Portuguese 
Spanish 
Norway eliminated Brazil from the World Cup on the field, but maintains one of the country’s main environmental partnerships off the field, with resources aimed at protecting tropical forests and the Amazon.
The elimination of Brazil by Norway in the round of 16 of the 2026 World Cup marked the most visible recent encounter between the two countries for millions of fans.
Outside of football, however, the bilateral relationship continues on another front: environmental cooperation aimed at protecting tropical forests.
Norway renewed this partnership by announcing, on November 6, 2025, during the COP30 Leaders Summit in Belém, a commitment of up to US$ 3 billion for the Tropical Forests Forever Fund, known by the acronym TFFF.
-
Denmark Constructs Its Largest Breakwater with 175 Concrete Blocks and World’s Largest Excavator to Combat 8-Meter Waves, at a Cost of $156 Million
-
Swedish Company Develops Offshore Wind Turbine That Eliminates the Need for Cranes and Simplifies Maintenance
-
Hurricane Katrina: Engineering Failures by U.S. Army Corps Led to 80% of New Orleans Flooding
-
Hisense Unveils 615-Liter PureView Fridge with Transparent Door, Smart Display, Voice Control, and UV Purification to Compete with LG and Samsung
The amount was presented by the Norwegian government as long-term loans, equivalent to 30 billion Norwegian kroner, and not as a direct donation in the traditional climate finance model.
The announcement included Norway among the countries that declared financial support for the mechanism proposed by Brazil to finance the protection of tropical forests.
The initiative seeks to create a permanent source of resources for countries that conserve forest areas, such as Brazil, Indonesia, and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, using investment returns to reward the maintenance of standing forests.
The Norwegian Prime Minister, Jonas Gahr Støre, stated at the event that stopping deforestation is necessary to reduce the impacts of climate change and curb biodiversity loss.
He also said that “we have no time to lose” and argued that the TFFF can offer “stable and long-term financing” to participating countries.
How the Tropical Forests Forever Fund Works
The TFFF was designed to operate differently from funds based solely on donations.
The proposal is to gather public and private resources, invest the capital in financial instruments, and use part of the returns to pay countries that maintain conserved tropical forests.
According to Brazil’s Ministry of Finance, the logic of the mechanism is to remunerate environmental services provided by these biomes.
In the Norwegian case, the resources must be gradually released until 2035 and reimbursed by 2075.
The Norwegian government conditioned the disbursement on criteria such as the entry of resources from other funders, the limit of Norwegian participation in the total raised, and the maintenance of a financial model considered sustainable and with acceptable risk.
The structure was presented by the governments involved as an attempt to provide predictability to long-term financing.
For countries with large areas of tropical forest, the mechanism can support the planning of continuous actions of monitoring, inspection, conservation, and sustainable development, provided that the resources are effectively mobilized and distributed according to the fund’s rules.
The Norwegian government itself reported that the start of payments to forest countries depends on the adherence of other funders and the operational structuring of the TFFF.
Thus, the commitment announced in Belém represents a stage in the formation of the fund, and not the immediate release of the entire amount to the beneficiary countries.
Amazon Fund remains as the axis of cooperation between Brazil and Norway
The environmental cooperation between Brazil and Norway also involves the Amazon Fund, created in 2008 and managed by BNDES.
The fund receives non-reimbursable donations and allocates resources to actions of prevention, monitoring, and combating deforestation, as well as conservation projects and sustainable use of forests in the Legal Amazon.
On November 17, 2024, Norway announced a new donation of US$ 60 million to the Amazon Fund, an amount estimated at the time to be around R$ 348 million.
The announcement was made by Jonas Gahr Støre during the Global Citizen Now Conference in Rio de Janeiro, in recognition of the reduction of deforestation in the Amazon in 2023, according to BNDES.
Before that, in June 2024, BNDES and the Norwegian government had already formalized another donation of US$ 50 million, equivalent to more than R$ 270 million at that time.
On that occasion, the bank reported that Norway remained the largest historical donor to the Amazon Fund, with resources exceeding R$ 3 billion since the first donation agreement, signed in 2009.
The difference between the two instruments helps explain the renewal of the partnership.
While the Amazon Fund operates with donations applied to projects approved by BNDES, the TFFF proposes a permanent financial mechanism, with loans and investments aimed at generating income.
In practice, the two funds have different formats and can finance different fronts of forest conservation.
Bilateral relationship began with trade and reached the climate agenda
The relationship between Brazil and Norway has records dating back to the 19th century.
According to a Norwegian government document, the first Norwegian-registered ship arrived in Rio de Janeiro in 1842 loaded with cod and returned to Europe with coffee.
The journey of the North Star marked the beginning of a commercial relationship that, over the decades, came to include energy, environment, research, foreign policy, and green transition.
The Norwegian government classifies Brazil as its main partner in Latin America.
More than 230 Norwegian companies are present in the country, and the Brazilian market is identified by Norway as the main investment destination for its companies outside Europe and the United States, according to the official strategy published by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
The presence of large areas of tropical forest in Brazilian territory is among the factors cited by Norway to justify environmental cooperation.
The country’s official strategy for Brazil states that Brazilian territory hosts one-third of the world’s remaining tropical forests and that bilateral cooperation in climate and forests has been occurring since 2008.
The Brazilian presidency of the G20 also opened space for new contacts between the two governments.
In December 2023, Brazil invited Norway to participate as a guest country of the group in 2024.
On the occasion, Støre classified the invitation as “a great vote of confidence” and related the Norwegian presence to bilateral cooperation in forests, climate, energy, and food security.
Brazil and Norway begin to share leadership in the TFFF
The partnership had a new development on April 17, 2026, when Norway began to act alongside Brazil in the leadership of the TFFF.
The Norwegian government reported that the country joined Brazil as co-chair of the new international fund for tropical forests, in an announcement made in Washington, United States.
With the change, the bilateral relationship also came to involve the governance of an international initiative.
The declared objective of the TFFF is to mobilize resources on a scale to compensate for the preservation of tropical forests in different countries, with payments associated with maintaining forest cover and complying with the rules provided by the mechanism.
For Brazil, Norwegian adherence expands the number of countries involved in a proposal presented by the Brazilian government on the climate finance agenda.
For Norway, the commitment maintains a line of external cooperation focused on tropical forests, an area in which the country has been working with Brazil since the creation of the Amazon Fund.
The implementation of the TFFF still depends on additional fundraising, operational definition, and fulfillment of the conditions established by the financiers.
The progress of the fund will be measured by the ability to transform financial commitments into verifiable payments for countries that preserve tropical forests.
