Hi, I'm Helen Avery with the Green Finance Institute, and
you're listening to Financing Nature.
In this first episode of our new season, I'll be joined by Pedro
Miracosta, Founder of Sustainable Investment
Management, SIM and BV Rio to talk about the Responsible
Commodities facility. The expansion of soy was the
biggest driver for the first issue in Brazil, particularly in
the Cihado, and something needed to be done.
Investors can subscribe to the bonds in Vienna, bring the money
to Brazil in less than 48 hours later is already in the hands of
this producers. So producers take our loans,
plant soy, they harvest, they repay us, we pay the investors,
and then we reinvest the the the capital for yet another year.
And this cycle can be repeated for as long as it takes.
Hello and a very warm welcome and thank you for joining us.
It's been a while, but we are back with a full series as part
of our Revenues for Nature initiative with UNEP FI and UNDP
Biofin. If you don't know about this
project, we are working globally to identify models and
mechanisms that are mobilising private sector investment into
nature restoration and nature based solutions to support
target 19 of the Global Biodiversity Framework.
And where possible, we're supporting those models to be
replicated and scaled and building a community of
businesses, project developers, policy makers, and financial
institutions to share learnings and also just work together.
I'll give more details about how you can plug into all of that at
the end. But the purpose of this series
is really to get into the detail of these models and learn about
what's working and how we can take those learnings and apply
them to different regions or different sectors so that we can
move faster towards these targets of mobilising up to sort
of 200 billion a year. So we have about 10 guests lined
up for you in this series, but I wanted to talk to you now about
today's guest, Pedro Miracosta. Pedro, if you don't know him, is
the founder and the CEO of impact investment firm
Sustainable Investment Management, also known as SIM.
And he's also founder of NGO BV Rio that runs the responsible
commodities facility. It's a facility that was set up
a few years ago and it's connecting investment, including
from UK retailers with soy farmers in the Cerrado to
prevent deforestation. And we'll be getting into the
details of that facility. It's super interesting and also
talking about how it could be scaled or replicated.
So without further ado, let's invite Pedro on.
Pedro, thank you so much for joining us today.
It's such a pleasure to see you again.
And I'm really excited to get into the details of the
Responsible Commodities facility.
But before we do that, I think you have such an interesting
background with 25 years of experience in developing
environmental finance models. So would you do us the honour of
just sharing some of that background with us?
Thanks Helen. Pleasure to be here.
Yeah, it's been a long, long journey really.
And somewhat accidental. I got into this whole sector of
environmental finance back in 1991 when I moved to Malaysia
and ended up running what was the the first carbon funded
project in the world. It was a rainforest
rehabilitation project in the middle of the of Saba in
Malaysia, where I spent five years kind of planting trees for
to offset the emissions of a new power plant in the Netherlands
back in the early 90s. I love the idea and you know of
having this payment for an environmental service, a
commercial relationship between those in the global South and
those that needed to offset their emissions in the north.
And that that led me to create a company to replicate what we did
in Malaysia. So we, I started doing a bit of
consultancy, ended up creating a company called Echo Securities,
which did projects all over the world during the Kyoto Protocol
phase. So we had something like 700
projects in more than 50 countries until we open the
capital in in the Learning Stock Exchange in 2005.
But at some stage during the financial crisis of 2008, the
stocks of environmental companies went down the drain.
And I tried to buy the company back and ended up selling it to
an American bank and then moved on.
I mean, and moved back to Brazil after 25 years, created an NGO,
they're called BV Rio, that specialised in creating new
financial mechanisms to tackle environmental challenges.
We looked at the circle economy, created the first system of
plastic credits in the world. Now there's more than 60 around
the, you know, in different countries.
And at some stage we decided to design something to address the
main drive of the first station in Brazil, which is the
expansion of the soy sector. And that resulted in a new spin
off company which is called Sustainable Investment
Management, which is an impact investor that the first thing
that we did was to create a fund focused on the soy sector, which
is called the Responsible commodities facility.
