Need to reduce your carbon footprint ? Colombia offers more bang for the buck !

Instituto Terra is the ambitious Project by the famous Brazilian photographer, Sebastiao Salgado and his wife Lélia Dluiz Wanick who, after being away from the family farm for years, returned home to see it had been devastated by deforestation. So they decided to plant 2 million trees over a 20 year period. See the before and after pictures and watch this amazing video. They own 1,740 acres and planted 290 different species. So it can be done !

195 countries have signed the Paris Agreement but very little has been done and by all accounts, we will fall way short of the 2030 commitments. Companies all over the world have made NET ZERO commitments and yet very few of those and have anything either. It´s a lot of talk and very little action.

There are companies who are doing something like Nestlé. Check out this article. Nestle partnered with the Colombiia Coffee Federation and are planting 7.5 million trees in just Colombia as a part of Nestlé’s Global Reforestation Program, which aims to restore and grow 200 million trees by 2030 in its sourcing territories.

In 2020, Colombia´s President Ivan Duque pledged to plant 180 million trees by 2022. The pandemia slowed things down. I read they have planted 35 million which is pretty good really. The current Ministra de Ambiente y Desarrollo Sostenible, Susana Muhamad, plans to rehabilitate almost 1 million acres.

According to Mongo Bay, an excellent group covering this topic, the cost to plant a tree is very low in Colombia. Here is what they say it would cost for Colombia to plant 180 million trees. 

A native plant that is produced commercially can cost between 3,000 and 7,000 pesos (equivalent to $0.76 to 1.77). If an average cost of 5000 pesos ($1.27) per seedling is assumed, this would mean an expense of 900 billion pesos (about $220 million), not counting the price of fertilizers and water.

$220 million for Berkshire Hathaway (BH) would be nothing. BH is sitting on $130 billion in cash. 180 million trees would go along way to the ‘Champions for 1 Trillion Trees’ platform, a 2030 goal set by the countries who attended the World Economic Forum.

The supervisor of the Sembratón has said that many plants will come from nurseries of institutions like ICA, the National Natural Parks System of Colombia, CARs—there are 34 but only 10 have their own nurseries—educational institutions and private companies. Colombia has the ideal soils and weather to produce and plant the trees. All we need is the money.

In my proposal Greener Pastures 2030 and Beyond, I propose that we change the paradigm. Unfortunately, the amount of money needed is too much to think it will come from chaitable donations like the $171 million Jeff Bezos recently pledged to Colombia.

Greener Pastures proposes that Investors BUY and finance the rehabilitation of degraded farmlands and forests. There are many ¨co-benefits¨ to attract environmental focused investors. But the main focus is to attract very large public companies by showing them the return on investment is very high with lots of direct benefits.

Investors will earn money from the operations (livestock, legal timber cutting), the sale of carbon credits and the appreciation of the land. They buy cheap, rehabilitate cheap and the land will be worth much more.

The investment is sefl supporting and sustainable versus charitable projects which seem to always need more money.

You can invest in great farms in Colombia for as little as $500,000 including the cost to rehabilitate.

To learn more, contact me at

William Schwind

(57) 304 201 3535

colombialivingrealy@gmail.com