Brazil | October 5, 2026

Trained in anthropology and sociology at France’s École Normale Supérieure (ENS), the École Nationale d’Administration (ENA), and then at MIT, Italo-French Argentine Eugenia Carrara has built broad expertise in food policy while maintaining, since her teenage years, a deep commitment to Amazonia’s Indigenous peoples. After working as an economic advisor to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo, she designed an international forum on regenerative agriculture for the French Presidency. She later served as Chief of Staff to the CEO of Rungis International Market, the world’s largest fresh produce market, and led the World Union of Wholesale Markets.

It was by observing, from the inside, the climate footprint of the agri-food sector that Eugenia turned towards nature finance. Since February 2025, she has been Director of Global Partnerships and Ecosystems at Capital for Climate, a capital orchestration platform working to accelerate institutional investment in nature-based solutions (NbS). Her role is to build alliances between investors, development banks, philanthropies, and other actors to structure the sector and deploy capital at scale, with a particular focus on Brazil. She has also worked for years alongside Indigenous leaders, such as Chief Raoni, in the region. From October 6 to 8, she will be in Geneva for the Building Bridges conference, where she will lead two sessions dedicated to Brazilian funds and developers.

In this interview, Eugenia Carrara explains what nature finance is, why Brazil is a global laboratory for it, how catalytic capital can unlock private investment, and what an economy where protecting nature is the rule rather than the exception might look like.

You were an economic advisor to Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo before turning to nature finance in Brazil. What did that path teach you about nature and money, and what brought you specifically into this field?

I first went into the Amazon rainforest at 18, and I am still there. Since then, I have run two activities in parallel: an institutional career linked to food policy, and a personal commitment to the Indigenous cause in Amazonia. It was at the COPs that I understood how these two dimensions of my life came together, and between the two, our relationship with the land.

As an advisor to Anne Hidalgo, I managed Paris’s food policy, and later, for the French presidency, I designed a gastronomy forum for regenerative agriculture. Leading the World Union of Wholesale Markets and working at Rungis, I measured the agri-food sector’s impact, which is responsible for more than 20% of global emissions and the leading driver of deforestation. After years helping governments build billion-dollar food infrastructure, I saw a shortage of professionals able to structure real financial markets for regeneration, and decided to dedicate my expertise to it.

For readers discovering this field, what is nature finance, in practical terms?

It is money that pays nature to keep doing its job, instead of paying for the damage once it stops. More than 95% of climate transition capital goes to energy. Nature receives less than 3% of financing, even though it is the most cost-effective solution for capturing carbon. Nature-based solutions can deliver a third of global carbon mitigation. Capturing a ton of carbon through industrial means costs several hundred dollars, compared with an average of 50 dollars for a nature-based project.

Financing nature means structuring these projects at scale around three pillars: the conservation of intact primary forests, the reforestation of degraded land, and the restoration of ecosystems. In Brazil alone, about 100 million hectares of degraded pasture are waiting to be restored, 24 times the size of Switzerland.

What makes Brazil such an important place for nature finance today?

Brazil holds 60% of the Amazon rainforest, the planet’s greatest concentration of biodiversity, and the “flying rivers” described by climatologist Carlos Nobre, which regulate climate well beyond its borders. It is also the world’s farm, the leading exporter of beef, soy, sugar, orange juice and coffee, yet roughly half of its pastureland is degraded, and regenerating it would raise productivity without cutting down a single additional tree.

The country also has the second-largest economy in the Americas and a financial system capable of absorbing massive capital. Eco Invest Brasil (Editor’s note: a Brazilian government initiative aimed at mobilizing private investment in sustainable projects) already generates 6 private dollars for every 1 public dollar, and the private sector is showing a strong appetite. At Capital for Climate, we mapped 34 asset allocators with around $10 billion committed to Brazil between 2025 and 2027, and our work has already catalyzed more than $590 million in closed transactions there. Brazil is our blueprint, and what we built there is now being replicated in Southeast Asia, Africa, and Europe.

Nature-related projects have longer horizons than conventional investments. Why does that matter, and what needs to change?

A tree doesn’t do quarterly earnings. For a long time, conservation was seen as philanthropy, but investors are now treating nature as economic infrastructure, which demands a longer horizon. A wholesale market or an airport is financed over 15 to 30 years, and nature needs the same vision, since it takes 7 to 10 years to reach target returns.

Climate risk is covered by insurers backed by measurement and verification data, while market risk is reduced through long-term purchase agreements. Major companies such as Microsoft, Google, Meta, and Salesforce are already committing to large volumes of carbon removal. Catalytic capital takes the first layer of risk, protecting commercial capital. And the long horizon is an advantage, since nature is the only asset class where the collateral grows.

On the subject of catalytic capital, private investors still represent only about 18% of nature financing. What role can this capital play in attracting more?

I often use a Swiss analogy, having lived in Geneva. Catalytic capital is the first swimmer who jumps into the still cold lake at the start of summer, to prove to everyone else that the water is fine. This capital, whether philanthropic or public, takes on the first risk in order to secure commercial investors. For Capital for Climate, the leverage effect is considerable. Every philanthropic dollar we receive catalyzes 300 dollars of private investment on the ground. At the Building Bridges conference, we are presenting resilient solutions so that Swiss private banks and family offices can invest directly in these projects.