So you touched on the problem that obviously RCF is trying to
solve and that is around deforestation in the Cerrado due
to soil production. But specifically, could you just
explain this sort of exactly what the facility does with
regards to that problem? Yeah, back in 2017, when the
whole kind of civil society in Brazil and and consumer goods
companies that have exposure that that consume soy, they
realised that the expansion of soy was the biggest driver for
the first station in Brazil, particularly in the Sihado, and
that something needed to be done.
That resulted in something called the Sihado Manifesto,
which was a plea for producers not to expand in native
vegetation and also for buyers and traders not to buy from
producers that were opening more Sahara the grassland.
So okay, but how do you make it work?
Agreement stock is cheap, so in order to make farmers to comply
with that, we thought that we needed to find a way of giving
them some sort of incentive. Farmers in Brazil, they can open
up to 80% of their of their land, it's legally authorised
to, to clear 8080% for agriculture and they have by law
to protect at anything between 20 and 35% in this ad.
So in order for them not to do that, to forego with this legal
right to the forest, they need an incentive.
And we thought that perhaps the best incentive would be credit
lines with low interest rates. Why low interest rates?
Because interest rates in Brazil are very high at the moment.
The base rate is 1425%, which is a lot every year.
And if you could provide loans for them, for them to buy the
seeds and fertilisers that they need to plant soil, If you give
them credit lines, which are cheaper, you can, on the other
hand, ask, OK, you can only access these lines if you commit
to zero, the first station, right?
Remember that at that time, the price of carbon, which could
have been another way of financing this, this protection
of the sahadu, but price of carbon was 0.
So OK, so that was the what we wanted to do for the farmers,
you know, provide them financial incentives, but how to fund it?
Carbon prices were zero. We then thought, well, perhaps
if we have a financial structure that can raise capital abroad at
the low cost, that would do the trick.
And that resulted in a structure based on on green bonds, which
are issued in Brazil and registered in the Vienna Stock
Exchange, where this investors can subscribe to the bonds in
Vienna, bring the money to Brazil in less than 48 hours
later is already in the hands of this producers.
So producers take our loans, plant soy that when they are
harvesting, they harvest, they repay us, we pay the investors,
and then we reinvest the the the capital for yet another year.
And this cycle can be repeated for as long as it takes.
So it sounds like there are some key factors that are supporting
the specific mechanism in Brazil, not least being the high
interest rate environment that makes these loans attractive.
But would you mind just clarifying again for us what the
farmers are agreeing to do when they're receiving these loans?
Yeah. In order for us to prevent the
legal deforestation, we need to select farmers that have native
vegetation in excess of legal regulations.
So as I mentioned before, I mean in in the Sahadu, the majority
of the Sahadu farmers can clear up to 80% and 20% is called the
legal reserve, Forest legal reserve.
Certain parts of the Sahadu, this forest legal reserve is
35%, in other parts is 20%. But then we choose farmers, we
select farmers that have an excess of this legal reserve, so
either 40% or 25% and those excess 5% is what they could
legally clear and they forego that that legal rights in order
to access our low interest credit lines.
Thank you for clearing that up. And just to sort of start with
the end, if you will, can you just sort of share with us who
how many hectares have already been conserved through RCF?
This year, Ellen, we are we. In a month's time we will be
closing the funding round for the next crop cycle.
In this next crop cycle, we have some new investors and we will
be closing at $100 million for us to lend to the farmers with
$100 million under management. We will be financing about 50
farming groups with about 250 farms and protecting in the
process about 100,000 hectares of native vegetation, of which
anything between 15 and 20,000 hectares will be this excess
legal reserve that are referred to before.
Because we're protecting this native vegetation, we're also
protecting carbon stocks. So this 100,000 hectares of
native vegetation store in average.
Again, we we only know the numbers after we actually select
the final portfolio, but about 35 megatons of CO2 stocks.
