- A Mongabay investigation has found that companies without the financial or technical expertise signed deals with Indigenous communities in Brazil and Bolivia, covering millions of hectares of forest, for carbon and biodiversity credits.
- Many of the communities involved say they were rushed into signing, never had the chance to give consent, and didn’t understand what they were signing up to or even who with.
- Brazil’s Indigenous affairs agency has warned of legal insecurity and lack of standards in carbon credit initiatives, and an inquiry is underway — even as the businessmen involved target more than 1.7 million hectares in the tri-border area between Brazil, Bolivia and Peru.
- Two and a half years since the deals were made, Brazil’s Public Ministry has called for them to be annulled, following Mongabay’s repeated requests to the ministry for updates.
BARCELONA — In December 2022, one of Brazil’s largest Indigenous territories and one of the smallest would each sign a 118-page, 10-year contract they would soon come to regret —as would faraway investors looking to capitalize on the billion-dollar carbon and biodiversity markets.
In Brazil’s lush westernmost states of Amazonas and Acre, which border Peru, entities promising to turn rainforests into green gold have persuaded Indigenous communities to grant them exclusive rights to trade the ecosystem services provided by their lands, a Mongabay investigation has found. The contracts covered the trade in nature-based solutions, an umbrella term covering a wide range of ecosystem services, from carbon sequestration to biodiversity.
The projects, covering more than 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres), failed to materialize in Brazil, with communities pleading to end the contracts, and one carbon certification program issuing a cease-and-desist letter. But the initiator of the scheme continued marketing the deals online and signed at least two more contracts without adequate consent from communities in the lowlands of Bolivia.
The three entities that approached Indigenous representatives in Brazil are Biota, a family-run cooperative from Argentina peddling herbal products and nature-based solutions; Biotapass, a related “climatech” startup registered in Spain and the subject of a criminal case; and their Brazilian fixer, Comtxae, which used to provide satellite internet and solar panels to Indigenous villages and nonprofits.
As inquiries from Brazil’s Public Prosecutor’s Office and the Federal Police are ongoing and Indigenous leaders worry about the validity of the contracts, some of the actors under investigation are attempting to make new carbon deals in the tri-border region between Brazil, Bolivia and Peru. In a video call with Mongabay, they said they’re looking to create private conservation areas and issue their own carbon credits, an approach they say will ensure transparency and avoid greenwashing, while putting communities front and center.
Voluntary carbon markets have been around for decades. But for all their promise and risk, and despite the large imbalance of power and information between proponents and communities, they remain largely unregulated.
Bolivia is opening its doors to carbon finance after a years-long ban, and Brazil only passed a law to create a regulated carbon market in December 2024. Funai, the Brazilian agency in charge of Indigenous matters, told Mongabay that the law is a significant step forward. However, it said, the text does not provide the necessary guidance to inform oversight of carbon projects in Indigenous territories — an issue that is coming into focus in the lead-up to the COP30 climate summit, the first to be hosted in the Amazon.
A legal minefield
Nely Duarte Dollis oversees a territory the size of Ireland on behalf of Funai. Speaking to Mongabay from her office in Vale do Javari, in the state of Amazonas, the anthropologist, an Indigenous Marubo, reflects on the issues piling up on her desk, in her inbox, and on her mind: rogue missionaries, illegal mining dredges, armed invaders — and now, carbon-focused businesses. “It’s a lot,” she said.
Mongabay reviewed hundreds of pages of administrative exchanges linked to the carbon scheme targeting communities in Amazonas and Acre, obtained through public information requests. They suggest that senior officials and enforcement bodies in Brazil also feel ill-equipped to address carbon-related grievances based on existing laws and policies.
“This is an area fraught with technical and legal doubts, concerns, uncertainties and insecurities, indicating potential harm to indigenous communities,” a senior Funai official wrote in a 2024 internal analysis obtained by Mongabay through a public information request. This is a matter of special concern, given that Indigenous territories in Brazil have seen a wave of carbon project proposals since 2022 — a trend that the new carbon framework may further fuel.
