2018 Lab instrument Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF) has won Environmental Finance’s Impact initiative of the year – Latin America and Caribbean award.

RCF provides financial incentives to produce soy in existing cleared and degraded lands in order to discourage further expansion of agricultural land in the Brazilian Cerrado. The instrument made headlines in 2023, expanding four-fold to USD 47 million. RCF also won Environmental finance’s Green bond initiative of the year in Environmental Finance’s 2023 Bond Awards, as well as International Financial Law Review’s Structured Finance Deal of the Year.

“The successful RCF demonstrator project in 2022 saw UK supermarkets take an innovative approach to supporting sustainable supply chains, through investment in the RCF, creating a new model for these supply chain stakeholders to directly support sustainable soy production in Brazil,” said RCF founder and SIM director, Pedro Moura Costa.

“The RCF is a financially sustainable way of incentivising farmers not to deforest, either legally or illegally, and demonstrates a system change in the way sustainable farming can be financed.”