We will also be producing about 300 and 5400 thousand tonnes of
0 deforestation and conversion free soy, which is about 10
percent, 15% of the whole UK footprint soy footprint well
assumption. Well, OK.
So really impactful coming back to the structure of the
facility, if we could start to get down into that in a bit more
detail. So you said investors are
purchasing green bonds listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange and
that money then comes into Brazil.
Can you sort of talk us through that piece of the facility?
So who are the investors? Are these sort of typical green
bonds? Because I know we've also got
Cras that we can go into. If you could sort of talk us
through that structure. So the way that he works is
first of all we have to identify a portfolio of farmers that want
to participate in the scheme. So we we select them, we screen
them for the environmental compliance, but also for the
credit risk. And then we negotiate with them
the the loans and enter into a series of loan agreements.
Next year is going to involve anything between 40 and 60
loans. So we get this pool of loans, we
register them in the Brazilian Stock Exchange.
And with that we can issue this green bonds.
The type of green bond that we use is is called cry.
Cry is an instrument widely used to finance the Agri business in
Brazil and stands for certificates of receivables from
the Agri business. We engage a company, we work in
partnership with a with a securitization company called
Opia. And OPIA is the one who who
actually gets all these loans as guarantees and issue this
instrument and register that in the Vienna Stock Exchange so
that it's easier for investors outside of Brazil to subscribe
to these bonds. There they, they go to the Young
Stock Exchange, they, they acquire the bonds, the money
goes into a paying agent bank account and transfer to Brazil
where we then distribute for all these farmers that sign in for
the loans. I forgot to mention, but we were
very lucky in a way that just before we we started this fund,
the Brazilian legislation changed and enabled us to issue
this Cras, the Cras in foreign currency.
And in this case we we issue this Cras in U.S. dollar.
Why dollar, you know, especially given that the majority of our
investors are actually European, but basically because the whole
soy economy is very dollarized, the the final price of of of soy
is, is kind of pegged to the Chicago Mercantile Exchange in
dollar. And the inputs that they use the
fertilisers and so on are also very much dependent on dollar.
So, yeah, as in as I mentioned then they use that to plant and
repairs. At the end of the crop cycle,
they enter into an offtake agreement with with traders
because we don't want bags of soy.
And the the traders in turn pay us with the, you know, the pay
us directly for the loan and the remainder goes back to the farm.
In terms of investors, I mean this whole fund to a certain
extent we designed this fund to assist consumer goods companies
in Europe, predominantly in Europe to, to do something for,
you know, to reduce the the impact of the soy purchases
along the supply chains. And the ones who really got
involved from the outset was the UK based supermarkets, Tesco,
Sainsbury's and Waitrose invested right at the beginning
of the fund. They put an anchor investor of
investment of $11 million. In the subsequent year.
We then kind of attracted more capital.
We leveraged their initial investment with different
sources of capital. In a mezzanine tranche, we
brought the Dutch impact investment group called Agri 3
and in the senior tranche Rabobank and Santander.
And this year we are now finalising the negotiations to
bring some new investors. It's a more robust structure as
well. We're bringing credit insurance
so that the senior tranche is going to have a credit rating of
AAA, AAA, Brazilian scale, which is, you know, the maximum that
we can get. And our objective was really to
prove that you could have this type of green bond, you know,
dark green bond. Independently certified by the
way, with second party opinion by ERM, but a dark green bond,
which is investment grade trip away rated with top class group
of investors. So this is where we're going to
get this year. And that's what's the objective
to show that you don't, you know, you can have environmental
impact with very sophisticated and robust financial structures.
That's great. If you're able to share sort of
what are the different terms then for that junior tranche,
the mezzanine tranche and the senior tranche?
Because I'm intrigued as to that UK retailer role in the junior
tranche and sort of what was their inspiration for for taking
that chunk? In, in terms of the the
structure, I mean for you to be able to raise a senior tranche
at a good price, you have to have a risk adjusted return.
