Their work primarily involves technical assistance, policy design, and financial frameworks, although some also engage in or support on-the-ground implementation.
Wealthiest
The role of these organizations prompts a broader inquiry: how much of climate funding is ultimately dedicated to enabling action, and how much effectively delivers results? This issue pertains more to structure than misconduct.
As money passes through multiple layers, it becomes increasingly challenging to draw a clear connection from funding to outcomes, whether in terms of emissions, land protection, or tangible community benefits.
According to the Climate Policy Initiative (CPI), preliminary data shows that global climate finance surpassed $2 trillion in 2024, after reaching $1.9 trillion in 2023.
Maud Borie, a senior lecturer, and Professor Sarah Bracking, both from King’s College London, contributed a significant article to The Conversation titled Why ‘green’ finance isn’t sustainable as it seems.
The article stated: “Mounting evidence suggests a gap between the anticipated possibilities and the actual outcomes of green finance. Many green finance products seem to benefit financial markets and wealthy investors more than nature or vulnerable communities.
Multilateral
“Even more concerning are the unintended consequences. Instead of leveling the playing field, green finance can worsen inequality.
“For green finance to serve collective wellbeing rather than the interests of a select few, we need rigorous and proactive public regulations and better public debates on what green finance should account for.”
The UK International Climate Finance (ICF) is not a single fund but a cross-government system involving the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office (FCDO), the Department of Energy Security and Net Zero (DESNZ), the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra), and the Department of Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT).
Together, these departments manage a wide array of climate spending that includes forests, energy transition, adaptation, and sustainable development.
A substantial portion of this funding does not go directly to projects. Instead, it is directed through multilateral institutions such as the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), and United Nations agencies.
Tangible
In Brazil, British climate finance totals over £510 million committed since 2016, positioning the country as one of the ICF’s top recipients.
This funding is distributed across various initiatives: addressing deforestation, ecosystem restoration, sustainable agriculture promotion, strengthening Brazil’s bioeconomy policy, and expanding green finance and clean energy systems. This results in a collection of parallel efforts rather than a unified strategy.
UK PACT, managed by FCDO and DESNZ, primarily focuses on technical assistance, working upstream, and shaping policies and financial systems rather than directly implementing projects.
In Brazil, UK PACT and the Green Finance Institute (GFI) play complementary upstream roles. UK PACT funds technical assistance and policy support through intermediaries, while GFI concentrates on developing green finance frameworks and investment pipelines.
This collaboration helps mobilize capital but also means much of the effort is focused on enabling systems rather than direct delivery, making the connection between funding and tangible on-the-ground outcomes more difficult to trace.
Targets
GFI funders include the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, HM Government, the City of London, the Esmée Faribairn Foundation, the Laudes Foundation, the MCS Foundation, the Quadrature Climate Foundation, the LTPP Foundation, Amalgamated Bank, and Climate Change Collaboration.
One of the less visible but highly influential aspects of climate finance lies in its definition.
Organizations like the Climate Policy Initiative and the Climate Bonds Initiative help determine what qualifies as green investment, while advisory groups like Talanoa translate these definitions into policy and financial systems, shaping progress measurement.
This process is not always neutral. Expanding definitions allow more activities to be classified as climate finance, sometimes including investments that might have occurred anyway. In such cases, reported progress might indicate alignment rather than genuine transformation.
This can create a subtle disconnect. Financial flows may increase, and targets are met on paper, but the link to real-world environmental outcomes becomes harder to establish.
Deforestation
When these frameworks reach Brazil, they face a more complex reality shaped by politics, economic pressures, and entrenched power structures.
At the center is BNDES, Brazil’s national development bank, which plays a crucial role in directing investment. It has strong ties to large industries and infrastructure projects, influencing the country’s economic direction.
Climate finance entering this system does not necessarily transform it. More often, it adapts to it, which may pose risks: funding aimed at driving change can end up reinforcing existing structures, including those associated with environmental destruction.
In the Amazon rainforest, British-backed projects often concentrate on sustainable land use, certification systems, and environmental monitoring. Although these tools are well-established, they have limitations. Organizations like Imaflora and IPAM offer expertise in these areas.
“Sustainable logging” still involves tree cutting, and certification schemes can vary in enforcement rigor. Moreover, protecting one area can shift deforestation pressures to another.
Assumptions
Significant funding also goes into monitoring. Brazil already possesses advanced satellite systems that track deforestation in real time. The challenge is not just knowing where it occurs but acting on that information consistently and effectively.
While more data can be beneficial, it alone does not prevent deforestation and degradation.
