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Green Climate Fund Projects

Responsible Commodities Facility - Deforestation and Conversion Free: Finance for soy production in the Cerrado, Brazil (RCF-DCF Project)

Gender assessment for FP301: Responsible Commodities Facility - Deforestation and Conversion Free: Finance for soy production in the Cerrado, Brazil (RCF-DCF Project)

Gender action plan for FP301: Responsible Commodities Facility - Deforestation and Conversion Free: Finance for soy production in the Cerrado, Brazil (RCF-DCF Project)

Project Approved

Brazil’s Cerrado, one of the world’s most biodiverse savanna ecosystems and a critical carbon sink, is facing increasing pressure from agricultural expansion, particularly soy production. Soy farmland expanded from 13 million hectares in 2000 to 44 million hectares in 2023, making it a major driver of deforestation and land conversion in the region. Agriculture and land-use change together account for more than 60 per cent of Brazil’s greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, more than half of the Cerrado’s native vegetation has already been cleared, leading to loss of biodiversity, degraded water systems, and greater vulnerability of farming communities to climate risks such as droughts, heatwaves, and changing rainfall patterns. While national regulations such as the Forest Code exist, enforcement remains limited, and farmers often lack financial incentives to conserve native vegetation, particularly as around 70 per cent of the remaining natural habitat lies on privately owned land.

The RCF-DCF Programme seeks to address these challenges by aligning financial incentives with landscape protection in the soy sector. The initiative supports deforestation- and conversion-free crop financing for soy producers in the Cerrado through a dedicated climate-focused investment structure. It includes a USD 85 million impact fund alongside additional co-investment vehicles designed to mobilise larger pools of capital.

Through customised credit lines, farmers will be enabled to forgo converting native vegetation and to support a shift in soy production business models towards landscape protection. By linking agricultural finance to conservation outcomes, the programme aims to protect native vegetation, reduce emissions from land-use change, and support more sustainable soy production systems across the Cerrado landscape.

The programme represents a first-of-its-kind attempt to use a scalable payment-for-ecosystem-services model for farmers in a region facing acute deforestation pressures. It was developed under GCF’s Project-specific Assessment Approach (PSAA).

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An aim to achieve a quantifiable outcome within a given time-frame, set by an institution such as a national government.

Policy instruments are techniques or tools used by governing authorities to promote certain policies in order to achieve predetermined goals. Put simply, instruments are how a government tries to achieve its goals, with this taxonomy being focused on national policy instruments.

Risk is the potential for adverse consequences resulting from the dynamic interplay between (climate-related) hazards, exposure, and vulnerability of affected human or ecological systems.

Groups  of people who are adversely affected by climate change or the response to it

A set of principles, processes, and practices that build economic and political power to shift from an extractive economy to a regenerative economy.

Renewable energy means all forms of energy produced from renewable sources in a sustainable manner.

Fossil fuel is a generic term for non-renewable energy sources such as coal, fossil gas, and oil (including crude oil, and petroleum products), that can be used for electricity and heat generation. Fossil fuels are hydrocarbons formed from pressurised and heated organic material buried over millions of years.

Molecules in the atmosphere that play a key role in the greenhouse effect by trapping heat radiating from Earth’s surface.

Area of the economy in which actors engage in identical or related activities.

In human systems, the process of adjustment to actual or expected climate change and its effects, in order to moderate harm, increase resilience or exploit beneficial opportunities. In natural systems, the process of adjustment to actual climate change and its effects; human intervention may facilitate adjustment to expected climate change and its effects.

The management and allocation of funds, assets and investments to meet various objectives