And because of that you have to have a strong subordination in
terms of a junior tranche which was subscribed by the UK
supermarkets and the mezzanine tranche which is what was Agri 3
and hopefully FMO as well. So each tranche is priced in a
way that reflects the risk. So the lower, the more junior
tranches get the higher coupon, you know, interest payments then
the senior tranche every year it's readjusted of course,
because it in the end of the day we have to have capital that is
cheap enough for this farmers to agree to commit to 0
deforestation. So every year we recalibrate
the, the interest rates that we pay for the, for the different
tranches of the fund. But that's, that's the way it
works. And having credit insurance now
and and a AAA rating, it also helps us to reduce the cost of
capital. And coming back to the retailers
again, for them this investment is aligned with sort of
reporting requirements. Do do they have any claims
against it? Like I'm interested in what
they're in the driver for them is?
Yeah, the UK retailer's main motivation at the time was, was
really to, you know, take a leadership position in terms of
saying, hey, there's a long supply chain between US and the
soy producers there. But you know, the UK based
supermarket doesn't buy physical soy.
I mean they, it goes through a whole supply chain.
It's, it's not that they are financing something that they
are directly buying, but they wanted to send the signal that
they are doing something about the, the sector that supplies a
lot of the products that they sell.
So was was not a compliance move.
It was not for carbon credits because we, we never actually
extracted or tried to extract carbon credits out of this
operation, but was basically to, to be able to reports to their
consumers, to their clients, to their investors that they were
taking a proactive approach to, to contributing to making their,
their supply chain more green. In parallel to that, more
recently then the EU passed this EU deforestation regulation, the
EUDR. Which will be forbidden the
entry into the EU of of agricultural commodities
associated with deforestation. We're not in the EU anymore, but
much sooner or later the UK may follow suit somehow.
And so that creates an extra motivation now for other, for
them and other companies to continue to be involved with the
RCF because apart from all the, the, the cuters that they may
get from investing in US, they will may end up have been able
to use that as a compliance instrument as well.
Another contribution that the RCF does to those investors is
that we are, we are greatly reducing the footprint, the
carbon footprint, the greenhouse gas footprint of their supply
chains and consequently that may be captured at some stage in
terms of the reduction of their Scope 3 emissions.
So all of that is in motion now. In order to be able to claim
Scope 3 reductions, to claim compliance with the EUDI, you
have to be able to trace the soil from our producers in the
middle of Brazil all the way to their supply chains that reach
UK or Europe. And that requires a whole work
on traceability, which we are doing at the moment.
And hopefully by the end of the year or the next harvest, we
should be able to have the first shipments which are fully traced
from stores to Europe and OPIA at the pilot stage yet.
But it will be a good start way forward.
Yeah, that's really interesting. And so I've got 2 questions from
that. Then the first is so that court
sort of explains the reasoning not to sell carbon credits
because it effectively could be used as sort of insetting and
for scope three, if I understood that correctly.
Yeah. As I mentioned, we are not
creating carbon credits associated with the reduction of
emissions for various reasons. One is that these are short
funds. I mean this fund has a four year
duration, but the methodologies associated with creating these
types of carbon credit they create, they require much longer
commitments which would be difficult to secure from this
farmers at this point in time. So our take is that, OK, you
keep protecting as long as I keep on paying.
But instead of carbon credits, what we we can do and we'll be
doing is capturing this greenhouse gas benefit exactly
as an inset in or reduction of Scope 3 emissions of those
involved. And that can be done without
having to go through the whole process of carbon credit
creation. Of interest is TNFD reporting a
driver for these retailers as well.
Well, yeah, there's, there's all sorts of new reports in an
environmental commitments and programmes and you know, there's
no reason why investment in the RCF couldn't be used for any and
all of them. I mean, we have a dark green
fund in which every single dollar invested in this fund
goes directly to activities that that have a positive
environmental impact, for instance.
