Brazil’s National Bank for Economic and Social Development, or BNDES, selected seven funds to receive a combined 4.3 billion reais ($850 million) for nature-based and climate investing. The bank chose five equity funds and two credit vehicles from among more than 40 proposals received since launching a public call in September.
Recipients include Amazon reforestation developer Mombak, Brazilian asset managers Patria Investments and EB Capital, and Just Climate, a climate investment firm backed by Generation Investment Management. Also included: Brookfield Asset Management, Vinci Partners and Riza Asset Management.
BNDES expects the managers to mobilize an additional $16.2 billion reais ($3.2 billion) from private investors.
Several of the selected managers, including Mombak and Patria, work with Capital for Climate, a New York-based network that has helped managers raise more than $10 billion for nature-based solutions in Brazil.
“The pipeline today looks fundamentally different from even three or four years ago,” said Capital for Climate’s Felipe Krelling. “NbS in Brazil has moved from being a ‘promising concept’ to a deployable asset class with real volume behind it.”
Ecological transformation
About 3.3 billion reais of BNDES’s allocation went to funds classified under its “ecological transformation” pillar, which targets Brazil’s energy transition and the decarbonization of hard-to-abate sectors.
The largest single allocation, up to one billion reais, went to a Brazil-focused energy transition fund managed by Brookfield. The firm closed its latest global transition fund at $10 billion in late 2024..
BNDES also committed up to 800 million reais to Just Climate’s Natural Climate Solutions strategy with institutional backers such as California State Teachers’ Retirement System, Microsoft’s Climate Innovation Fund. and the Royal Bank of Canada.
Nature-based solutions
BNDES allocated the remaining $1 billion reais ($190 million) to nature-based solutions funds, including Mombak’s Amazon reforestation fund and Patria’s Reforest Fund.
Both managers are expanding their nature-based investment sleeves.
Mombak, for example, raised $49 million from French insurer AXA in 2023 and closed its first investment vehicle shortly after. Patria, a 37-year-old Latin American alternative asset manager, launched its reforestation strategy in 2024, with no prior track record in nature-based solutions.
“What distinguishes these firms is not prior track record in NbS, but how quickly they compensated for that gap,” said Krelling. “Although both didn’t have track-record in this space, both hired the best teams they could find, and were very quick to adapt to the necessity of being creative in nature-based solutions.”
BNDES expects the selected projects to restore more than 90,000 hectares across Brazil’s Amazon, Cerrado, and Atlantic Forest biomes.
“The question is no longer whether NbS can attract institutional capital—it clearly can,” Krelling added. “The challenge now is execution: project origination at scale, standardized risk allocation, and faster pathways from capital commitment to deployment.”The awards follow BNDES’s work under the EcoInvest program, a federal government-backed platform that has mobilized roughly $14 billion for climate-aligned investments, including nature-based solutions.
