USAID PPA partners make the case for sustainable business in Forum of Impact Investment

USAID PPA partners make the case for sustainable business in Forum of Impact Investment
PPA Coordinator Mariano Cenamo leads session on sustainable investment in the Amazon. Photo: USAID
The Partnership Platform for the Amazon (PPA) led two sessions at the recent 2018 Forum on Social Finances and Impact Investment in São Paulo June 6-7. The 2018 Forum was the second national-level event of its kind, and the first to include a focus on the potential for social investment financing in the Amazon region of Brazil, led by the PPA members. The Forum gathered over a thousand global social investment leaders and participants from throughout the world.

In the first session on sustainable investment in the Amazon session, PPA member Denis Minev, from the Bemol/Fogás group, pointed out that the businesses of the Amazon region were focused on forestry, mining and livestock farming - activities that have a significant impact on the environment. He stressed the importance of a transition with urgency, presenting investment cases in the Amazon and highlighting the importance of investing in initiatives that guarantee productivity gains with the conservation of natural resources at scale. PPA member Mr. Minev was featured in an article by Época Negócios on the Forum.

In the session "Socio-Environmental Impact Businesses in the Amazon," PPA coordinator Mariano Cenamo of Idesam, represented the PPA and highlighted the need to channel investments to new sustainable businesses for Amazon development and presented some bottlenecks in the development of social and environmental impact enterprises in the region. These include: logistical difficulty, such as access to energy; communication and transport; regulatory issues, which present obstacles to entrepreneurs and; social conditions of the residents, for whom deforestation or forest degradation may be among the only options for generating income in the near term.

“The Forum was a good opportunity for USAID/Brazil and PPA members to engage new partners and potential investors for the PPA Social Investment Forum for the Amazon, in November,” according to Michael Eddy, USAID Representative in Brazil.