Forests are a game changer for ending poverty and ensuring a livable planet. They sequester carbon, clean the air we breathe, enrich the soil for farmers to grow crops, create jobs locally, and drive industries globally. They are also a lifeline for communities living in some of the poorest pockets of the world.

From the Amazon to the Congo, and the Upper Guinean to the Indo-Malay basins, investments in forests and communities are laying the foundations for prosperous forest-based economies.

Around 47 million people live in the Amazon forest region. Many of them live in global cities like Manaus in Brazil, Iquitos in Peru, and Leticia in Colombia. Others live surrounded by towering kapok trees and epiphytic plants, in towns and villages within and surrounding the forest expanse. Most depend on the forest and rivers for their way of life; including the estimated two million Indigenous Peoples that call the Amazon home, and who have preserved it for thousands of years.

To the wider region, the Amazon contributes livelihoods, jobs, food and water, climate regulation, and other necessities of life. Further afield, the Amazon drives global industries—exporting timber, rubber, medicines, fruits, and nuts, among other commodities, to the wider world.

Despite this immense value, the Amazon forest has been under threat for some time. Since 1970, the Amazon has lost 17 percent of its tree cover, though deforestation rates have recently slowed in certain areas.

West Africa’s Upper Guinean Forest, a tropical carbon sink stretching from Guinea to Togo, is known as a global biodiversity hotspot. Ghana’s piece of this forest is being lost to deforestation at an alarming rate—4% annually—in part due to cocoa farming. In recent years, a pipeline of World Bank-led projects in Ghana have supported cocoa farmers in improving their crop and forest management practices.

The Congo Basin hosts one of the world's largest and most biodiverse tropical rainforests, 60% of which lies in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC).

This expansive forest and the mighty Congo River have been home to humans for tens of thousands of years, and support thousands of animal and plant species, many of which are found nowhere else on earth.

Yet, as population and poverty rise and the implications of climate change become a reality, the pressure on DRC's forests is increasing. The heavy human reliance on forests and the encroachment of unsustainable agricultural practices—usually due to a lack of resources and viable income alternatives—wreaks havoc on one of the world’s most important forest biomes.

The Improved Forested Landscape Management Project—with financing from the Climate Investment Funds’ Forest Investment Program and the Global Environment Facility—has worked with rural communities including indigenous people to diversify livelihoods, reduce human pressures on environs, and alleviate poverty, including through the provision of alternative livelihoods training and resources.

For Mme. Matonga and the other women in Ibi, beekeeping has not replaced agricultural work, but the additional income has had a huge impact on their lives. The extra money and training allowed the women to invest in new farming practices that are better suited to the landscape and changing climatic conditions, such as transitioning from itinerant slash-and-burn agriculture to savannah agroforestry. These changes have not only made agriculture more profitable but also lessened pressure on the surrounding environment and natural resources.

Mme. Matonga’s is just one success story among many from changemakers on the frontlines of the climate and nature crises in DRC.

As a result of the project, more than 15,000 households saw their conditions improve, with overall household income rising by 14.7% on average. Almost 2,600 jobs have been created, with some 29,000 more temporary jobs created during the lifetime of the project, 59 percent of which were taken up by women.

One fifth of the Indonesia’s population lives in and around forests – drawing food, fuel, shelter, and jobs from these precious resources. However, these same communities are also bearing the brunt of land degradation, high poverty rates, and low employment prospects.

In response to these challenges, while aiming to reduce poverty and foster rural employment, the Indonesian government initiated efforts to enhance equitable access to land and its resources. The Government of Indonesia's Social Forestry Program sets an ambitious target: providing forest-based communities with legal access to 12.7 million hectares of state forests.

The most urgent global challenges of today—including climate change, nature loss, food insecurity, pandemics, and conflict—require holistic solutions. Healthy forests play an important role in addressing all of these issues—and hold the keys to a resilient future.

The reality is that some of the world’s poorest people live amidst some of the richest natural capital. It’s an irony we must break. And breaking it – working with some of the poorest people on the planet in some of the most important environments in the world – embodies our mission to end poverty on a livable planet.

This does not mean asking forest-dependent people to forgo their development just to save the trees, but instead building forest economies that deliver jobs and social services, that work for people, while also delivering for climate and nature.

To accomplish this, there are gaps that must be addressed. Success hinges on commitment to invest in public institutions and mobilize finance. As things stand, an annual sum of more than US$536 billion will be needed to meet climate change mitigation, nature conservation, and land restoration targets globally. The cost of protecting the Amazon alone will cost US$50 billion over the next five years. It will also require better data and tools that are accessible to stakeholders across sectors. Initiatives like the Global Partnership on Sustainability respond to this growing demand and help public and private actors integrate sustainability metrics, including natural capital accounting data, into decision-making.

In the short term, it also means ensuring that social safety nets are reaching forest-dependent communities. And it means building practical knowledge platforms so countries can learn from one another and replicate what works.

Looking to the future, investments in forests and landscapes will help deliver nature-resilient futures to the poorest communities, many of whom continue to be on the frontlines of environmental crises to which they contributed the least.

Like trees, the solutions won’t grow overnight. But if the world is to end poverty on a livable planet, investing in forests, with lessons from places like Colombia, Ghana, DRC, and Indonesia, will be essential to build greener futures for generations to come.