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Amazon Fund grantees fear a new funding freeze after Brazil’s election
Amazon Fund grantees fear a new funding freeze after Brazil’s election. Originally published by Mongabay.
By Fernanda Wenzel · 2026-09-10T18:20:28.640Z
In 2018, the Amazon Fund chose to support a project in the Brazilian Amazon helping 614 families engaged in babassu coconut breaking in 11 traditional communities. Encroached on by soy farming and cattle ranching, the families in the state of Tocantins would receive financial support to keep producing oil, flour and handicrafts from this unique Amazonian fruit while reinforcing their role as guardians of the forest. But the promise was short lived. Jair Bolsonaro took office as Brazil’s president in January 2019, and immediately set his far right agenda to work dismantling the country’s environmental frameworks and freezing the Amazon Fund’s contributions. The fund was created in 2008, with initial donations from Norway and Germany to reward Brazil for its success in reducing Amazonian deforestation. Over the last 18 years https://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br/export/sites/default/pt/.galleries/documentos/rafa/RAFA 2025 port.pdf , it has benefited 288,000 people and supported 144 projects in forest restoration, sustainable production, firefighting, inspections and monitoring of environmental crimes, and Indigenous issues. “It is one of the world’s leading funds for investing in projects that protect the rainforest,” said Rayandra Araújo, climate policy specialist at Talanoa, a Brazilian climate think tank. When Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva replaced Bolsonaro, returning to the presidency in January 2023, he revived the Amazon Fund’s operations. The babassu coconut breaker project, led by the group Alternatives for Small Scale Farming in Tocantins APA TO , was again considered and began implementation in April 2026. “The project was on hold for almost 10 years,” says Selma Yuki Ishii, the project coordinator and technical director at APA TO. With Lula, the Amazon Fund quadrupled its annual financing volume, from 300 million reais in 2009 2018 about $82 million at the 2018 average exchange rate to 1.3 billion reais in the 2023 2025 cycle $233 million at the 2025 exchange rate , according to a report https://climainfo.org.br/2026/06/14/fundo amazonia quadruplica ritmo de aprovacao de projetos desde retomada em 2023/ by Brazil’s environment ministry and the country’s national development bank, BNDES, which manages the fund. By Dec. 31, 2025, the fund had 6.7 billion reais $1.2 billion at the exchange rate at the time available to honor existing projects and support new ones. The number of endorsed projects also increased by 50%, and the range of donors, previously just Norway and Germany, now includes the U.K., Switzerland, Denmark, the U.S., Ireland, Japan, and the European Union. In Tocantins, APA TO received more than 13 million reais $2.5 million to benefit communities that rely on babassu coconut products. After decades of struggling with a lack of resources and the expansion https://news.mongabay.com/2019/11/brazils coconut breakers feel the squeeze of cerrado development/ of soy and eucalyptus cultivation and cattle ranching over their palm groves, the families will have support to build an agroindustry around their crop and access new markets. The project will also help families grow other Amazonian fruits, such as cajá, açaí, acerola, cupuaçu, cashew, and passion fruit. APA TO will manage the money and redistribute it to three local organizations, including two women’s associations. “We are simultaneously strengthening the local economy, women’s empowerment and forest conservation,” Ishii said. “The Amazon Fund enables us to link environmental policy with the everyday lives of the communities responsible for keeping the forest standing.” But she said she fears the project may be paralyzed again depending on the outcome of the next presidential election, to be held on Oct. 4. So far, polls https://www.nexus.fsb.com.br/estudos divulgados/pesquisa btg nexus de intencao de votos para presidente do brasil 17 de agosto de 2026/?utm source=chatgpt.com indicate a tight race between President Lula and Senator Flávio Bolsonaro, the eldest son of Jair, who’s been barred from running after being sentenced to prison for a failed coup attempt following his loss to Lula in the last election. “It is one of the worst case scenarios,” Araújo said of a return by the Bolsonaro clan to power. In 2023 and 2024, the Amazon faced a historic drought https://news.mongabay.com/2025/07/report reveals severe impact of last years drought on amazonian communities/ aggravated by El Niño, the abnormal warming of the surface waters of the equatorial Pacific Ocean. This year, an even stronger El Niño may fuel the Amazon fire season https://news.mongabay.com/short article/2026/07/brazil boosts budget and number of firefighters amid strong el nino forecast/ . “Today, a suspension of the Amazon Fund would have a much more serious impact than it would have had four or eight years ago, because the climate system is under greater stress and there is much less room for maneuver to reverse the trend,” Araújo said. BNDES acknowledged the risk of discontinuity in the fund’s 2025 annual report https://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br/export/sites/default/pt/.galleries/documentos/rafa/RAFA 2025 port.pdf , “particularly if the fund’s governance and objectives are changed,” and cited the paralysis under Bolsonaro’s term. In a WhatsApp statement to Mongabay, the development bank said the risk analysis is a routine part of fund management and has no connection to the election calendar. “As for donors, there are no indications so far that new contributions are being postponed because of the elections,” BNDES stated. The environment ministry didn’t comment on the possible impact of the elections on the Amazon Fund. In a WhatsApp statement to Mongabay, it emphasized the fund’s importance in controlling deforestation and strengthening sustainable development initiatives. The Amazon Fund isn’t the only financing initiative at stake in the election. According https://capitalreset.uol.com.br/financas/paises adiam novos aportes ao tfff a espera da eleicao brasileira/ to the Brazilian environmental economics website Capital Reset, at least five