Yeah. You know, the, the, the fund
should be able to qualify as an Article 9 under the, the, the
European Regulation exactly because of that.
There's not a single aspect of the fund that is not devoted
directly directed to positive environmental impact.
You know, every farm is plotted in our GIS mapping system.
Every farm is monitoring the independently.
Well, yes, that's, you know, it's a perfect segue.
Let's talk about how you're measuring environmental impacts
and that monitoring and verification process.
Yeah. I mean, if you have a green
fund, if you have any environmental claim, you really
need to monitor that to, to, to a standard, to a level that is
credible. And the more that you can kind
of demonstrate in a, in a transparent way that what you're
doing is what you promised to do, the better.
If you don't do that, sooner or later you will be the subject of
criticism or suspicion and so on.
So in our case, from the outset, we with, we took a lot of care
and precaution to have it right. So to start with, you know, the,
all the environmental criteria necessary for farmers to enter
into the programme to participate in the RCF were
discussed with a group of organisations which include
TNCWWFCI, UNAP Finance Profars, EPAM which is a Brazilian NGO
and Bivirio, which is the NGO that we run in Brazil.
These organisations in turn, I mean, we discussed a lot, OK,
should we have this criterion or not?
I mean what level of intensity, how do we monitor?
So all of that was agreed with them and now form part of our
environmental eligibility criteria.
Then in addition to that, UNAP Finance also put together an ENS
framework, environmental social framework for our operations,
which go a bit beyond this criteria that we have.
Then all these organisations then joined us in an
environmental Advisory Board. So if there's any required
modification of the criteria or, or questions on the
interpretation, how do we implement these criterions?
We always discuss with them and we, we always report on a yearly
basis to the environmental board what the impacts were, you know,
so they have a look, they may have questions, clarifications
and after they give their feedback, we then report to
investors. OK, how do we then measure all
of that? I mean we, these criteria are
used to screen this producers right at the beginning when they
asked to join the programme. We check a variety of databases
of compliance with environmental laws, with labour laws.
We also check all their farms for compliance with the main
requirements. The main requirement of the fund
is 0 deforestation since the cutoff date which is January
2020. So we get the shape files of the
files we check with against satellite imagery that going
back to 2008 and then determine whether or not they have all the
requisites to participate. So once they join in, we
continue to monitor them throughout the crop cycle and
after they they they harvest and repay the loan, we then check
whether or not there was any deviation of this criteria,
especially deforestation. If there is any deforestation,
the, the farmer is expelled from the, from, from the programme
and have to pay a fine of 15% on top of the repayment of the
loan. To date we've financed more than
200 farms and, you know, more than 100,000 hectares of forest.
And there was one case of the forestation of 23 hectares.
Unfortunately there was the, the death.
But in the, you know, in the grand scheme of things, we
actually managed to protect a lot of of native vegetation
during this very turbulent times in Brazil.
Yeah. So following up on that question
of MRV, have you seen, do you see costs coming down?
I mean, how much of an impact does that have on when you're
trying to create an instrument that has a return that attracts
large investors? Yeah, the MRV costs for the RCF
are not that high because we're looking at clearance of native
vegetation, deforestation, which is something that is very easily
observed with satellite imagery. So we can do the majority of IMF
without actually having to visit each of these farms, which will
take, you know, weeks because the distances in, in the
interior of Brazil, you know, they're, they're huge and the,
and the roads are not that great.
So the majority of what we do is based on remote sense and and
publicly available databases of compliance or infringement of
environmental legislation which are compiled by either the
state, municipal or federal level and Brazilian government.
So that is the bulk of what we do as and when we find question
marks. So I don't know if this area was
cleared or not and so on. Then we have to deploy people to
the ground. So the course nowadays with the
amount of technology that is out there is not prohibitive.
It's something kind of quite affordable.
