Innovative Financing for Amazon Region Preservation and Restoration

By Alex Wilkins

This is the third blog in our three-part series about Cisco Foundation partner organizations working in the Amazon and South America region. You can read the other two, and more Climate Impact & Regeneration blogs here! This series introduces you to eight Cisco Foundation partner organizations working to support the preservation and protection of the Amazon basin through three main avenues, all of which are deeply entangled and in tandem, serving to promote enduring environmental protection and preservation: Prioritizing Indigenous Sovereignty, Promoting Sustainable Livelihood Opportunities, and Scaling Innovative Financing Opportunities.

This blog was constructed in partnership with my colleagues at WWF: Cat Normile and Hillary Wilson; Capital for Climate: Deborah Stern; NESsT: Kirsten Dueck and Tiana Lins; and Cisco: Julie Rose.

The Amazon Rainforest, an immense and biodiverse ecosystem that spans seven million square kilometers in South America, plays a crucial role in regulating the planet's climate by absorbing carbon dioxide, releasing oxygen, and regulating global rainfall patterns. Despite the need for lasting conservation and widespread restoration, this unique biome is still under severe threat from deforestation, mining, agriculture, and climate-change induced droughts. The Amazon is intrinsically important for its unique cultural and biological diversity, and its protection can contribute to global goals, such as The Paris Agreement, to limit warming to 1.5°C above pre-industrial levels, and the Kunming-Montreal Global Biodiversity Framework.

Foto: Accesswire

Recognizing the urgency of the situation, climate finance has been identified as a key driver of restoration and conservation at a large scale, and yet the annual financial investment will need to increase 3x to meet 2030 targets. Specifically, funders like the Cisco Foundation are driving innovations by catalyzing and supporting public and private sector investments, emerging markets, and instruments like the voluntary carbon market and biodiversity credits.

In service to Cisco and the Cisco Foundation's vision of a connected, regenerative, and inclusive future, we have prioritized supporting innovative financing flows to unlock resources that are so vitally needed to build economic, biocultural, and ecosystem resilience across the Amazon. We are pleased to introduce three more Cisco Foundation partner organizations that are supporting broad-level systemic change for channeling global finance mechanisms toward this region.