NEW YORK, 28 June 2023 – The BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group (TIG) has won Environmental Finance’s Sustainable Investment Award for ESG investment initiative of the year in Latin America for the second consecutive year.
The 2023 award commends the progress TIG has made toward delivering its impact-focused Latin American reforestation strategy, which was launched in 2021 with Conservation International as impact adviser. The strategic collaboration seeks to mobilize US$ 1 billion over five years, with an aim to deliver risk-adjusted financial returns alongside significant climate, environmental and social benefits at a large scale.
“We are honored to receive our second consecutive award in this category, which is wonderful and sustained acknowledgment of the collective effort of our team and our colleagues at Conservation International,” said Mark Wishnie, TIG’s Chief Sustainability Officer and Head of Impact Investment Management. “Our shared mission is to pioneer a strategy that seeks to generate financial returns while also driving significant impact in the fight to slow climate change, protect biodiversity and support inclusive and equitable community development.”
“We’re excited to be collaborating with the Timberland Investment Group on this strategy, which seeks to help safeguard the environment and deliver significant climate benefits. Initiatives such as this can play an important role in forging a sustainable economy that provides positive impacts for climate and biodiversity. Congratulations to TIG for this well-deserved award,” said Mauricio Bianco, Vice President of Conservation International-Brazil.
TIG’s reforestation strategy aims to protect and restore nearly 300,000 hectares (approximately 700,000 acres) of natural forests in deforested landscapes in Brazil, Uruguay, and Chile; plant hundreds of millions of trees in sustainably managed, independently certified commercial forests; improve biodiversity; and generate an estimated 35 million tonnes of carbon sequestration over 15 years.
During the award period, TIG and Conservation International worked together to develop and operationalize fourteen impact criteria designed to ensure positive impacts for people and nature at landscape scales. They include avoiding negative impacts such as habitat loss for critical species, as well as delivering positive outcomes including water quality, forest protection, and carbon sequestration. Together, TIG and Conservation International use these criteria to evaluate new properties for acquisition. Conservation International also advises TIG on site-level spatial recommendations for native forest reforestation on each acquisition, as well as on monitoring and ongoing community engagement.
“We are very grateful to the team at Conservation International for their collaboration. Each of our organizations brings its own expertise to the table, resulting in outcomes that are informed both by TIG’s long history of sustainable forest management in the region and Conservation International’s experience leading science-based conservation efforts in Latin America,” said Gerrity Lansing, Head of TIG.
In 2022, TIG made its first investment as part of the strategy: the acquisition of a nearly 60,000-acre cattle ranch in southern Brazil. Together with Conservation International, TIG designed a landscape-scale management plan that targets the protection and restoration of approximately 30,000 acres on the acquired property and others in the region, enhancing biodiversity, protecting the headwaters of an important watershed, and supporting an expected increase in per-hectare employment of more than ten times existing levels on the acquired ranch in the first year of operations.
This award follows an announcement by the White House in April that the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) is working to assess potential financing of US$ 50 million for the strategy. The announcement was made by President Biden during the Major Economies Forum on Energy and Climate Change, when he outlined a number of actions to rapidly scale forest protection and restoration to help address climate change.
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Disclaimer: Awards may not be representative of any one client’s experience and are not indicative of the future performance of the BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group, LLC or BTG Pactual. ESG investment initiative of the year, Latin America. Awarded on 29 June 2023. The EF Sustainable Investment Awards are issued by Environmental Finance, an online news and analysis service that reports on sustainable investment, green finance, and environmental markets. A judging panel consisting of over 40 investors and industry experts chosen for their knowledge, objectivity and credibility along with the Environmental Finance editorial team reviewed the submitted entry material for this award. Judges scored each entry individually and any conflict of interest was removed. The judge’s scores are confidential. Award based on information relating to the period of March 2022 to April 2023. TIG did not pay a fee to participate in this award. However, TIG did pay a fee to Environmental Finance in connection with publishing an announcement of the award and award redistribution rights.