For almost two decades, Mark Wishnie has been a leading player in sustainable forestry and overseen some of the world's largest restoration and reforestation strategies. Now, as chief sustainability officer at BTG Pactual's Timberland Investment Group (TIG) he has a front row seat to an investment theme which continues to accelerate.

Wishnie's entire academic and professional career has focused on forestry. In 2007, alongside three colleagues, he set up a company dedicated to expanding sustainable forest management across Latin America. This company was ultimately acquired by BTG Pactual to set up the Timberland Investment Group.

After a stint at The Nature Conservancy from 2017 where he led the Global Forestry programme, he returned to TIG in 2020 as the firm's chief sustainability officer to provide overall leadership on sustainability policy and performance. This includes leadership of TIG's groundbreaking Latin American reforestation strategy. With Conservation International as its impact adviser, the strategy aims to mobilise $1 billion over the next five years towards conservating, restoring, and planting of deforested and degraded properties in selected regions in Latin America.

"We saw rapidly increasing interest among institutions in climate and biodiversity-positive investment opportunities, but we didn't see a lot of institutional offerings that could meet that need," Wishnie tells Environmental Finance.

"It has become abundantly clear in the last few years that natural climate solutions need to be an investment priority. It has really shifted", he says, calling this "the most exciting time I've seen in the sector" and creating a lot of pressure "to deliver on all that potential and promise."

With investors increasingly demanding their investments deliver climate and nature benefits, much of Wishnie's role is focused on ensuring it meets client expectations. This includes working with teams on the ground, which he said is the "most satisfying" part of the role.

Over the past year, the strategy has initiated restoration of around 2,600 hectares of natural forest in Brazil, with aims for this to grow to 70,000 hectares in the region.

"To be on the ground, seeing the work underway and seeing all the wildlife coming back to those areas is incredible," he says. "Nothing beats that."

The strategy has also been a success commercially, and earlier this year Wishnie oversaw what is believed to be the largest carbon removal transaction to date, with TIG agreeing to provide tech giant Microsoft with eight million nature-based carbon removal credits until 2043.

But challenges continue to hold back growth of the sector, particularly with the lack of rules surrounding emissions measurement and being able to set targets. The highly localised nature of TIG's projects means this can be a complex issue for new investors to assess.

"Having greater clarity about what the impacts [of the investment] are and how they evaluate, measure and monitor these would be incredibly helpful," says Wishnie, "This would certainly make ours, and everyone else's, work a lot easier."

However, Wishnie remains optimistic that progress is being made and anticipates that the next two years will be "critical" – largely because of the growing interest and attention on the sector.

In the short term, Wishnie, along with the rest of TIG, will focus on delivering what it has already committed to accomplishing, and aims to make more announcements on its progress over the next year, while continuing to monitor emerging themes relating to the nature, climate and the bio-economy.