The Precious Forests Foundation: focusing on its role as a facilitator for sustainable tropical forest management

In 2024, the organization made a strategic shift: faced with growing funding challenges and an evolving institutional landscape, it refocused its work on dialogue, facilitation, and knowledge transfer, gradually phasing out direct project funding.

A strategic repositioning after five years of pilot projects

The foundation's first five years were spent supporting targeted projects, including:

an update of European life cycle assessment (LCA) databases for tropical timber.
an experiment in collecting biodiversity data using drones and eDNA in the Amazon, which earned the Swiss team supported by PFF third place in the XPRIZE Rainforest 2024 competition.

These experiments, while significant, have also shown the limitations of fragmented support in a highly polarized sector. The PFF has therefore decided to suspend ad hoc project funding from 2024, while maintaining those already launched.

Two projects still ongoing

Two initiatives are still ongoing:

a project in the Amazon on the second forest harvest cycle, aiming to scientifically demonstrate the feasibility and economic benefits of long-term sustainable logging;
the development of a Wikipedia entry on Reduced Impact Logging (RIL), in collaboration with HAFL (Bern) and ATIBT, to fill a gap in knowledge on a practice that is central to sustainable forest management.

A foundation facilitating and catalysing dialogue

The core of the PFF approach is now focused on bringing together experts, economic actors and scientists around sustainable management issues: carbon, biodiversity, second cycle, legislation and markets. In 2025, a new large-scale project will aim to analyze the conceptual evolution of sustainable forest management through global scientific literature in order to identify areas for improvement, regional adaptation, or strategic revitalization.

Tighter but expert governance

In 2024, the board of directors was strengthened by the appointment of Plinio Sist, a recognized expert at CIRAD and coordinator of the TmFO Observatory. He joins an active board of six members, including Benoît Jobbé-Duval, director of ATIBT. The foundation's administrative operations have been streamlined, with offices and services shared, in favor of a more agile, primarily online way of working.

Conclusion: toward greater influence through restraint

In an ecosystem of numerous and diverse actors, the PFF has chosen to focus on qualitative impact. By becoming a facilitator of solutions, a catalyst for reflection and an incubator of ideas, it intends to continue playing a key role in the future of sustainable tropical forest management. ATIBT welcomes this strategic repositioning, based on cooperation, scientific expertise and long-term commitment.

The annual report is available in English