One of the major challenges for small nature-based project providers is the need for more access to finance in the early stages of project implementation. Investors often have difficulty applying their usual risk versus reward metrics, particularly due to the smaller project size, upfront costs and lack of return for up to five years until carbon credits can be certified.

Hawaii-based Terraformation's Seed to Carbon Forest Accelerator impressed judges of this year's Sustainable Company Awards with its focus on community- or indigenous-led reforestation projects, which often do not have the funding to begin planting or scale up to the project sizes that climate investors prefer.

The programme – named as this year's Nature-based initiative of the year, Americas – provides technical assistance to cohorts of around eight forest teams across Africa, Asia and Latin America. This includes guidance on structuring and providing up-front funding to get the project off the ground and enhance its credibility and attractiveness to other financiers.

"Our Accelerator brings Silicon Valley's expertise in scaling to reforestation, where there is a shortage of high-quality forestry projects that meet investor criteria, and a shortage of forestry teams with the skills, tools, and funding access to create investable projects," said Yishan Wong, founder and chief executive of Terraformation. The accelerator supports "overlooked community-based teams" which often lack a track record in this space or have an insufficient project development capacity.

Sustainable Company Awards judges labelled this as an "excellent approach to removing practical obstacles on investment into high-quality forest-based projects where capacity building of smallholders and local experts is required".

Terraformation has launched projects across different continents, including a mangrove restoration project in Ghana, native forest restoration in the Philippines and a social forest project in Indonesia. In many countries, it is imperative to show that "reforestation can be more lucrative than destruction", Wong told Environmental Finance.

He said: "We hope to connect with more corporations, family offices and investors to be early funders of these types of projects which can deliver multiple co-benefits."

According to its current trajectory, the programme should lead to the planting of 3.7 billion trees by 2034 – equivalent to sequestering all of South America's emissions in 2022.