, Indigenous Peoples, local communities and gender-diverse people have meaningful opportunities to shape the decisions that affect their lives, territories and futures.

We will challenge corporate lobbying and the co-optation of the global movement for climate and environmental justice, and stand with communities resisting fossil fuel extraction, deforestation, destructive livestock production, mining and other forms of extractive development.

Climate justice cannot be achieved by turning forests, land and nature into commodities. It requires a transformation of the systems that are driving the crisis and a just transition towards economies and societies that put people, communities and Mother Earth before profit.