The Impact World this Week: 21 November 2025

COP30: The latest COP30 draft declaration is calling for US$1.3tn a year by 2030 from developed countries to support developing countries with climate action – tripling current flows. Delegates at the 30th annual UN Climate Change Conference in Belém, Brazil, are in last-ditch negotiations over a final draft agreement put forward by the Brazil presidency of this year’s edition. The call for scaling up climate finance from Global North to Global South countries, however, does not specify where the money should come from, instead referencing “all public and private sources” – despite requests from developing countries to see more government funding committed.

Despite earlier drafts calling for a commitment to move away from fossil fuels, the latest version of the text drops any reference to fossil fuels, following lobbying from some oil-rich countries including Saudi Arabia. But that will not meet demands from other countries, not least the 29 nations which sent a letter to the Brazilian COP presidency threatening to block any agreement that did not include a commitment to phase-out of fossil fuels, which could bring negotiations to a deadlock.

The move to drop any mention of fossil fuels from the text has been met with fierce criticism from climate activists and international environmental organisations. Bronwen Tucker, public finance lead at Oil Change International, said: “This is outrageous. We came here to secure a COP 30 package for justice and equity. The Presidency has presented a shamefully weak text that fails to mention fossil fuels, fails to deliver accountability towards rich countries’ finance obligations, and only makes vague promises on adaptation.”  

COP30: The Tropical Forests Forever Facility (TFFF) has attracted billions of dollars of investments within days of launching at the COP30 Leaders’ Summit ahead of the conference in Belém. 

Initiated by the Brazil COP30 presidency, the TFFF is a fund that will pay countries that have tropical forests to keep trees standing. Rather than using grant capital to fund it, it will be based on a for-profit investment model. 

Hoping to become the world’s largest multilateral fund at US$125bn, it will use public investments as catalytic capital to help mobilise private investment, at a ratio of four dollars of private investment for each dollar of public money allocated. The fund will invest its money sustainably and use part of the returns to pay tropical countries that preserve their rainforests – incentivising conservation instead of deforestation. Beneficiary countries must use at least 20% of the money they receive specifically to support Indigenous peoples. 

On the day TFFF was officially launched, US$5bn in commitments had already been made by several countries including Norway, Portugal, France, Brazil and Indonesia, and other countries have followed-up since. Brazilian ministers described the fund as a “turning point in the history of tropical forest conservation”.

Europe: The European Commission is calling for a ‘recognition’ of impact investing in a proposed review of its regulation on sustainability-related disclosures for the financial sector (SFDR). The text, submitted to the European Parliament and Council for examination before it is voted upon, says the term ‘impact’ in the names of financial products should be restricted to those that meet the “specific characteristics of impact investing”, including the “objective of intentionality and targeting measurable change in specific pre-defined environmental or social areas with an upfront theory of change and with reporting on the outcomes”. United for Impact, a coalition of 68 impact investment funds from across the continent, welcomed the paper and said it “charts a clear ambition”.

The review of SFDR is part of the bloc’s wider ‘simplification’ agenda to make regulation less burdensome for businesses and investors; it will group ESG-related investment products in three categories – ‘sustainable’ (which contribute to sustainability goals); ‘transition’ (which invest in companies that are not yet sustainable but on a path to become so); and ‘ESG basics’ (for those that follow various ESG criteria but do not match the former two categories).

Figure of the Week: 2.18m is the total number of social enterprises across the African continent, generating US$96bn annually and creating 12 million full-time jobs, with more than half of them led by women and more than one-third led by youth. The State of Social Enterprise: Unlocking Inclusive Growth, Jobs and Development in Africa report, published by the Schwab Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship this week, drew these figures from a multi-country survey of 1,980 social enterprises and a synthesis of existing data. The report says realising the full potential of Africa’s social enterprises requires coordinated action around five cross-cutting priorities: building enabling ecosystems; unlocking capital; investing in people and skills; fostering partnerships; and gathering data and evidence. It provides recommendations for governments, the private sector, investors, philanthropies and development partners to act on these priorities and unlock the sector’s potential.

Australia: Impact investing is looking up Down Under, with the market in Australia growing nearly eight-fold since 2020, with a 77% rise in product numbers. Those figures come from the Benchmarking Impact: Australian Impact Investor Insights, Activity and Performance Report 2025, published this week by the University of New South Wales Centre for Social Impact and Impact Investing Australia. The report found the country’s market now includes AUS$12.5bn in impact funds (mainly private equity, infrastructure and debt) and AUS$145bn in Green, Social and Sustainability bonds, led by semi-government issuers. The data in the report is based on surveys of investors representing AUS$345bn in assets under management, and an analysis of 197 investment products totalling AUS$157bn.

USA: BlackRock is winding down its Impact Opportunities social impact fund, according to reports by the Financial Times and Reuters. According to the Financial Times’ sources, the firm told employees it would close its BlackRock Impact Opportunities fund to new investments after subprime car lender Tricolor filed for bankruptcy in September. BlackRock is expected to continue to manage the portfolio through a one-to-two-year period, during which it will look to sell the US$800m fund’s investments, before closing the strategy fully. The move follows the closure of other BlackRock impact funds, including the US Government Mortgage Impact Fund in August 2025 and the Global Impact Fund and China Impact Fund in late 2024. In September Forbes reported that large investment firms, including BlackRock, were shying away from ESG strategies at least in part in response to attacks by Republican politicians accusing them of practicing “woke capitalism”.

Movers and shakers 

• Kamal Pankhania, CEO of property development company the Westcombe Group, has been appointed as Advisory Council Member of the British Asian Trust. Pankhania has experience working in philanthropy through the Westcombe Foundation.

In case you missed it 

Global: re.green, a Brazilian organisation using AI and satellite data to make reforestation profitable; Friendship, a Bangladeshi NGO restoring over 60km of mangrove forests to shield vulnerable villages from cyclones; and the City of Bogotá’s efforts to cut air pollution by 24% since 2018 are among the 2025 Earthshot Prize winners. The winners were announced on 5 November in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, prior to the start of COP30. Alongside the winners, a raft of announcements by Earthshot Prize finalists were made, including a new partnership to stop microfibres entering the ecosystem, more funding to secure land and forests rights for Indigenous and community organisations and a major step forward to accelerate and scale sovereign debt conversions.