In emailed responses to Mongabay, the press office at Funai said two initiatives are underway to equip public servants with appropriate guidelines.
Brazil’s National REDD+ Commission, CONAREDD+, has developed guidelines for jurisdictional REDD+ programs and private, forest-based carbon projects. In parallel, Funai is working to put forward regulatory recommendations that protect Indigenous rights under the new carbon law, which tasks the agency and the Federal Prosecutor’s Office with overseeing the consultation process for future contracts.
“Meanwhile, we cannot say there is enough legal certainty for Funai officials to take action or for the production of [carbon] contracts,” said Funai, which has contributed to the inquiry into the present schemes. “As long as the regulations and guidelines are not there, we advise Indigenous people to refrain from engaging with any individuals on such deals.”
Biodiversity credits, which are likely to feature on the COP30 agenda in Belém, the Brazilian state of Pará, as a means of integrating climate and conservation goals, remain out of the scope of existing federal regulations in Brazil.
Anatomy of a scheme
The 10-year deals in Brazil covered the entirety of two Indigenous territories in the states of Amazonas and Acre. One is the multiethnic Vale do Javari Indigenous Territory, home to at least 19 Indigenous communities living in voluntary isolation. At more than 8.5 million hectares (21 million acres), it’s Brazil’s largest Indigenous territory, after the Yanomami land; both are in Amazonas. The other is the Campinas/Katukina Indigenous Territory, in Acre, which spans 32,624 hectares (80,616 acres) and is home to Noke Ko’i clans. The territory is cut in half by the BR-364 highway, a significant driver of deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.
The carbon scheme, led by Biota co-founder and Biotapass shareholder Sebastián Enrique Torres Gómez Omil, appears to have attracted investments of hundreds of thousands of dollars in cryptocurrency, money transfers and cash. The plan, based on document reviews and interviews for this investigation, was to sell “carbon and biodiversity offsetting certificates” worldwide through a proprietary online platform.
To get the deals off the ground, the companies planned to ask prospective investors for nearly $4 million in 2023, including $990,000 for “travel and protocol activities in line with the Indigenous Protocol” and to funnel money to Indigenous communities, as shown in a draft business deck shared with Mongabay by a former Biotapass stakeholder.
Realizing this promise hinged on sealing the Amazonian deals, just as Funai warned that Indigenous territories in Brazil were facing a second wave of dubious carbon proposals that continues today.
By August 2022, even before any contract had been signed or any methodology had been published, Biotapass was shaping up to be the next green unicorn, according to the Madrid City Council, which supports business incubators. In November 2022, Biotapass was already being recognized as an up-and-coming green startup, with its executives featuring on national public television and participating in conferences.
Great expectations
The entities targeted Indigenous communities living off the forest, off the grid, and on the margins of the cash economy. According to one source at Comtxae, the companies used ad hoc translators. They promised communities access to health care, education, electricity and internet connections, while pledging significant resources to combat illicit activities hurting the Amazon Basin.
At the office of the Union of Indigenous People of the Vale do Javari (UNIVAJA), companies told the representatives of 10 Indigenous associations that their people would receive economic returns every 16 weeks, starting only four months after sealing the deal, in April 2023. The leaders of the Indigenous associations that signed said they were told they had to immediately sign a 118-page contract filled with concepts like blockchain, smart contracts, and carbon and biodiversity markets.
The parties met in Atalaia do Norte, a rundown town on the Itaquai River, close to where Brazil meets Colombia and Peru. The town, located in an area fraught with violence, provides an entry point to a valley dotted with remote communities, which can take days to reach by boat.
The head of UNIVAJA at the time, Paulo Marubo, has since died. But three of the 10 Indigenous representatives who signed the deal told Mongabay they regretted it, and described serious shortcomings in terms of the process of obtaining free, prior and informed consent. They described internal divisions and damage to their own legitimacy.
