The Need for Green: Sustainable Takeaways from the Concordia Americas Summit

Latin America and the Caribbean are home to a third of the planet’s fresh water and nearly a quarter of its forests, making it one of the most biodiverse regions in the world. This rich biodiversity translates into ecosystem services worth billions of dollars. It is also quickly emerging as the new favorite sector for investment in America.

At the annual Concordia Americas Summit, the largest nonpartisan gathering besides the United Nations General Assembly, private and public sector leaders reinforced the need for sustainable investments in Latin America and the Caribbean. The summit, hosted at the University of Miami, challenged leaders to think about how environmental conservation can support development rather than hinder it.

It’s part of a transition to prioritize green economies from some of the biggest names in America, including the Libra Group, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham, New York Mayor Eric Adams and former President of Bolivia Jorge Quiroga, together with business leaders and leading scientists.

“We wanted to use our platform, and especially our significant private sector involvement, as a catalyst to advance commercialized solutions to the various issues and challenges facing the environment,” said Matthew Swift, Concordia’s CEO and co-founder .

The summit kicked off Climate Week Miami on Monday, April 22, with a commitment to the environment through a partnership with CrossBoundary Group’s Fund for Nature – a group focused on investing in sustainable solutions in underserved communities. The partnership was announced by Colombia’s former president Iván Duque, who has worked to conserve the Amazon rainforest that covers a third of the country.

“We have to act and we have to act quickly,” Duque said. “Not only must we combine enforcement against environmental crime, but we must also engage those players who can mobilize large-scale capital tied to conservation and restoration projects across the Amazon biome.”

A moment to connect finances with nature

Latin America has experienced firsthand how damaging the loss of an ecosystem can be due to Amazon deforestation. Hundreds of thousands of square kilometers of rainforest have been lost in just a few decades, with record high losses in 2022. Studies now estimate that Amazon will need to invest between $1.7 and $2.8 billion annually to maintain capacity at 80%.

Getting ahead of this curve and trend in climate response was a prominent concern and hope among speakers.

“How do we value the tree before we cut it down?” Chris Ballard, Ontario Minister of Environment and Climate Change and Minister of Housing, said. “We are looking at ways to make our cities habitable in the face of climate change and it costs a lot more money to fix this afterwards than to plan properly.”

The consensus among attendees was that the drive for sustainable change comes down to cities and private market investment.

“It’s looking at public-private partnerships as an answer rather than saying, this is just a government problem or this is just a business problem,” Swift said.

The sustainability panels featured mayors from Miami-Dade and New York to Kingston, Jamaica Quito and Ecuador to talk about the initiatives they are leading or have led to build climate resilience and finance urban nature in their cities.

“I think regulation and the combined work between the cities and the cities’ leadership will be absolutely key to keeping that going,” said Alejandro Guerrero, the president and CEO of Lockton Argentina and Uruguay. “You have to understand where the government plans to get.”

Major international conferences are coming to South America

The role of government in Latin America at an international level will become increasingly important until 2025. Within a year and a half, South America will be home to the G20 summit, COP 16 for the Convention on Biological Diversity and COP 30, the UN Climate Conference. Change conference. By organizing these conferences, Latin America can start the conversation about environmental collaboration between the private and public sectors.

“The biggest and most important events on climate, economy and nature will take place in Latin America,” said Carlos Correa, former Minister of Environment and Sustainable Development in Colombia. “That is a huge responsibility. We have to take advantage of that and utilize that.”

Biodiversity will likely play an important role on these platforms. During the summit, leaders including Duque and Guerrero discussed the potential for biodiversity credits, a new initiative from the World Economic Forum that would allow companies to earn biodiversity credits as a reward for conserving or restoring a certain amount of land. sustainability goals.

“At some point in our history we will have to understand that countries are valuable not only because of what they produce, but also because of what they have, and also because of what they preserve,” Guerrero said.