countries are expected to wait for the poll’s results before confirming their contributions to the Tropical Forest Forever Facility TFFF https://tfff.earth/ . This financial mechanism, aimed at rewarding countries conserving their tropical forests, was launched by Brazil at the last United Nations climate summit, which it hosted in the Amazonian city of Belém in 2025. Projects in the Brazilian Amazon had already been affected by funding cuts earlier that year from the U.S. Agency for International Development USAID , following the inauguration of Donald Trump to a second term as president. According to the Brazilian website o eco, Brazilian environmental initiatives lost 84 million reais https://oeco.org.br/reportagens/fim da usaid compromete ao menos r 84 milhoes em projetos ambientais no brasil/ $15 million at last year’s average exchange rate from USAID. Fueling a new economy Brazil created the Amazon Fund to be compensated for its success in slashing the deforestation rate in the Amazon between 2004 and 2012 by 83%. This reduction was achieved largely during Lula’s first two terms in office, thanks to a series of policies that included satellite monitoring and the designation of protected areas. Under Bolsonaro, the deforestation rate spiked, before steadily decreasing again under Lula, reaching their lowest https://news.mongabay.com/short article/2026/07/amazon deforestation falls to 10 year low in first half of 2026/ level in a decade in the period from August 2025 to July 2026. Keeping the deforestation rate low in the long run, however, hinges on offering livelihood alternatives to communities that have historically depended on land grabbing, illegal logging, gold mining, and cattle ranching. “If we don’t have a new economy, we’ll just keep chasing our tails,” said Carlos Koury, director of bioeconomy innovation at Idesam, an institute that works on sustainable practices and innovation in the bioeconomy in the Amazon. In 2017, Idesam managed an Amazon Fund backed project called Forest Towns https://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br/pt/projeto/Cidades Florestais/ . It received almost 12 million reais about $3.8 million at the exchange rate at the time to support oil production and sustainable forest management in river communities in the state of Amazonas. “We are increasingly seeing an empowered Amazonian hinterland, but we need to work hard on this,” Koury said. The Mamirauá Institute, based in Tefé municipality in Amazonas state, has just started its second project backed by the Amazon Fund. The Remanso Project https://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br/pt/projeto/Rede de Manejo da Sociobiodiversidade REMANSO/ will support extractivist families, who depend on sustainably harvested forest and aquatic resources, in the states of Pará and Amazonas. It will cover honey production from native bees, and sustainable management of timber harvesting, caiman hunting, and catches of pirarucu, one of the world’s biggest freshwater fish. Dávila Corrêa, the Mamirauá Institute’s director of management and social development, said one of the challenges in developing such projects in the Amazon is the high logistical cost. To reach some communities, for example, can take several hours by boat. “We deal with high operating costs on a daily basis — whether it’s transportation, logistics, communication, or ongoing technical support,” Corrêa said. “The monthly visits to the communities and the work of supporting them require resources that are commensurate with this reality.” The projects being managed by both APA TO and the Mamirauá Institute run under a model launched in 2011 by the Amazon Fund. Under this system, an umbrella organization https://www.fundoamazonia.gov.br/export/sites/default/pt/.galleries/documentos/monitoramento avaliacao/5.avaliacoes externas/Relatorio Efetividade APS Aglutinadoras.pdf?utm source=chatgpt.com receives the money and distributes it to smaller associations that would otherwise be unable to meet the fund’s eligibility requirements or navigate its bureaucracy. “Community based organizations face many difficulties, as well as numerous administrative, legal, and accounting constraints, when it comes to directly accessing large scale funds such as the Amazon Fund,” Corrêa said. Following the same strategy, other organizations, such as Fundo Casa Sociambiental, https://casa.org.br/teia/ have been working as intermediaries between major donors and small local associations. In 2020, the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon Coiab created the Podáali https://news.mongabay.com/2026/02/we have to bring trust into funding talks valeria paye on indigenous led funds/ , the first Indigenous financing mechanism. The Interstate Movement of Babaçu Coconut Harvesters MIQCB has also had its own fund https://miqcb.org.br/fundo babacu/ since 2012. Financing for suitable initiatives is also spread across several other organizations, such as the Climate and Society Institute https://climaesociedade.org/ iCS , the Brazil Fund https://apoie.fundobrasil.org.br/crise climatica?gad source=1&gad campaignid=24102134544&gbraid=0AAAAAob1Jjv YYLNWZLZwPrFi1qbYp6rA&gclid=CjwKCAjwqJXUBhBNEiwA8BgG7gKxAll16qUPC4CX35wL6rFxoSLL2MRlzDZacPjzwl TPKt8Ye4qmBoCVpoQAvD BwE , Fundo Ecos https://fundoecos.org.br/ , and funds offered by private companies such as miner Vale and state oil and gas company Petrobras as a way of offsetting their environmental impacts. Few funders, however, offer amounts as large as the Amazon Fund, allowing complex projects to move forward. Before the fund’s support, for example, APA TO spent nine years securing smaller grants to build a single industry facility for processing babassu coconuts. “You’ll keep gathering various resources until you’ve built the best possible structure,” said Ishii, the project coordinator. “A significant sum, such as that from the Amazon Fund, goes a long way toward enabling us to take a bigger step forward.” Indigenous Parakanã fear election U turn may spark new invasions in Brazil https://news.mongabay.com/2026/07/indigenous parakana fear election u turn may spark new invasions in brazil/ FEEDBACK: Use this form https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLScP6kOx20iZFILxoYS1UBbTpsd0OdoPOooYfJmxMScY75S5GQ/viewform to send a message to the author of this post. If you want to post a public comment, you can do that at the bottom of the page.