“We don’t really understand how this carbon credit thing works,” said Manoel Chorimpa, president of the Community Development Association of the Marubo People of Alto Rio Curuçá and a longtime defender of Indigenous rights. “More than betraying our expectations, the whole affair made us look bad, just as the Indigenous movement needs to be stronger than ever to keep invaders at bay and address the many pressures on our territory from a place of unity.”
According to several witnesses, including Chorimpa, the meeting with Biota and partners was supposed to be just that: a first gathering where they could hear the companies’ proposal. Instead, the companies pressured them into signing a contract that had already been drawn up, ruling out any chance at prior consultation with local leaders (caciques) and communities deep in Vale do Javari.
According to Comtxae founder Lucas Boscacci Pereira Lima da Silva, the businessmen succeeded in having the contract signed in record time before flying out. The Indigenous representatives and witnesses to the meetings confirmed to Mongabay that no legal advisers or independent third parties were present.
“You know, there was even talk about buying a helicopter for medical evacuations down the line,” Jaime Mayuruna, of the Mayuruna people, told Mongabay. “We fell for a promise of easy money against which I warn all communities.”
‘This is so damaging for us’
In the Campinas/Katukina Indigenous Territory in Acre, families from the 11 villages that line the BR-364 highway went to meet the companies on Dec. 11, 2022. A couple of days later, Levi Pequeno de Souza, president of the General Association of the Noke Ko’i People (AGPN), signed the contract. He has since been replaced.
“You have these companies parachuting into a territory, chatting for a while with a community they are meeting for the first time, and persuading an individual to sign a years-long contract,” Poá Katukina, general cacique of the Noke Ko’i, told Mongabay. “This is not what proper free, prior and informed consent looks like. This is so damaging for us.”
The Noke Ko’i have had their own consultation process in place since 2020. The protocol requires that decisions be made as part of a general assembly, after a process that ensures that all the communities fully understand the initiative in question and what it will mean for their way of life. Among the partners the Noke Ko’i want to be present at such processes are the Public Prosecutor’s Office from both federal and state levels, Funai, the Federal Public Defender’s Office, and the Acre Pro-Indian Commission (CPI-Acre).
The companies never delivered on their promises, but the Noke Ko’i (meaning “true people”) say they still wonder whether what was signed will end up affecting them.
The last clause of the contracts, accessed in full for this investigation, notes that all parties maintain the powers and rights acquired in the deal even if they fail to, or are delayed in, exercising any of them. The document also notes that any disputes shall be brought to an arbitration court in Rio de Janeiro, more than 3,600 kilometers (2,200 miles) away.
“I don’t really know what is the legal status of that agreement,” Itsomi Varinawa, the current president of the AGPN, told Mongabay. “Could somebody help us annul it for good?”
Hearing about the findings of this investigation, Vera Olinda Sena de Paiva, head of civil society association CPI- Acre and a leading Indigenous rights expert in the state, shook her head in disbelief.
“All of this looks so wrong to me,” she told Mongabay in a phone interview. “The entities displayed a serious lack of transparency: if something is done in good faith, all of the key actors in the territory will be, at the very least, informed, starting with the state’s authorities who oversee climate policies and the jurisdictional REDD+ program.”
Then, there’s the contract itself: the Noke Ko’i’s first language isn’t Portuguese, she said. Translating it into their own language and building people’s capacities to ensure a meaningful participation process can’t happen in two days, or even two months.
“Brazil is rebuilding its institutions and reinstating the rule of law after the Bolsonaro years,” said Sena de Paiva, who supported Indigenous governance and rights for more than 40 years. “We just can’t turn a blind eye on deals like this — even if the companies appear to have retreated. On the contrary, we have the political and legal duty to call them out so that the story doesn’t repeat itself.”
