BTG Pactual Timberland Investment Group has won two sustainable investment awards for its Latin American reforestation strategy, which is nearing its $1 billion fundraising target.

Over the past year, the strategy, which is aiming to conserve, restore and reforest around 270,000 hectares of degraded landscapes across Latin America, crossed $983 million in commitments.

This included $93.9 million worth of commitments from the Brazilian Development Bank in two separate debt and equity transactions. The International Finance Corporation also committed $53 million alongside an investment of an undisclosed size from Singaporean nature and carbon investor GenZero.

Around half of the strategy's assets are Stewardship Council-certified commercial trees and the remaining are conserved and restored native forests.

It has recently completed 14 new investments, equivalent to around 30,000 hectares of land, and progressed an existing project into a validation and verification phase – the first amongst its assets. It aims to generate "significant volumes of high-quality carbon credits" across its strategy.

BTG Pactual TIG has also continued its collaboration with local communities and academia to support local employment and improve understanding of reforestation.

This has included a project with the Federal University of Viçosa to "test the effectiveness of different reforestation methods", including direct seeding and natural regeneration techniques on an 81-hectare field experiment. Initial results have found that there is steady progress with seedling growth and natural regeneration underway.

It labels the strategy as a "model for large-scale ecosystem restoration solutions that seek to deliver impact, tangible community benefit, biodiversity outcomes and commercial production".