2022 was another milestone year for the BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group (TIG), marking significant growth in our business, key hires for our impact team, and continued leadership to help move the market toward new solutions and opportunities.
This growth took place within the context of a number of broader developments. We saw continued policy action to protect and restore forests around the world, which culminated in the launch of the Forest and Climate Leaders’ Partnership at COP27. This high-ambition collection of countries, co-chaired by the U.S. and Ghana, seeks to build on the previous COP pledge by more than 140 countries to halt and reverse forest loss and land degradation by 2030, while delivering sustainable development and promoting an inclusive rural transformation. The same period marked a growing number of climate commitments from the private sector, with more than 38% of Fortune 500 companies and US$ 59 trillion in assets under management now committed to net zero or other climate-related targets. The voluntary carbon market also grew rapidly, quadrupling in size from 2020, and a number of initiatives emerged to promote integrity through enhanced consistency and transparency. Crucially, 2022 marked an inflection point in public and private sector recognition of the urgency of the global biodiversity crisis, with unprecedented levels of private sector and investor engagement in the emerging “nature positive” agenda at COP15 in Montreal, where a landmark agreement was reached that included concrete measures to halt and reverse nature loss, including putting 30% of the planet and 30% of degraded ecosystems under protection by 2030.
Against this backdrop, in 2022, our business grew to 3 million acres of sustainably managed timberland and US$ 5.6 billion in assets under management (AUM). In Latin America, we’re working with the global environmental non-profit Conservation International (CI), who serves as Impact Advisor to our impact-focused US$ 1 billion reforestation strategy. Last year, we made our first investment under the strategy, which aims to protect and restore more than 300,000 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 support inclusive and equitable community development. The strategy aims to generate an estimated 35 million tonnes of carbon offsets over 15 years.