Mongabay asked Brazil’s Federal Public Ministry and its counterparts at the state level about the status of their inquiry into the matter, including in light of the businessmen’s plans to resume work in Brazil. In an emailed response, the authorities said the case is being processed under seal in the state of Amazonas, where it was reported by the regional Funai coordinator at the time. The case has not yet been reported in the state of Acre.
Botched contracts
A 2024 analysis by Funai, obtained by Mongabay, lists serious problems with the Vale do Javari contract — identical to the one signed with the Noke Ko’i — including failure to obtain free, prior and informed consent from all community members; disproportionate power being granted to the companies over the entire territory, a vast public land; and the threat to Indigenous groups living in isolation, who risk being wiped out by introduced diseases like measles.
Other red flags, Funai noted in its analysis, are contradictions in terms of the acceptable carbon methodologies; fiduciary arrangements laden with uncertainty; and a two-year pilot project, of which no details are provided, other than that it will release resources to communities every four months.
Additionally, according to Funai, the contract treats UNIVAJA as the de facto rights holder of the Vale do Javari Indigenous territory and has it authorize the marketing of all nature-based solutions that the Indigenous territory may supply, without limitations. However, while UNIVAJA does represent Indigenous people in the territory, it has no rights or ownership over the land.
The Vale do Javari contract also states that Biota has “vast experience” in developing successful carbon and biodiversity projects. According to Funai, “It is essential to know what experience the companies have in implementing these types of projects and if they have the technical and financial capacity to see through the activities they outline in the contract.”
The businessmen appear to stand by the contracts they presented to Indigenous communities and by the process that led to their being signed. In emailed responses to Mongabay, for instance, Torres from Biota said he considers the contracts are clear, favorable to the communities, and respectful of social safeguards, and that he has always operated in line with the highest ethical standards.
In one response to Mongabay, Torres said the 118-page contract on carbon and biodiversity credits had been designed by Comtxae and the Indigenous associations, whose presidents had insisted it cover all nature-based solutions.
“They [Indigenous representatives] are very knowledgeable people and everything was clear to them,” Torres said. “Each ethnic group had legal teams who assisted them [during the meeting with the companies] and understood everything very well.”
Indigenous representatives and witnesses contacted by Mongabay denied these claims, as did Boscacci from Comtxae. However, Boscacci said he stands by the process that led to the speedy signing of the contract: “The leaders decided to move forward with the talks the way we did. No one was putting a gun to anyone’s head.”
‘We’ll draw less attention’
In the weeks leading up to the meeting, Torres and his Spanish associate, Alejandro Gómez, got together in the Chaco plains of Argentina to prepare for the trip. On Nov. 21, 2022, both signed a receipt acknowledging the payment of $50,0000 in cash made by an Argentinian investor to fund their carbon venture in Brazil.
A draft contract with the investor said that Biotapass is in “advanced negotiations” with communities in Vale do Javari and shows the first clauses of the deal they expected to close.
Among the documents shared by Boscacci with Mongabay, a separate message from Biotapass to the investor expounded on the choice of words for the contract with Indigenous people: “NbS [nature-based solutions] comprise carbon credits among others, as described in last week’s plan report. By using [the term] NbS, we’ll draw less attention and make the contract as broad as possible.”
The message also asked for $143,500 to expedite the consultation process from three months to only a few days, and breaks down amounts and concepts. For example, it budgets $38,000 to pay Funai for things like authorization to negotiate with Indigenous people. Each of those items was entirely fabricated by the businessmen, as verified by this investigation.
Torres said Gómez authored the document, but didn’t comment on its content. Gómez didn’t answer Mongabay’s requests for comment.
Misinformation playbook
After getting the contracts signed, the companies left the Indigenous territories in Brazil: “WE ACHIEVED EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING, EVERYTHING,” reads a message from Torres to a contact in Spain in December 2022; the message was shared with Mongabay by a former Biotapass stakeholder. From there, the situation started to deteriorate.
