Former GEF CEO Carlos Manuel Rodríguez to Chair new forest finance facility launched by Everland

Conservation organization Everland has launched the HALO (Holistic Alignment for Lasting Outcomes) Facility on World Environment Day. This new financing initiative aims to provide community-led forest conservation projects with the early-stage and continuity capital necessary to build strong foundations and progress toward investment readiness.

Carlos Manuel Rodríguez, former CEO and Chair of the Global Environment Facility (GEF) and former Minister of Environment and Energy of Costa Rica, has been appointed as HALO's inaugural Chair. As a recognized authority on conservation finance, Rodríguez will oversee the Facility's fundraising, governance, and strategic development.

HALO developed from the Indigenous Amazon Outcome Bond initiative, designed to mobilize institutional capital for community-led forest conservation projects under the Equitable Earth carbon standard. This standard prioritizes the needs of Indigenous and traditional forest communities while meeting the integrity requirements of carbon credit buyers.

A total of 23 projects involving nearly 90,000 community members across 17 million hectares of the Amazon rainforest in Brazil, Bolivia, Colombia, and Peru are poised to participate. However, discussions with these communities and potential investors revealed a persistent difficulty: many projects lack the funding necessary to complete fundamental development activities, which hinders their readiness for institutional investment.

HALO aims to fill this gap by providing catalytic and bridge financing to promising projects, ensuring they have the resources needed to establish the foundations crucial for sustainable conservation. These foundations are essential for reducing risk and unlocking access to larger financing opportunities as well as long-term revenue for communities.

"Durable conservation is most likely to be achieved when communities are at the center," Rodríguez stated. He noted that REDD+ projects have demonstrated effectiveness in channeling private finance to forest communities and biodiversity protection but emphasized that many promising initiatives struggle due to a lack of timely capital. HALO seeks to address this issue and is currently looking for philanthropic, public-sector, and private-sector partners to contribute to its initial funding and help prepare high-potential Indigenous and traditional community-led conservation projects for institutional investment.