Forestry is emerging as a critical sector for impact investors, offering opportunities to address climate change, biodiversity loss and economic development while generating competitive financial returns. In 2024, 15% of investors made at least one forestry investment, and just under half expect to increase their allocation to the forestry sector in the next five years, according to the GIIN’s State of the Market 2024 report. Forestry impact investing funds offer investors a variety of project types, including sustainable timber production, reforestation and conservation initiatives and investments in forested land, timber assets and emerging carbon markets. Beyond conservation and carbon finance, forestry also serves as a platform for social investments, with the potential to support decent job creation, Indigenous land stewardship and community-driven economic opportunities.
This GIINsight summarizes the data collected by the GIIN forestry impact performance benchmark. The benchmark represents 117 annualized investments made across 27 countries from 2013 to 2023. The GIIN also interviewed three impact investing organizations operating in three different continents: Agrroempresa Forestal (AF) headquartered in Uruguay, Finnfund headquartered in Finland and New Forests headquartered in Australia. Each of these organizations also participated in the design of the benchmark and provided data.
Read the full GIINsight here and interact with the data on forestry’s GIIN Benchmarks page.