In June 2023, a Spanish stakeholder in Biotapass who had also traveled to Brazil accused Torres and five of his associates of financial mismanagement, fraud and criminal association, in a legal complaint that included bank transfers, crypto transactions and receipts for cash payments. The allegations triggered the liquidation of Biotapass and led to a second legal complaint in Argentina, in December 2023. The case in Spain was dismissed in 2024, but the one in Argentina was still ongoing when this investigation concluded.
But even as official inquiries into the scheme were underway, Biota’s website still featured the deals with the Indigenous territories until the end of 2023.
In an investor pitch letter from February 2023, for example, Torres said that Biota advises the Cercarbono Carbon Standard, governments and NGOs on carbon and biodiversity protocols and sustainable development. He then announced that the cooperative had signed two “historic contracts” with the consent of all caciques and community members in the Vale do Javari and Campinas/Katukina territories.
“We are actively working, together with AGPN, to find companies that could help these Indigenous communities via sponsorships, donations, and, very soon, investment opportunities in carbon and biodiversity credits derived from these territories,” he said in the pitch letter. Among other requests, he asked for $3,000 for an upcoming Noke Ko’i festivity and $10,000 to feed communities for one year through fish farming.
But Torres’s claims don’t appear to have held up.
In emailed responses to Mongabay, Torres said Biota is currently developing protocols for clients in line with ISO and international standards such as Verra, the International Carbon Registry (ICR), and Cercarbono, a Colombia-based carbon and biodiversity certifier.
Speaking with Mongabay, Cercarbono founder and chairman Carlos Trujillo said his company has never collaborated with Biota or Biotapass, and that Torres has been warned against making claims to that effect: “They are dropping our name to suggest that their protocols comply with international standards and regulations. Controlling that is very difficult.”
In November 2023, the certifier had already sent a cease and desist letter to the cooperative, obtained by this investigation. “The statements you make on your website, saying that you certify projects under the Cercarbono standard, have no legal basis, are untrue, generate confusion for the companies and individuals who interact with your website, and are detrimental to us,” the letter, shared by Trujillo with Mongabay, said.
Biota touts having “20+ years of experience in international Carbon Markets,” an online claim that extends to engagement with communities and investors. When Mongabay asked Torres to substantiate the company’s claims, he replied: “All the work we do is confidential.”
Indigenous voices
After six months of waiting for the companies to make good on their promises, Indigenous leaders in Vale do Javari drew a line, too. Between September and October 2023, the Marubo Villages Organization of Rio Ituí (OAMI), the Community Development Association of the Marubo People of Alto Rio Curuçá (ASDEC) and the Vale do Javari Kanamari Association (AKAVAJA) each wrote letters addressed to the companies, UNIVAJA and “competent authorities,” pleading to end the contract. The companies, they said, had been using them for their own purposes while failing to deliver any tangible results for the communities.
“We know that Biota/Biotapass have been using the name of the organizations in the Indigenous Territory to undertake negotiations and [discuss] partnerships without consulting all of the communities [represented by UNIVAJA],” Alfredo Barbosa da Silva Marubo, president of OAMI, wrote in one of the letters obtained by Mongabay, urging authorities to investigate and sanction the entities accordingly.
Biota would not give up on the Vale do Javari contract in writing until February 2024, under pressure from an official inquiry that’s still ongoing in the state of Amazonas. Claims on Biota’s website that Funai was one of its “frameworks and safeguards” — using a logo containing the word “Funai,” but belonging to the Japanese company Funai Electric Co. Ltd — and that it was working with Indigenous communities in Brazil were eventually taken down toward the end of 2023.
