The purpose of the Investment Strategy Pitch Book Toolkit is to provide teams with the information, resources, and best practices necessary to create an engaging, effective, and robust investment strategy or corporate engagement pitch book that showcases investment opportunities and programs for sustainable agriculture development within forested regions.

While forests and agriculture hold a large degree of potential for mitigating the climate change crisis in a cost-effective manner, they currently receive less than three percent of public climate finance, according to the World Economic Forum. While hundreds of companies and state and local governments in forested areas have signed commitments related to reduced deforestation and development-related emissions, very few are acting on it; there is a gap between intention and action. What’s more, many countries are far from meeting their deforestation goals. While governments have made commitments related to supply chain goals, most have failed to attract investment partnerships.

A lack of concrete on-ramps to invest in support of jurisdictional programs, when combined with the barriers such as high interest rates, high transaction costs, and a perception of high risk, has hobbled jurisdictional efforts to decrease deforestation. Developing a pitch book can help to address this obstacle and begin to tackle questions that the investment community has, including what to expect in terms of return on investment (ROI).

The toolkit should be used alongside the Strategies for Sustainable Development of the Amazon report, which highlights various impact investing funds, the need for blended finance, and ways that producers can leverage various finance opportunities and mechanisms.