Can green bonds finance Brazil’s agriculture?

This briefing by the Climate Bonds Initiative and SITAWI examines the potential for green bonds to finance sustainable agriculture in Brazil. While Brazil is a global agricultural powerhouse with significant climate goals, green bond issuance in the sector has been largely limited to forestry and paper. The document identifies barriers to sustainable financing—particularly for small-scale producers—and suggests that aggregating small loans through securitization (such as green CRAs) and leveraging international capital markets could scale up investment in low-carbon agricultural technologies and practices.

• Brazil's agricultural sector is a major economic driver, with agribusiness contributing 23.5% of the country's 2017 GDP and accounting for 44.1% of its exports, which reached USD96bn in 2017.
• Brazil's Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs) to the Paris Agreement include specific targets for 2030: achieving zero illegal deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon, restoring 12 million hectares of forests, restoring 15 million hectares of degraded pasturelands, and converting 5 million hectares to integrated cropland-livestock-forestry systems (ICLFS).
• Sustainable agriculture financing in Brazil is underutilised due to a complex funding environment and barriers for small-scale producers. Between 2010 and 2015, the Low Carbon Agriculture Program (ABC) disbursed an average of only 42.8% of available funds. Small farmers face specific hurdles, including unclear property rights in remote areas, lack of technical assistance for documentation, and long delays between credit application and funding.
• The Brazilian green bond market is heavily concentrated in the forestry and paper sub-sector. Sustainable land use represents 38% of total green bond issuance and 23% of climate-aligned outstanding bonds, but within the green bond segment, forestry and paper holds a 69% share.
• Existing capital market instruments like Certificates of Agribusiness Receivables (CRA) and Letters of Agribusiness Credit (LCA) provide opportunities for green labelling. As of September 30, 2018, the CRA market had BRL31.6bn (USD7.9bn) in outstanding bonds and the LCA market had BRL154.2bn (USD38.6bn).
• To scale sustainable investment, the document recommends using securitization to aggregate small revenue streams into green ABS bonds. It identifies several eligible investment areas, including eco-efficiency (biogas, energy efficiency), soil health (biofertilizers, zero-till systems), sustainable sugarcane production, and forest management in biomes such as the Amazon, Atlantic, Cerrado, Caatinga, Pampa, and Pantanal.

APA

Climate Bonds Initiative (2018). Can green bonds finance Brazil’s agriculture? https://www.climatebonds.net/files/documents/publications/brazil_agri_finance_briefing_cbi_sitawi_final_eng-web.pdf

Chicago

Climate Bonds Initiative. Can green bonds finance Brazil’s agriculture? 2018. https://www.climatebonds.net/files/documents/publications/brazil_agri_finance_briefing_cbi_sitawi_final_eng-web.pdf.

Wikipedia

{{cite report |author=Climate Bonds Initiative |title=Can green bonds finance Brazil’s agriculture? |date=November 2018 |url=https://www.climatebonds.net/files/documents/publications/brazil_agri_finance_briefing_cbi_sitawi_final_eng-web.pdf |access-date=17 August 2026 |via=Climate Insights Directory}}

BibTeX

@techreport{climatebondsinitiative2018can, author = {{Climate Bonds Initiative}}, title = {{Can green bonds finance Brazil’s agriculture?}}, institution = {Climate Bonds Initiative}, year = {2018}, month = nov, url = {https://www.climatebonds.net/files/documents/publications/brazil_agri_finance_briefing_cbi_sitawi_final_eng-web.pdf}, urldate = {2026-08-17}, note = {Indexed by Climate Insights Directory} }