For one former logging company, nature’s green is gold

Editor’s note: In the fight against climate change and wildlife extinction, businesses have to a key role to play. But how? Conservation International’s investment fund, CI Ventures, is helping startup companies fund new business models founded on the protection of nature. Here is one of them.

The Amazon rainforest faced another difficult year in 2024, from deforestation to extreme drought and record wildfires.

Despite bright spots — including curtailed deforestation in Brazil’s Amazon and a wealth of new species discovered in Peru — humanity is still asking too much of the forest.

One company says it has an answer.

Green Gold Forestry (GGF), based in the Peruvian Amazon, started out as a logging company. It now bills itself as a “conservation company,” having shifted its business model from wood to “goods” — think fruits, oils and handicrafts — that come from the forest. The idea: Sell forest-based products that are not only sustainable and profitable, but that make money for local communities, thereby protecting the forest.

But it doesn’t stop there. GGF also helps keep trees standing by valuing the climate-warming carbon that trees absorb from the atmosphere. That carbon is fueling carbon markets, which value forests for being alive instead of dead, based on their power to fight climate change.

And the world has taken notice: The company just won a prestigious Environmental Finance award for its work.

Conservation International is also invested, providing a US$ 250,000 loan from CI-Ventures to help GGF purchase machinery and solar equipment to power its facilities, as well as to assist with the carbon credit verification process.

Conservation News recently spoke with Gareth Hughes, the CEO of GGF, as well as Fabrice Garnier, an investment officer with CI Ventures, about what a “sustainable forest economy” means for them — and for the future of the Amazon.

© GGF

Locals harvesting aguaje, a fruit they will take to GGF’s processing plant to be turned into oils for cosmetics and skincare.

Conservation News: You began as a sustainable logging company, now you protect trees. Tell me about that evolution.

Gareth Hughes: After about 10 years of practicing sustainable logging, following international sustainability methodologies and certifications, we realized that even with these standards, we continued to have an impact on the forest and were not truly sustainable. So we took a good, hard look at our operation and explored alternative paths to becoming a sustainable business model.

That took us to carbon crediting, which protects trees by flipping the script and making them more valuable alive than dead. As the world was beginning to look at carbon in a different way, and companies, governments and individuals were willing to offset their climate footprints, the opportunity to operate a business in the carbon market became feasible. So we decommissioned our logging concessions and turned them into conservation concessions. In 2024, we sold our first carbon credits. In essence, our work now is preserving trees that would have otherwise been cut down.

Preserving trees while making a profit is not something people tend to think of as compatible. How does it work?

GH: I get this question a lot. People tend to have a misconception that preserving trees means leaving them alone and not doing anything. On the contrary, keeping a forest healthy and standing requires a lot of effort, including extensive monitoring and community development work.

We work in about 440,000 hectares (1 million acres) of forest in the Peruvian Amazon and around our project we have 18 neighboring communities who share the challenges we do, like illegal logging, hunting and narcotrafficking. Our business model is built on the belief that by improving the local communities’ living standards, we enhance our project’s quality and increase the value of our carbon credits. Over the next 20 years, we expect our project to keep nearly 10 million metric tons of carbon — equivalent to the annual emissions of more than 2 million cars — out of the atmosphere.

In addition, we don’t just prevent trees from being cut down, we also develop sustainable businesses out of the forest’s bounty.

Like what?

GH: Açai, for example. The popular superfruit grows abundantly in the forest. Yet historically, when people wanted to harvest the fruit, they would cut down the palm tree and pick off the fruit — which meant the end of the tree. We are working with them to climb the tree and harvest the fruit so we can come back to the same tree every year.

Now, açai spoils rapidly — too fast to be able to take it into town to be processed. So we needed a processing facility on site. That’s where Conservation International came in. With a loan from CI Ventures, we’re building a fruit processing plant where we gather the fruit or buy directly from locals, process it into oil and sell it on an international market for a significantly higher price.

Altogether, we’ve created over 600 seasonal jobs for locals and have helped communities develop their own enterprises from handicrafts to artisan chili sauce.

From CI Ventures’ perspective, why is this partnership significant?

Fabrice Garnier: This partnership excites us for a couple of reasons. Not only is GGF helping sequester vast amounts of carbon and protect critical biodiversity by keeping trees standing, they’re creating even more business out of the forest — business that aligns with local community needs.

The beauty of it is that those businesses also feed back into the carbon business. By engaging with local communities, you improve the quality — and value — of your carbon credits because you’re also improving biodiversity and quality of life.

Many people who live in this area have limited economic opportunities outside of low-paying, typically extractive industries like logging, oil or farming. GGF is expanding opportunities in a way that conserves the forest and these communities’ way of life. It’s a model that’s scalable not only in Peru, but also in other parts of the Amazon. And it’s not just açai they have their sights set on.

What other businesses could follow?

GH: The potential for sustainable forest products is enormous. We have about a half a dozen new projects in the works, including developing natural latex rubber, producing vanilla and working with medicinal plants. We’re also working on producing vaccines with snake venom. Snake bites are a major problem in the Amazon, and we hope one day we can have a laboratory and medical science facility working on this.

It’s really a question of keeping at it, learning and doing the work. In most of these cases, nobody has ever attempted this before — but the opportunity is there.

What drives you to do this work?

GH: There’s a lot of dark news out of the Amazon. Trees cut down, fires raging, losing species faster than we can even know they’re there. We want to prove that doing the right thing can be a successful for-profit business model. Sustainability is my biggest driver — with GGF, we’re trying to make something that will be sustainable for the communities in the long run so that if we ever disappeared, they would be able to carry on the work because they have the skills and resources to do it.

© GGF

A pink dolphin swims in the confluence of the Napo and Curary rivers near GGF’s forest.

Mary Kate McCoy is a staff writer at Conservation International. Want to read more stories like this? Sign up for email updates. Also, please consider supporting our critical work.