Norway's bilateral deforestation efforts in partnership with developing countries

Norway has an International Climate and Forest Initiative (Nicfi), under which the country has "committed to spend up to NOK 3 billion ($366M USD) each year rewarding rainforest countries that meet agreed targets"
- "Over the past decade, Norway provided 40% of global finance to fight tropical deforestation, according to Rainforest Foundation Norway. This mainly comes in the form of direct payments to countries, which incentivise forest protection."
- Norway has paid the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) over $120M over 10 years, and in 2018 signed a $50M agreement in Ecuador, in partnership with the German government.

Norway has admitted to an ongoing “disagreement” with the government in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to which payments have been frozen.
- DRC's Environment Minister Amy Ambatobe has awarded "3 forestry concessions to Chinese companies and started a process to allocate 14 more, which would open an area of rainforest the size of Belgium to industrial logging."
- An anonymous source suggested Ambatobe saw logging contracts as a bigger vote-winner than foreign aid for forest protection. In addition, there has been talk that bribes were made in association with the forest concession award.
- Norway channels their funds through the Central African Forest Initiative (Cafi), which also channels funds through the World Bank and UN Development Programme "rather than the corruption-prone government." Cafi has tried to bypass Ambatobe on many of their initiatives, including funding for family planning and sustainable farming initiatives.
- "Jo Blackman, campaigner with Global Witness, urged Cafi to halt activities until DRC had had free and fair elections. 'We see this approach of freezing and unfreezing funds is failing, because it is not addressing the fundamental problem of weak governance in the DRC forest sector, which is essentially political.'"
In 2017, Norway also had to cut Brazil's annual payment, which averages $114m, by almost two thirds due to deforestation

Norway and Guyana had a $250M REDD+ agreement, which "reduced deforestation in Guyana by over 30 percent during the project period (2010-2015), which is equivalent to approximately 12.8 million tons of avoided CO2 emissions"
However, deforestation increased immediately after the agreement ended. Academics also expressed some concern about leakage, though there isn't concrete evidence

Norway has spent almost a billion kroner ($120m) in DRC over the past decade, but deforestation has continued to rise