Solutions at Scale: Driving Nature-based Solutions with the BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group

At the heart of TRFF’s investment strategy lies a mission to invest in people and places, leveraging capital to address the climate crisis and foster environmental resilience. To drive this, we are committed to investing in both innovative decarbonization technologies and the planet’s natural resources through nature-based solutions.

In 2023, as part of this commitment, we invested in BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group’s (TIG) core U.S. timberland strategy. TIG is one of the world’s largest timberland managers with 2.6 million acres of forestland under management across the U.S. and Latin America.[1] It has a longstanding commitment to sustainable forestry practices and recently launched two innovative collaborations with environmental non-profits to increase the climate, community and biodiversity impact of sustainable forestry, one of which has won support from the U.S. Government, major development finance institutions, and climate leaders in the corporate arena including Microsoft, Meta and Apple.

Similar to our reasons for investing in EFM, TRFF’s decision to invest in TIG was driven by our belief in the ability of nature-based solutions to deliver meaningful climate action alongside many other benefits for people and the planet. Specifically, TIG’s collaboration with The Nature Conservancy (TNC) in the U.S. seeks to identify impact opportunities across TIG’s core U.S. strategy to go above-and-beyond best industry practices to unlock additional opportunities for climate, biodiversity and communities. TIG’s core U.S. strategy is over $1 billion in size and diversified across nearly 650,000 acres.[1]

Under the collaboration, TNC provides conservation advisory services on forest management practices, carbon sequestration opportunities, and permanent protection strategies to TIG.  TIG and TNC staff set annual impact goals, which are assessed and reported on each year. Leveraging the scale of TIG’s strategy and the joint expertise of both organizations, the collaboration aims to enhance biodiversity and ecological benefits beyond existing sustainable forestry management practices, to increase the resilience of the portfolio and the landscapes in which it invests, and to deliver greater climate benefits and other environmental outcomes.

The collaboration has led to the setting of preliminary targets, through 2031, to protect 30,000 acres of forest, actively manage 42,000 acres of forest to enhance biodiversity, develop 130 miles of streams with enhanced water quality and aquatic biodiversity, and sequester at least 500,000 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (tCO2e) of additional carbon.[2]

TIG and TNC jointly published a report that provides detail on the tools being used to deliver these impacts, from acquisition pre-screens, to forest management interventions, to carbon project development. For example, through an initial assessment, the collaboration has already determined that regions of significant biodiversity appear across 27% of the portfolio’s footprint.[3] A key component of the collaboration is centered on the belief that demonstrating the delivery of conservation and social impact, while maintaining or enhancing economic value, creates the opportunity to expand the innovations developed in the portfolio to millions of additional timberland acres across the U.S.

TRFF’s investment in TIG’s U.S. timberland strategy reflects a forward-thinking commitment to sustainable forestry, climate resilience, and biodiversity enhancement. By leveraging TIG’s collaboration with TNC, this strategy demonstrates how conservation and economic objectives can align to create measurable impacts across critical landscapes. As TIG and TNC continue to innovate and share their findings, there is the potential to expand the integration of environmental stewardship with sustainable investment strategies across millions of acres of U.S. timberlands. This will help to address urgent climate and biodiversity challenges and provide economic benefits.

TRFF is proud to invest with companies like TIG that are driving innovative approaches to environmental sustainability, as part of its commitment to invest in people and places to address the climate crisis.

For more information on TRFF’s investments, please visit our financial portfolio.

[1] Data as of December 30, 2024

[2] This figure includes projections of sequestration potential from two possible carbon projects calculated by a third-party project developer. Additionally, this figure includes 90,000 tCO2e of sequestration potential from the implementation of improved forest management practices between 2024 and 2031. Carbon volumes associated with improved forest management practices were estimated by multiplying mean above and belowground live and standing dead carbon volumes (derived from forest inventory data analyzed using the Fire and Fuels Extension of the Forest Vegetation Simulator) by projected land area on which these practices will be implemented. Mean per-acre carbon volumes were further adjusted to reflect recommended overstory retention levels within these areas. These estimates do not include future growth of retained trees or deductions for leakage or permanence. These estimated emissions reductions have not been third-party verified and thus are not eligible for sale as credits or for use to offset internal emissions.

[3] Timberland Investment Group & The Nature Conservancy, “Collaboration at Scale: Enhancing Impact in U.S. Working Forests,” (2024), 7.