The Brief

The Brief: Latin America’s playbook for partnerships around climate and biodiversity

ImpactAlpha · July 9, 2026

Saludos, Agents of Impact! 

☎️ Agents of Impact Call: Crafting a positive agenda for faith-based impact investors. Can faith-aligned investors become known for what they are for, not just what they’re against? To help such investors move beyond negative screens to a positive agenda, Impact Evaluation Lab’s Terry Keeley and John Coleman of Sovereign’s Capital have developed metrics for “human flourishing” for both fund managers and portfolio companies. Sue Ernster of the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, and Jean Baptiste de Franssu, recent president of Vatican Bank, will join Keeley and Coleman, in conversation with ImpactAlpha’s David Bank, Wednesday, July 15, at 7am PT / 10am ET / 3pm London. RSVP today. 

In this month’s newsletter:

  • Playbook for partnerships around climate and biodiversity 
  • Formalizing elder care 
  • Expanding renewable energy generation in Peru
  • Closing gender gaps to ease skill shortages

More than a dozen climate and biodiversity collaboratives advance system-change in Latin America. Actors with different mandates, time horizons and risk appetites – but common objectives – are blending their capital to support biodiversity protection and climate resilience in Latin America. “Climate change, biodiversity loss, inequality and financing gaps are deeply interconnected. No single organization, investor or source of capital can address them alone,” Paula Ramirez of Latimpaqto, the regional network of impact investors, writes in a guest post. Ramirez highlights more than a dozen examples of multistakeholder partnerships across the region, mapped by Latimpaqto. It may seem obvious, she says, “but partnerships are one of the most effective ways to move from isolated interventions to systemic change.”

  • Partnership playbook. The Latin American Water Funds Partnership has so far mobilized just $7 million but impacted more than 14 million people with improved water security and watershed conservation. The partnership includes The Nature Conservancy, the Inter-American Development Bank, the Global Environment Facility and FEMSA Foundation. The Regenerative Food Business Consortium, an effort of Fundación AVINA, IDRC Canada, SVX Mexico, SVX Colombia and CATIE, combines research, technical assistance, capital and policy engagement on regenerative agriculture. Herencia Colombia draws on funds from government, donors and private investors to support long-term forest conservation. It has so far mobilized $10 million. “Solutions often depend on actors willing to finance ecosystem building, evidence generation, technical assistance, policy dialogue and experimentation,” writes Ramirez, establishing “the invisible foundations that make future investment possible.”
  • Financing farmers. In Brazil, Credit Saison collaborated with its portfolio company AgroForte, a Brazilian agriculture lender, and The Yield Lab Latam, to monitor the impact of loans to Brazil’s small livestock farmers. “Animal protein is essential to Brazil’s economy and badly exposed to climate risk,” Andressa Esteves of Credit Saison shares in a separate post. AgroForte designs its loans around seasonal cycles and farmers’ ability to repay, versus rigid collateral requirements that are blocking livestock farmers from accessing credit and making climate-smart improvements. The monitoring system revealed, for example, that credit to young dairy farmers helped reduce emissions per liter of milk by as much as 36%. Esteves’ message to other lenders: “Credit underwritten on delivery data rather than collateral is a replicable structure.” Read the full post. 

Dealflow: Valuing Aging

Ana Care raises seed funding to formalize homecare for seniors in Latin America. Informal workers provide much of the home care needed by Latin America’s seniors. Mexican startup Ana Care is working to formalize elder homecare with scheduling, caregiver training and digital payments, as well as AI-powered patient monitoring. The company raised early funding from Impact Ventures PSM’s seed fund, a $5 million impact vehicle managed by Chile-based Impacta VC. “By professionalizing, training and supporting caregivers through AI, the company improves health outcomes, reduces costs for families, and strengthens a sector essential to Latin America’s future,” IVPSM’s Octaviano Couttolenc said. Financial terms were not disclosed. 