So sort of moving on to, you know, 100,000 hectares,
incredible in a short time and also, you know, worth saying
that the facility was scaled to $47 million in 2023 and you said
100 billion this year. So obviously the numbers are
going up in terms of numbers of hectares and investment coming
in. How do you see that scaling
process? What are the challenges to
scaling it further that you see and and how are you overcoming
some of those barriers if there are some?
Yeah, I mean, the credit market for soy.
Soy is an annual crop. So every year the farmers have
to go to the bank to to borrow the money to to plant.
And usually they want credit to pay only when they harvest.
This market for soy alone in Brazil is about 30 to $40
billion year on year, right? We are still right at the
beginning of that process. And then next year if everything
goes well, we will be jumping from 100 to about $500 million
on the map. Wow.
Why is that? Because if we are negotiating
now alone with the UN Green Climate Fund that if approved
will be in a journal tranche and enable us to to leverage capital
from that capital markets which are you know, provided that they
have all the elements that we are putting in place, credit
insurance, credit rates and etcetera, it's not that
difficult to raise. The big challenge all the time
is to raise subordinated capital, the the first loss
capital that reduces the risk for stock markets to invest in
this, you know lower risk green bonds.
So that remains always a challenge.
As I said, if we can get like a multilateral or or an
international fund like the GCF invest in, in the subordination,
we have the potential to grow a lot.
Alternatively, we would love to have more of the consumer goods
companies that needs to do something about the supply
chains to join Tesco, Sainsbury and Waitrose and demonstrate
their leadership through involvement with initiatives
like ours. Yeah, I mean to ask a bit of a
Mike's had a daft question, but why?
Why UK retailers do you think versus other very large
retailers? Since 2017, when the Sehado
Manifesto was being proposed and launched, Tesco was taken a
leadership in the working groups that were discussing among all
the industry what could be proposed and put forward.
And perhaps because Tesco is in the UK, kind of, you know, it
was easier to engage some of their peers.
Yeah. That makes sense.
So essentially what we would, what would be helpful as if we
think about scaling in addition to that subordinated tranche
that we you you need is this sort of anchor investor in each
country really would be fantastic.
Yeah, but for you know that's the challenge Helen for all
impact funds is always the subordinated, the first loss
trenches. What we are trying to do now, I
mean what's next for the RCF? At the moment the RCF is focused
only in providing credit lines against zero to first station
commitments. But at some stage we will have
hundreds of farmers engaged with us and then we can start
layering all the requirements. And for instance, we've been
asked by some consumer goods companies actually to to figure
out some incentives for farmers to adopt regenerative
agricultural practises. So we are now modelling a new
fund that will give an additional incentive scheme for
those of the farmers that already engaged with us to adopt
regenerate practises. Another one that we are also
modelling at the moment is funds to finance the expansion of soy,
but not into native vegetation, but into areas that already
cleared. Brazil has a lot of land that
was cleared for extensive cataration, very low
productivity. It was a means of of people as
securing tenure of land. They cleared the land with a few
cows and now it's mine. But this area should and you
know, could and should be transformed or converted into
more productive uses. And soy is an obvious 1.
Farmers need additional investment to convert these
areas to soy and that is something that we will be
rolling out in next year probably.
And I mean, it sounds like you have a lot on a lot of plans for
RTF in the region that you're that you're working in.
But do you see that RCF could potentially be replicated in a
different region, perhaps with a different supply chain, not soy?
I'm sure you have thought about that.
Sure. I mean we're, we're very happy
with the model that we created that enables us to raise capital
from capital markets abroad directly to farmers to producers
underground. That's perhaps our differential
that we've managed to crack this nut of direct access to
producers and it can be replicated, can be replicated to
other commodities in other locations.
One obvious one would be cotton. In fact cotton is is produced in
the same area in the Brazilian Sahad.
Sometimes the the same farmer produces soy in one crop in the
next 1 cotton. So, you know, replace Tesco
with, you know, Gap or Zara and then you have RCF cotton coming
online. It's another that's, that's the
lowest hanging fruit for us. Apart from that, we've been
asked, you know, to do low methane in, in Asia, sustainable
fisheries in Caribbean, which will be very pleasant to be
involved with all the way to plastic recycling and circular
economies. So all of them have very similar
traits and and the components and so on.
