BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group

Inside the project

BTG Pactual TIG, the timberland arm of Latin America's largest investment bank, announced on 28 April 2026 the close of its Latin American Reforestation Strategy at US$1.24 billion in commitments, the largest reforestation fund closed to date. The strategy targets the protection, restoration, and reforestation of approximately 660,000 acres (about 270,000 hectares) of degraded landscapes, split roughly evenly between native-habitat conservation and restoration and FSC-certified commercial tree plantations.

Activity is concentrated in Brazil's Cerrado, a tropical savanna biome that has lost more than half its original cover to agriculture and pasture. TIG's flagship Brazil Cerrado 1 project spans Mato Grosso do Sul, Mato Grosso, and Minas Gerais, pairing native-forest restoration with sustainably managed plantations so commercial timber and land-value returns help fund the conservation work alongside removal-based carbon credits.

The fund drew a deep base of development-finance institutions, sovereign and pension funds, corporates, and foundations, with Conservation International acting as impact adviser. By 2025, TIG reported nearly 29 million trees planted across 64,000-plus acres, 53,000-plus acres of native habitat under conservation, and active restoration on 50,000-plus acres, supported by a long-term research partnership with the Federal University of Viçosa.

Image credit

Wikimedia Commons (Cerrado - Panorâmica)Image source ↗

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Objectives

• Protect and restore roughly 330,000 acres (about 135,000 ha) of native Cerrado forests, savanna, and riparian buffers.
• Establish roughly 330,000 acres (about 135,000 ha) of FSC-certified, sustainably managed commercial tree plantations.
• Generate high-integrity, removal-based carbon credits under Verra's VM0047 ARR methodology while protecting biodiversity.
• Create durable rural income, targeting around 2,700 direct and indirect full-time-equivalent jobs at full scale.

Approach

• Carbon outcomes are measured under Verra's Verified Carbon Standard and Climate, Community & Biodiversity Standards using the VM0047 afforestation/reforestation/revegetation methodology, under which the Brazil Cerrado 1 project became the first in the world to be issued credits (230,120 VCUs), with roughly 7.0 million tonnes of CO2e expected to be removed over its 20-year crediting period. IFC's loan adds performance incentives tied to specific biodiversity and watershed-health targets, and operations apply the IFC Performance Standards for environmental and social risk management.
• Restoration techniques are informed by a long-term collaboration with the Forest Restoration Laboratory at the Federal University of Viçosa, including a 200-acre field experiment comparing direct seeding, native-seedling planting, and natural regeneration. Biodiversity and watershed monitoring tracks more than 1,000 plant and animal species across hundreds of miles of protected streams, with findings used to refine methods, cut costs, and prioritise high-sequestration species for replication across properties.