Lestari Capital wins Environmental Finance Award for the Rimba Collective as Nature-based initiative of the year
Lestari Capital is proud to have won Nature-based initiative of the year (APAC) at the Environmental Finance Sustainable Company Awards 2023.
Environmental Finance, a leading publication in sustainable finance, recognises companies that are actively driving change in their approach to responsibility and sustainability. Lestari Capital has been acknowledged for its innovative collective action approach and finance mechanism, the Rimba Collective, which aims to mobilize up to US$1 billion to help protect and restore 500,000 hectares of forest and improve the livelihoods of 32,000 people in rural communities in Southeast Asia over 30 years.
Lestari Capital launched the Rimba Collective in 2021 together with its Founding Partners, leading Consumer Goods Manufacturers (CGMs), Nestle, PepsiCo, Proctor & Gamble, and Unilever with a robust, transparent conservation finance platform that leverages a portfolio-based approach to mitigate risk.
This mechanism is an alternative to short-term conservation project funding, aimed at driving a longer term, scalable impact, measured through a robust verification approach measuring credible ecosystem outcomes. To date, the Rimba Collective is financing 10 projects and has restored and protected 128,000 hectares in less than two years of operations, primarily in Indonesia and Malaysia, which hosts some of the most biodiverse, critically threatened ecosystems on the planet.
The Rimba Collective believes that to protect and restore forests, support local communities and keep 1.5° alive, we must offer long term, scalable solutions – and that collective action across the sourcing landscape is an important approach.
Lestari Capital’s partners within the Rimba Collective are at the forefront of a movement to directly embed forest conservation finance into supply chains, demonstrating the collective action required to deliver on their commitments to biodiversity, communities and the climate.
We are delighted that the work of the Rimba Collective and Lestari Capital has been recognised by this award. Lestari Capital prides itself on breaking new ground in conservation finance and setting a benchmark for credible delivery of impact for corporate sustainability efforts. This recognition reminds us that while we have achieved much already, there is still much to do, and we look forward to more collective action to help us scale and improve.
Michal Zrust Founder & CEO, Lestari Capital
The Rimba Collective’s financial mechanism is designed to be replicable and scalable into other sectors and geographies in the future.
This Environmental Finance award reinforces the importance of collective action and innovation in conservation finance and that new models are needed to accelerate the momentum towards a sustainable future.
Read the awards article in Environmental Finance
About Lestari Capital
Founded in 2017 in Southeast Asia, Lestari Capital is an impact-focused enterprise headquartered in Singapore that designs and builds innovative mechanisms to address the chronic under-funding of conservation and restoration initiatives through integration with supply chain market demands.
Working in partnership with industry leaders, Lestari Capital aims to change the narrative around conservation funding globally by integrating the value of ecosystem services into the cost of commodities.
Visit: www.lestaricapital.com.
About The Rimba Collective
The Rimba Collective is an innovative, long-term collaboration between consumer goods manufacturers, processors, traders and growers in the agricultural commodities industry. Through collective action, each company can deliver on its individual corporate sustainability objectives over the long term and at scale.
We are at the forefront of a movement leading the transformation to sustainable economies through programmes that protect and restore natural landscapes and support local communities. We partner with NGOs, governments and conservation experts to deliver positive ecosystem outcomes at scale over the next 30 years, and through our unique finance model and robust verification approach, we equitably link high-quality, credible ecosystem outcomes to the scale of companies’ contributions and their procurement of natural commodities.
Learn more at: https://rimbacollective.com/.
For media enquiries, please contact:
Lee Ann McKee, Head of Communications, Lestari Capital