During COP27, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) announced progress USAID has made in delivering on two major commitments: President Biden’s Plan to Conserve Global Forests and a USAID commitment to build our partnerships with Indigenous Peoples.
Plan to Conserve Global Forests
At COP26, President Biden announced the U.S. Plan to Conserve Global Forests: Critical Carbon Sinks, a whole-of-government effort to protect the Amazon rainforest and other critical ecosystems worldwide that sequester large quantities of greenhouse gasses.
USAID is delivering on forest conservation with a more than $250 million annual portfolio across 50+ countries. This includes ongoing work on more than half of the 50 programs named in the Plan to Conserve Global Forests.
Since COP26, USAID has announced new initiatives in support of the Plan’s goals including Amazonia Connect, an initiative to reduce commodity-driven deforestation in the world’s most important carbon sink; the new phase of the Central Africa Regional Program for the Environment, the U.S. government’s main effort to conserve the Congo Basin; and a new effort in Papua New Guinea to reduce deforestation and emissions in the world’s third largest rainforest.
Support for Indigenous Peoples
In 2022, USAID invested a total of $92 million to support the development needs of Indigenous Peoples and Local Communities (IPLC).
A significant part of our effort contributes to the Forest Tenure Pledge. In Glasgow, a coalition of 23 countries, including the United States, and donor organizations formed the Forest Tenure Funders Group and pledged to provide $1.7 billion to advance support for IPLC tenure rights and their forest guardianship between 2021 and 2025. The Group jointly spent over $320 million, or nearly one-fifth of the pledge, in 2021.