Climate-focused fintech Cultivo has appointed six new board members, including Mark Carney, the former governor of the Bank of England and current vice chair at Brookfield Asset Management.
Cultivo’s mission is to generate capital for financial institutions while regenerating 1% of the world’s land into healthy ecosystems through its unique ‘upstream’ model of portfolio development. In an interview with Finextra, CEO and founder Dr. Manuel Pinuela explained that the company aims to assist financial institutions in developing portfolios designed for future investments in high-quality carbon credits and in achieving sustainability goals such as Net Zero.
“We can unlock the natural capital value of an existing land portfolio that a corporate customer may have, creating carbon credits that they can invest in,” he stated.
Pinuela highlighted a growing issue in the market: a shortage of high-quality nature-based carbon credits. He emphasized that the root cause of this challenge is the lack of investment flowing ‘upstream’ to originate and develop high-quality nature-based projects properly. To combat this, Cultivo is actively building portfolios of high-quality natural capital in collaboration with financial institutions and corporations.
The company utilizes a climate tech platform to assess land for its natural capital potential. According to Pinuela, Cultivo’s technology was specifically designed to tackle the upstream issue. “We have developed a Search Engine for Natural Capital that proactively identifies parcels of degraded land with high regeneration potential. Our proprietary tools and algorithms allow us to forecast gains in biodiversity, water, and carbon for projects. Essentially, our technology significantly reduces the time and cost associated with screening and originating projects with high natural capital potential, thus accelerating the flow of funding into nature.”
Pinuela is optimistic about Cultivo’s future goals and believes that the addition of prominent board members like Mark Carney will further enhance their progress. “This is a tremendous validation of our model and our ambition to scale investments into nature. Mark Carney brings extensive knowledge in climate, finance, and voluntary carbon markets, which is crucial to addressing the supply issue. His expertise, along with that of our other board members, will be invaluable.”
The five other newly appointed board members are Brace Young, chair of Social Finance; Mark Tercek, senior advisor at Centerview Partners; Lucy Thomas, head of sustainable investing at UBS Asset Management; Francesco Martinez, impact investor and CEO of Reaseguradora Patria S.A.; and Gabriel Holschneider Osuna, CEO and chairman of the Rainmaker Group.
In related news, Finextra has announced its fifth Sustainable Finance Live conference and hackathon, scheduled for 29 November. For more details and registration, please visit the event page here.