Diego’s 2024 Reflections

A message from Pachama’s CEO, Diego Saez Gil

I’m writing to share with our community an end of year message with some reflections on the year that is ending and a preview of things to come from Pachama in the new year. 2024 was an intense year, to say the least. For the planet, the United States, the sustainability world, carbon markets, Pachama and for me personally.

Starting with the personal, this year I had the incredible joy of seeing my first child grow from newborn to a beautiful one-year-old boy who’s full of energy, curiosity and laughter, making the sleep deprivation manageable. This year, I also lost my beloved grandmother, ‘Nena’, who was a huge influence and first inspired in me the love for trees. Along the way, I traveled a lot with the intention of forging partnerships for the mission of protecting our planet and meeting incredible people working on it, which gave me energy and hope.

I don’t need to go over all the ways in which this year was intense for the world, the United States and the markets in which we all operate; you know that already. What I can say is that it does feel like we are living in times of big challenges and risks, but also amazing opportunities for the future of humanity. What is undeniable is that we are entering a time of big change, perhaps even an entirely new era. Times like these demand that we show up with our best talents, with proactivity, adaptability and what Joanna Macy calls “active hope”.

At Pachama, we certainly had to adapt. In Q1 of this year, we saw carbon markets continue to stall, as companies were still processing the revelations of inconsistent quality in legacy carbon credits and confusing guidance on Net Zero claims, combined with austerity measures by CFOs in a moment of economic and political uncertainty. In the face of all that, we had to make the difficult decision of resizing our team. We did it with integrity, and I’m proud to say that we preserved great relationships with all the people that departed our team. We have since returned to hiring great talent, even inviting back team members in key areas of development.

Despite all the challenges, we accomplished great things this year: we drove millions of dollars to projects that are creating brand-new forests or conserving critical tropical forests, sequestering CO2 from the atmosphere, restoring biodiversity and empowering local communities. We helped these projects not just by connecting them to amazing corporations that are investing to reduce their carbon impact, but also with our DMRV tools which – powered by AI and satellite data – help measure, verify and report impact with integrity and transparency. We released many new DMRV tools, including a global land suitability tool which has now processed over 4,500 different project boundaries. And we also made our methods and sources public, with our recent science releases. Furthermore, we established amazing partnerships, including Patria Investments, Latin America’s largest investment firm, to create a new fund to invest in reforestation projects in Brazil and Latin America.

I’m super excited for the news we shared last week: that we have been selected by the Symbiosis Coalition to be the underlying technology platform for their upcoming Request for Proposal (RFP) for reforestation and agroforestry projects. This coalition, formed by Google, Meta, Microsoft and Salesforce, aspires to contract for 20M tons of nature-based carbon removal by 2030, making it one of the single largest vehicles for nature-based funding in the market today. We have spent years solidifying our expertise in this space, and we are honored to have been selected for our DMRV-enriched technology platform to support Symbiosis to screen and diligence these projects. While we’ll still help projects in different ways, Pachama will not submit any projects to the Coalition RFP nor evaluate projects submitted to the RFP to avoid any potential concerns of conflict of interest. We also have implemented stringent safeguards, data encryption and privacy protocols to ensure project data is only accessible to Symbiosis and its approved parties. The Symbiosis Coalition reflects a new paradigm in carbon markets, where integrity, transparency and accountability will be paramount from the earliest of stages.

The Coalition is not alone in this quest for quality and transparency. This year, we’ve seen discerning companies raise their standards, spending more time and resources conducting deep diligence on each project. The market is coming back, now with new dynamics.

This market evolution is leading Pachama to transform as well: we’re in the process of evolving our business model from one of a DMRV-powered broker and project developer of high-quality forest projects to an end-to-end DMRV insights platform for buyers to source projects and make their own informed decisions. Moving forward, to better support our customers’ needs, we will continue to deliver the rich insights we’re known for, but now in accessible, self-serve tools spanning a larger universe of projects and players in the carbon market ecosystem. I’m very excited for how this evolution will help all stakeholders in the market and I can’t wait to share more with you all in the coming months.

Despite headwinds in the worlds of ESG and climate policy, we see an exciting future ahead for corporate climate action. The growth of AI, led by the most innovative and powerful companies in the world, will lead to massive investments in clean energy and carbon removal. Racing to Net Zero will provide a competitive advantage to hyper-scaling companies determined to win. Carbon markets will continue to evolve towards a new phase, where innovative technologies support new guidance to ensure consistent quality, integrity and transparency. Smart investors and corporations understand the opportunity and are starting to invest now. This new flow of capital at scale will allow humanity to rebalance our atmosphere and regenerate our biosphere for an exciting future ahead.

This year put us all to the test. It tested our characters and our determination to fight for what we believe. I’m incredibly proud of our team and the community that surrounds us for the way we all showed up in the face of great challenges and uncertainties, and, personally, I’m so grateful that I get to work side-by-side with you day in and day out. We now have a new mountain in front of us, but we have everything we need to climb it and to deliver to the world what it so desperately needs. I wish a regenerative holiday with your loved ones. I can’t wait to see what we will build together in 2025. Onwards!