So you have people on the ground that needs funding to perform an
activity that has a positive environmental impact.
They need funding. They can generate revenue, they
can pay back loans. Here's a question really of
hours in the day to be able to put it together.
So actually what you're saying is it's not that Brazil is the
sweet swap because you've got the green bonds that you
mentioned the the Cras, the Cras and the high interest rates that
kind of enable this to work there.
Actually, you could adopt this as you're saying for regions
that don't maybe have those mechanisms and and that high
interest rate level in place. Well, it's not that Brazil is a
sweet spot, but that we spend a lot of time initially trying to,
to identify what are the financial instruments that are
available in Brazil and make the most of that.
And for this reason, for us, you know, the low hanging fruit
would be to do more funds in Brazil, where, you know, we know
the, the, the legal and financial frameworks, the
instruments that can be used like cotton in the Sahara will
be very easy. If we go to the Caribbean for
sustainable fisheries or or India for sustainable rice, then
we will have to do all the the homework of how to, to identify,
create and select the best instruments for for that type of
activity. But that shouldn't prevent us
from trying to do that. You know, it's something that we
would like to expand into in the future.
That's. Great.
Well, thank you so much. Just to wrap up, Pedro, I'm
really keen before we go to hear your broader opinions.
Given your experience over all these years of how are you
feeling at the moment? Do you feel quite optimistic
around sort of our ambitions around the global biodiversity
framework and the targets of mobilising private sector
investment into, you know, nature restoration, nature
positive supply chains sort of as close to nature positive we
can get? How are you feeling, especially
with some of the sort of the geopolitical events that have
been happening in the past few months?
Yeah, No, we, we are living through a very kind of turbulent
time, you know, globally, I mean, it's for a long time we,
we all lived in, in a very relatively peaceful kind of
period of time in which we, we could spend a lot more, more,
more resources and thinking about ways of improving the
environment and preventing environmental degradation.
Now that the things are more difficult in a geopolitical
sense, I think that now it's more important than ever to find
ways of harnessing private capital with financial
instruments that work for both sides.
You know that that works for investors so that you less
depend on on philanthropic capital flows and works for
those on the ground. This is an era in which we have
to make the most of environmental finance so that we
can kind of navigate these difficult times in terms of
mobilising public resources, while at the same time it's very
urgent to deal with the the climate and the biodiversity
challenges that we face. Well, thank you for joining us
today to share all about RCF, which is obviously one of, you
know, there aren't huge numbers of models that are really are
mobilising private sector investment and with the the
finance element to not just sort of payments between companies
and the supply chain of producers.
So thank you so much for coming and joining us and good luck
with the rest of the year and the Rays and look forward to
seeing you, Elko. Fantastic.
Thank you, Helena. It's a pleasure.
Well, that is a wrap for this week.
If you want to learn more about the Responsible commodities
facility, we do have a case study on the Revenues for Nature
site. It's a bit of a mouthful of a
URL if I'm honest. So we're just going to post the
link on LinkedIn. And if you Google Revenues for
Nature, you will get there very easily and find everything we're
doing with our partners at the UN and also links to the case
studies and how to join the community of practise too, if
that is of interest to you. And the next two weeks, in
honour of the UN Oceans Conference and the Blue Economy
Forum, we'll be taking a look at marine models and I'll be joined
by Nicholas Pascal of Blue Alliance and also Elizabeth Beal
at Finance Earth. So don't miss those two.
And if you are going to be headed to the South of France,
do let us know several of the team are going to be there.
In the meantime, just a big thank you for listening.
We always welcome your feedback, so do share it with.
With us at Hive, at GFI dot Green, and especially if there
are models that you think we haven't identified that you
would like us to include in this series, please do reach out.
But until next time, have a good week.