Torres told Mongabay he wasn’t aware of any queries or concerns from Indigenous representatives, though they all shared a WhatsApp group. He added that Biota currently advises the Marubo Association of São Sebastião (AMAS), a member of UNIJAVA, on the need to subdivide the Indigenous territory. “We are working alongside them, helping them to structure these subdivisions for each ethnic group so that they can enter into projects with sufficient tenure security to avoid objections from the international [carbon] market.”
“I am the president of AMAS and I don’t know this Biota,” Jorge Marubo told Mongabay. “Also, our association is not looking to develop carbon projects with any institution for the time being: they are complex, full of legal uncertainty, and lack transparency.”
UNIVAJA general coordinator Bushe Matis said he doesn’t see the Vale do Javari territory embracing carbon markets any time soon, either: “How would the money be distributed? The [recently contacted] Korubo, for example, don’t even have an association and there are isolated Indigenous groups,” he said. “Collectively, we don’t yet have a good understanding of what carbon credits are or a consensus on benefit-sharing.”
Bolivia: The new carbon frontier
As communities in Brazil were waiting for the money promised by the companies, Biota, together with Mariel de Nascimento Macedo, an accountant and former Comtxae member now running his own company, Golden River, started exploring similar businesses in Bolivia. The move took place in 2023, one year before the country lifted restrictions on the commodification of nature, opening the door to carbon and biodiversity markets.
One of the deals Biota made was with communities of the Bajo Paraguá territory (374,151 hectares, or 924,547 acres), home to the Chiquitano and Guarasug’we peoples. The area is part of the Chiquitanía, one of the best-preserved tropical dry forests in the Americas. The other contract, from Oct. 23, 2023, was with communities in the Yuracaré y Trinitaria El Pallar territory (78,651 hectares, or 194,351 acres), a stretch of Amazonian transitional forest that’s home to the Yuracaré and Mojeno Trinitario peoples.
In a 2024 pitch to a prospective investor, seen by Mongabay, Torres estimated Verra-certified credits from these two contracts, covering more than 450,000 hectares (1.1 million acres), could generate at least $116 million and even maybe twice as much over the next 30 years. In the proposal, Torres said he had raised $130,000, and requested another $50,000. A second phase would require significantly more money.
He also noted that he was eyeing 600,000 hectares (1.48 million acres) of rainforest in the northern department of Pando.
However, this investigation found that the communities named in the contracts know almost nothing about Biota and the agreements over their lands — ancestral territories with unique ecosystems under pressure from loggers, industrial farmers, land grabbers and mineral prospectors scrambling over Bolivia’s natural resources.
“Our land has been ravaged by fires,” Claudio Lino, current president of the Bajo Paraguá Indigenous Association (Cibapa), told Mongabay. “We do need support to restore them, but from trustworthy partners who are transparent and do not set us up for failure.”
Torres said he cancelled the contract with Bajo Paraguá because it was incompatible with their forest management plan, but is moving forward with the Yuracaré y Trinitaria El Pallar deal. Jaime Yuco, president of the Indigenous Council for the Yuracaré-Mojeño People (Cypim), told Mongabay he wasn’t aware of that.
According to Yuco, Marleny Montejo Asín, the woman with whom Biota claimed to have been in touch in the territory, was never elected by the majority of community members as part of a general assembly, meaning she’s not a legitimate representative, as confirmed to Mongabay by the Confederation of Indigenous Peoples of Bolivia (CIDOB) and independent Indigenous rights experts.
For Yuco, the responsibility of a company that plans to make millions off their land is to, at the very least, get to know each of the 14 communities and make sure it engages their actual representatives: “Have you seen the extreme hardship our people face? The thought of individuals attempting to make a profit behind our backs makes me sick.”
Cypim adviser Rolando Bueno Carlo told Mongabay that such a contract could never be valid: “If a pseudo-leader signs an agreement on behalf of the people, the document is apocryphal. The company can’t make any claims because the territory is collectively owned.”
