Norway announced on Monday (9) that it will transfer about R$ 350 million to the Amazon Fund, the equivalent of 600 million Norwegian kroner. The announcement came from the country's embassy in Brasília, weeks after Brazil reported the lowest Amazon deforestation rate ever measured by the Instituto Nacional de Pesquisas Espaciais (Inpe, the national space research institute).
The money is not in the account yet. The Amazon Fund works on a pay-for-results basis: the pledge is announced when the numbers fall, but the disbursement depends on a final verification of environmental indicators, due by the end of 2026.
The numbers behind the pledge
The data come from Prodes, Inpe's satellite monitoring system. In the 2024/2025 reporting year, Amazon deforestation totalled 3,335 sq km, a drop of 41.8% from the previous period and the lowest figure in a series that starts in 1988.
The decline was not limited to the rainforest. In the Cerrado, the cleared area fell 23.8%, to 5,516.7 sq km — also the lowest since that monitoring began in 2001.
For Norway's Minister of Climate and the Environment, Sigrun Aasland, the result reaches beyond Brazil's borders. "Brazil's results are impressive and important not only for the country, but for the whole world," she said, according to the embassy's announcement.
Who decides where the money goes
The Amazon Fund is managed by the BNDES, Brazil's development bank, and currently supports 156 projects. The body that picks which initiatives get funded is the Comitê Orientador do Fundo Amazônia (the fund's steering committee), which brings together the federal government, the states of the region and civil society. Donors have no say in that choice — a long-standing rule, and the reason the fund can take foreign money without handing over decisions on environmental policy.
Norway is by far the largest contributor: since the fund was created in 2008, it has put in roughly R$ 3.8 billion. The donor list also includes the United Kingdom, the United States, Germany, Denmark, Switzerland, Ireland, Japan and the European Union.
The 2019 precedent
The relationship has broken down before. In 2019, under Jair Bolsonaro's government, Norway suspended about R$ 133 million, arguing that Brazil had broken the deforestation-reduction agreement. Other contributions also stopped, and the fund went through a period without approving new projects.
Monday's announcement therefore lands on a mechanism that has already proved sensitive in both directions: it speeds up when deforestation falls and stalls when it rises. That design is why the R$ 350 million remains tied to the December check rather than to today's announcement.
The pledge also arrives while COP31 is under way in Antalya, Turkey, with climate finance among the most contested items on the agenda.
With information from O Tempo, Diário Online (DOL) and Prodes/Inpe data.
