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.