Urapi Sustainable Land Use aims to generate returns for investors while providing significant social and environmental impacts through investments in sustainable agroforestry projects in rural areas of Latin America. The Fund’s investments bring sustainable and commercially viable alternatives to current unsustainable land use practices that are causing land degradation, deforestation and CO2 emissions that, in turn, have negative environmental effects worldwide and threaten the long-term economic development of local communities.
Urapi’s investment strategy includes financing and supporting cooperatives and farmers in their transition from unsustainable land use practices to more efficient and sustainable land use models based on cocoa, coffee or nuts. Urapi Sustainable Land Use will invest in structured agroforestry transactions at a landscape level that include the following components:
- Loans to cooperatives and microcredit facilities to small farmers to renovate ageing farms into sustainable agroforestry systems, restore degraded lands into agroforestry systems, and conserve neighbouring forests;
- Investments in supply chain infrastructure and equipment in joint ventures with cooperatives in order to increase the cooperatives' capacity to commercialize high quality, certified products such as cocoa, coffee, nuts and timber;
- Design and implement carbon sequestration and emission reduction projects to integrate climate finance to diversify cooperatives’ incomes and to monetize their positive environmental impacts.
The fund aims to raise US$50 million by close of 2020 from various institutional and private investors and foundations with a first closing in 2018. The fund works in partnership with ECOTIERRA, a Canadian project developer, to manage the investments and operate the projects. Investment commitments are long-term and consistent with a 15-year investment strategy. There is an expectation to fully deploy the fund’s capital with investments in four to five projects by 2020.
Projects:
Café Selva Norte Perú: Empowering coffee producers to restore land
Country
Peru
Ecuador
Colombia
Urapi Sustainable Land Use aims to generate returns for investors while providing significant social and environmental impacts through investments in sustainable agroforestry projects in rural areas of Latin America. The Fund’s investments bring sustainable and commercially viable alternatives to current unsustainable land use practices that are causing land degradation, deforestation and CO2 emissions that, in turn, have negative environmental effects worldwide and threaten the long-term economic development of local communities.
Urapi’s investment strategy includes financing and supporting cooperatives and farmers in their transition from unsustainable land use practices to more efficient and sustainable land use models based on cocoa, coffee or nuts. Urapi Sustainable Land Use will invest in structured agroforestry transactions at a landscape level that include the following components:
- Loans to cooperatives and microcredit facilities to small farmers to renovate ageing farms into sustainable agroforestry systems, restore degraded lands into agroforestry systems, and conserve neighbouring forests;
- Investments in supply chain infrastructure and equipment in joint ventures with cooperatives in order to increase the cooperatives' capacity to commercialize high quality, certified products such as cocoa, coffee, nuts and timber;
- Design and implement carbon sequestration and emission reduction projects to integrate climate finance to diversify cooperatives’ incomes and to monetize their positive environmental impacts.
The fund aims to raise US$50 million by close of 2020 from various institutional and private investors and foundations with a first closing in 2018. The fund works in partnership with ECOTIERRA, a Canadian project developer, to manage the investments and operate the projects. Investment commitments are long-term and consistent with a 15-year investment strategy. There is an expectation to fully deploy the fund’s capital with investments in four to five projects by 2020.
Projects:
Café Selva Norte Perú: Empowering coffee producers to restore land
Country
Peru
Ecuador
Colombia