Where are the most promising investment opportunities, and what makes a project ready to receive capital?

Three main types of projects dominate: large-scale native forest restoration, agroforestry/regenerative agriculture, and regenerative livestock farming. Most of them combine several revenue streams, such as carbon credits, the sale of agricultural products, and land value appreciation, given that restored land can see its value multiply by five within four years.

To be investment-ready, a project needs to have clear land titles, an experienced management team, a buyer committed under a firm contract, a transparent MRV (monitoring, reporting and verification) system, and, ideally, a capital structure that includes catalytic capital as a guarantee. With support from foundations such as Gordon and Betty Moore, Cisco, Itaú and Santander, we built a free platform, the NbS Investment Intelligence Platform, with a pipeline of around $42 billion in high-integrity investable opportunities worldwide and over 800 projects under consideration.

Among these investment opportunities, how can financing be better directed toward Indigenous peoples, who protect an essential share of the forests yet receive less than 1% of global climate financing?

This requires patience, listening, and deep respect for community consultation processes. Indigenous peoples hold a thousand-year-old body of conservation knowledge and a cosmovision that doesn’t separate people from the forest. Among the Yawalapiti, the people’s own name is the name of a tree, and a human being, in their reading of the world, is fully part of nature, not its manager.

Money follows that logic, or it doesn’t arrive. For finance to reach territories directly, Indigenous peoples have to decide on the funds and manage them themselves, rather than sit at the end of a chain of intermediaries. That is the whole purpose of Fundo Podáali, created and managed by COIAB, the Coordination of Indigenous Organizations of the Brazilian Amazon, which structures high-integrity REDD+ projects and agroforestry value chains, such as açaí and native rubber, giving communities genuine financial autonomy. My role is to translate in both directions: the requirements of financial markets to Indigenous leaders, and the realities on the ground to investors.

How can technology bring more transparency to these markets while strengthening, rather than replacing, local knowledge and governance?

Technology should be the forest’s witness, not its judge. It can enable, among other things, the digital traceability of supply chains, as with the digital passport for native rubber developed by Lynx and Seringô, as well as environmental DNA analysis carried out with ETH Zurich and UFAM (Ed. note: these projects are featured in the Swissnex’s new report Switzerland and Amazonia, Stories of Collaboration). Far from replacing local governance, it gives communities tools of integrity to prove the environmental value of their territories and to assert their rights with international buyers.

Brazil and Switzerland bring different kinds of knowledge to this conversation. What can the two countries learn from each other?

It is a remarkably complementary alliance. Brazil brings biological scale, megabiodiversity and a heritage of ancestral knowledge, what is sometimes called the “Silicon Valley of Nature.” Switzerland brings its financial excellence, its expertise in reinsurance and its blended finance structures. As a sign of this complementarity, the Nature Finance Accelerator, a new Swiss think tank, is led by a Brazilian, Henrique Martins. IDB Invest placed its first Swiss franc bond in June, and Eco Invest Brasil, set up with the IDB, already covers exchange-rate risk to attract foreign capital toward restoration. In October, I am bringing six Brazilian companies and funds to Building Bridges to meet the investors who belong in these deals.

On a global scale, how is nature finance evolving today, and what is driving demand?

The underlying trend is a growing awareness that nature is essential infrastructure for the stability of global supply chains. The drought in the Panama Canal blocked thousands of ships and caused billions of dollars in losses. The World Economic Forum notes that more than half of global GDP, or 44 trillion dollars, depends directly on nature. A recent report from Forest Trends and The Nature Conservancy confirms that private investors now see it as a real and profitable asset. Private investment in nature grew from 2.8 billion dollars in 2016 to 14 billion in 2025, with 183 billion announced for the coming years, and 88% of the investors surveyed say financial return and results for nature go in the same direction. Latin America is already the world’s second-largest region, with 15 billion dollars.

What could the Brazilian economy look like if investing in nature became the rule rather than the exception?

Brazil would stop exporting only commodities and start exporting solvency. The country is sending positive signals: the climate transition plan of Minister Fernando Haddad, Eco Invest Brasil, the mobilization of Fundo Clima, new carbon market legislation, and a carbon fund of about 100 million dollars structured by the World Bank with Brazilian institutions. Tomorrow, a producer in Mato Grosso will be able to obtain lower interest rates thanks to data proving carbon storage in the soil and resistance to drought. Brazil’s economy will no longer draw its wealth only from the extraction of raw materials, but from the ecological integrity of its territories.

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More Information

Eugenia Carrara’s recommendations for those who want to learn more about nature finance and the Amazonian bioeconomy.

Books

“The Ministry for the Future,” by Kim Stanley Robinson
“Arrabalde,” by João Moreira Salles (also recommended by Paulo Reis in a recent interview published by Swissnex)
“Ideas to Postpone the End of the World” (Ideias para Adiar o Fim do Mundo), by Ailton Krenak
“The Falling Sky,” by Davi Kopenawa

Documentary

“Kiss the Ground,” on the regenerative power of soil and agriculture.

Podcasts

“O Clima na Faria Lima,” hosted by Marina Cançado (for Brazilian audiences)
“Outrage + Optimism,” by Christiana Figueres (for international audiences)

Platform

The NbS Investment Intelligence Platform by Capital for Climate, free to join