Carbon markets are another critical element. They theoretically offer a way to reduce emissions by assigning value to carbon reductions. However, some systems allow companies to offset emissions by purchasing credits elsewhere.
This has sparked ongoing debate about whether this approach leads to real reductions or merely delays them.
Investigations into forest-based carbon credits have raised serious concerns about their credibility. Some projects fail to achieve real emissions reductions, while others rely on assumptions that are difficult to verify.
Pressure
The result is a system that can sometimes balance emissions on paper without clearly reducing them. It’s a promising idea but not straightforward.
There is growing interest in decarbonizing Brazil’s heavy industries, particularly steel and cement, using technologies such as hydrogen and carbon capture and storage.
The concept is appealing: cleaner fuels, emissions capture, and continued industrial output. However, the gap between concept and reality remains significant.
Both hydrogen and carbon capture and storage technologies exist and are being tested in pilot and early commercial settings. Yet, as highlighted in the Climate Bonds Initiative report on cement and steel decarbonization, they have not been deployed at the scale needed to significantly reduce emissions across heavy industry.
Hydrogen is often proposed as a cleaner alternative to coal in steelmaking, especially when produced using renewable energy. However, this type of hydrogen remains costly and not widely available, particularly in countries with already strained energy systems.
Emissions
Scaling this up in Brazil would require substantial new infrastructure and long-term investment that is not yet in place. For now, it remains more of an ambition than an immediate solution for reducing emissions.
Carbon capture and storage face similar challenges. It is costly, energy-intensive, and not yet used in steel production at commercial scale.
There are also questions about where all the captured carbon goes and how safe it is to store it long term. The same report indicates that these systems are still far from being reliable, large-scale solutions.
This creates a gap between ambition and reality.
Technologies like hydrogen and carbon capture and storage are often used to present a reassuring narrative rather than deliver immediate change. When counted as part of today’s climate progress, they can give the impression that emissions are being more directly addressed than they truly are.
Flows
Across all these areas, a pattern emerges: outcomes are shaped not only by intentions but also by incentives.
Organizations receive funding to design solutions, governments are expected to demonstrate progress, and financial institutions benefit when more investments qualify as green.
In this environment, activity itself can become the focus. It is often easier to showcase progress through frameworks, metrics, and reports than through measurable environmental change.
There is little incentive to acknowledge when something isn’t working, and even less to simplify systems dependent on complexity.
Meanwhile, those most affected, local communities, often remain on the periphery of funding flows. The system speaks on their behalf but rarely channels resources directly to them.
Repackage
This does not imply that programs like UK PACT are unnecessary, but it does underscore the difficulty in ensuring that funding translates into tangible results.
The central issue is not whether money is being spent, but how impact is defined and whether those definitions align with what is happening on the ground.
When success is measured through financial flows and policy alignment, the connection to lived reality can weaken, leading to a decline in trust.
An article published in Geography Compass argues that climate finance often appears more transformative than it actually is. Although funds are presented as tools to reduce emissions and support vulnerable communities, they mainly function within existing political and economic systems rather than reshaping them.
In some cases, what is labeled as green investment may simply repackage standard activities, giving the impression of progress without delivering substantial environmental change.
Power
The paper further highlights how these financial flows can exacerbate existing power imbalances. Instead of redistributing resources, climate finance can consolidate them, raising questions about who benefits and who is left out.
It challenges the notion of climate finance as a neutral solution, pointing instead to a system that can easily replicate the inequalities it aims to address.
Lauren Gifford, the lead author of the paper, emphasized the complexity and influence of financial systems.
She said: “Finance is complex and often confusing, and it can be a black box for many of us, obscuring how capital is created, traded, and accumulated. We need more scientists to think about intersections of money, finance, technology, and climate change. Those spaces maintain a lot of power in how climate change is addressed.”
The goal is not to dismiss climate finance programs, but to critically examine them.
Complexity
Greater transparency, clearer links between funding and outcomes, and more direct support for frontline action are frequently suggested as ways to move forward. Equally important is the willingness to question how success is defined.
Forests remain under threat, communities continue to face risks, emissions are still rising, and yet, on paper, progress is reported.
Ultimately, the story of British climate funding in Brazil is not one of clear-cut failure or success. It is a narrative about complexity and the need to scrutinize systems that seem, at first glance, to be effective.
Thus, the question remains: are we truly altering the course of climate change, or are we simply improving our descriptions of our efforts?
This Author
Monica Piccinini is a Brazilian-British journalist and a member of the National Union of Journalists. She frequently contributes to The Ecologist and publishes on Substack, Medium, and on her own platform, YourVoiz.org. Read Monica Piccinini’s report: A reckoning in the amazon (pdf).
