For more than a decade, CFD has been one of the most active investors in global conservation, raising and deploying with partners over $250million through varied mechanisms such as trust funds, debt swaps, loans, carbon finance, conservation agreements, and payment for ecosystem services. Working with local partners, we have impacted over 50 million hectares and thousands of people that depend on nature for their wellbeing.
Many long-term conservation and sustainability projects, once created, lack the funding and structure to be effective over the length of time necessary to ensure lasting results. As a leading thinker in the field of conservation finance, Agustin has been responsible for creating and executing innovative financial mechanisms to encourage more investment in conservation, including the largest privately financed avoided deforestation project and first sustainable fisheries fund. These projects help support everything from coffee growing farmers in the Amazon to Maasai communities that wish to maintain their traditional ways of life, knowing that finding natural solutions to human problems offers huge un-tapped potential.
Agustin moved to CI from the private sector with the goal of using public-private finance to drive natural capital conservation and low carbon development, primarily by catalyzing the growth of ecosystem service markets. Before CI, Agustin spent time in various banks and investment groups, including six years spent on the commodities desk of a UK trading group.