  • Tech enabled aging. Ana Care was started by Manuel Rosemberg and Ariel Zylbersztejn after the pair won IDB Lab’s silver economy challenge in 2022. The startup operates in eight Latin American countries and says it has registered more than 15,000 caregivers on the platform. Ana Care is also supported by the Mapfre Foundation, Schwab Foundation and the World Economic Forum.
  • Silver economy. More than a quarter of adults in Latin America will be over 60 by 2050. “Care systems are being stretched,” said María Andrea Orduz of Región Plateada, an initiative of IDB and Colombia-based Fundación Arturo Sesana to support entrepreneurs developing solutions for healthy aging in the region. In Chile, HoraSalud helps seniors book and manage medical appointments, while Mistatas developed an emergency system that detects and alerts caregivers of falls. In Colombia, Glya monitors chronic conditions through a modem installed in the home; it doesn’t require a smartphone.

Dealflow overflow. Investment news crossing our desks:

  • Alterra co-invested with I Squared Capital in Lima-based Inkia Energy to expand its renewable energy generation capacity. The investment was the first deal in Latin America for the $30 billion UAE-backed fund (see, “Is Altérra’s ambitious effort to mobilize climate finance for the Global South working?”). (Alterra)
  • Boston-based nonprofit Britebound acquired Chile-based edtech startup Lab4U to improve Latin American and US-based students’ access to science, technology, engineering and math lessons online. (Britebound)
  • The Restoration Seed Capital Facility committed to backing Fronterra, which develops carbon and biodiversity projects in Peru. (RSCF)
  • Check out other recent impact deals in Latin America and the Caribbean. 

Signals: Gender Smart

Closing the gender gap in Latin America’s mobile workforce. Women are out in the field across Latin America, delivering goods, installing solar panels, providing community-based services and keeping infrastructure running. Yet jobs with the highest pay, technical certifications and supervisory responsibility remain overwhelmingly male. For Bogotá-based ALIVE Ventures, closing the gender gap is an opportunity to bridge the skills gap as well. ALIVE found that expanding women’s access to technical and supervisory roles can help portfolio companies strengthen hiring, reduce turnover and build more resilient businesses in addition to better economic opportunities for women. 

  • Work hurdles. To understand where women are falling out of the mobile workforce, ALIVE, which spun out of Acumen, commissioned the research firm Briter to document the gaps. Women in the workforce often face obstacles such as unsafe transportation, ill-fitting protective equipment, limited childcare and a lack of digital banking. The mismatch “creates a persistent gap between presence and power,” according to “Reducing gender gaps in the mobile workforce economy in Latin America.” “The main biases are the most basic,” Briter’s Laura Carrión told ImpactAlpha. “If you don’t own your own phone, you cannot receive the salary on your own wallet. Usually the salary goes to the husband, or the son, or the father.”
  • Investor role. The report urges investors and their portfolio companies to look beyond headcounts and examine where women work – by job, pay and level of responsibility – to see where they disappear from the career ladder. Some of the fixes are simple. Gender-neutral job descriptions, transparent promotion criteria, structured onboarding, and holding supervisors accountable for hiring and promotion decisions require little more than management attention. “If we can better understand where those gaps are across the value chains we invest in, we can help our companies address them in the design of their business models and products, improving gender outcomes and business performance at the same time,” ALIVE’s Alan Pierce said.

Agents of Impact: Follow the Talent

IDB Invest’s Aldo Malpartida will become head of infrastructure and energy for the Caribbean. The development finance group seeks an environmental and social senior officer in Brazil, and an investment officer for infrastructure and energy in the Caribbean… Amazonia Impact Ventures seeks a financial management specialist for Brazil nut cooperatives… The ImPact is looking for a Latin America-focused community manager… Patria is on the hunt for an ESG associate.

CPP Investments seeks a senior associate for infrastructure and sustainable energies in Brazil… The Global Green Growth Institute is looking for a Paraguay national strategy consultant… Cubico Sustainable Investments is looking for a project director… Potencia Ventures is accepting applications for its accelerator from startups in education and workforce development in Spanish-speaking countries.

👉 View (or post) impact investing jobs on ImpactAlpha’s Career Hub.

Thank you for your impact!

– July 9, 2026