In the department of Pando, in the Bolivian Amazon, Biota signed a third contract with local nonprofit Funsol, and a letter of intent with the Amazonian University of Pando to promote nature-based solutions, including carbon credits. The idea, Torres told Mongabay, is that Biota’s carbon projects will eventually pay for the services of Golden River, Macedo’s São Paulo-based company that offers services like satellite internet, water purification and solar panels across communities in the tri-border area.
Speaking with Mongabay, Miguel Vargas Delgado, executive director of the Center for Legal Studies and Social Research (CEJIS), a Bolivian nonprofit, warned that Bolivia is allowing carbon proponents to freewheel across the country without any regard for safeguards —without discussing benefit-sharing mechanisms or considering the risks to land rights, sovereignty and traditional livelihoods.
“A handful of entities are dividing up our territory, neocolonial style, while new policies remain lax, and the government lacks the technical or human capacity to conduct serious monitoring,” Vargas Delgado said.
CEJIS’s Observatory on Indigenous Peoples’ Rights in Bolivia recently exposed a carbon deal involving the Federico Hecker Foundation, which Indigenous communities rejected because it sought control of 88% of the titled land of the Multiethnic Indigenous Territory II — an area of 407,585 hectares (about 1 million acres) that’s home to 36 communities — for 30 years, without “the possibility of review or sovereign decision.”
As European aid flows into jurisdictional carbon initiatives in the country, Vargas Delgado called on donors to recognize the problem posed by parallel, unscrupulous carbon businesses, and urged them to support the development of proper safeguards.
Overcoming division
In Bolivia, dubious carbon proponents benefit from the divisions within the Indigenous movement, a trend that emerged when Evo Morales rose to power in 2006. Associations like Cibapa and Cypim haven’t been exempt, with rival leaders vying for legitimacy.
The conflicts are a result of years of the politicization of Indigenous entities at the national and subnational levels. The meddling has sown discord, weakened their influence, and opened a space for unprincipled businesses, according to well-known activists, local NGOs and Indigenous advisers who spoke to Mongabay on the condition of anonymity for fear of retaliation.
“Politics come and go, but it is us, who live in and off the land, who are left to suffer the consequences,” said Maida Peña, the second great cacique of the Chiquitano Nation. She said that what particularly concerns her are the impacts of logging and the megafires that have been devouring the Chiquitano forest over the past decade — recurrent events driven by the expansion of the agricultural frontier and, in some cases, the prospect of financial aid.
“Carbon and bioeconomy projects, done right, could be a way of making sure that our forests are worth more standing than cut down,” Peña said. “We are suffering, yes — but we are also putting up a fight.”
The companies’ plans
Biota has rebranded itself and is eyeing 1.7 million hectares (4.2 million acres) across Brazil, Bolivia, Peru and Argentina. In a video interview, Torres told Mongabay that the company plans to launch its own carbon standard by the end of 2025, marketing the resulting credits through a proprietary online platform.
Speaking to Mongabay about Biota’s “carbonservation” approach, Torres said: “At COP30, we’re planning to present a model that can be quickly replicated [across the Amazon] due to its social, economic and environmental success.”
In 2024, Biota brought on board Álvaro Vallejo Rendón, former Latin America director for the IUCN, the global nature conservation authority. Torres said he joined the family-led business because of its community-centric approach.
Macedo from Golden River claimed to be in touch with more than 100 communities, including the Ticuna and the Huni Kuin from the Brazilian states of Amazonas and Acre, respectively. He told Mongabay that one of his first steps with Biota in the country will involve issuing carbon credits from agribusinesses. He said he intends to promote their business model as an example at meetings with Funai and at COP30.
Boscacci from Comtxae said he plans to work with urban communities, leaving behind his work in Indigenous territories — and the complaints that came with it. He maintained that the company always acted ethically, including regarding the carbon contracts.
Gómez, Torres’s former Spanish associate, moved on from carbon ventures, trying to engage with Indigenous communities through a new NGO, Indigenía, but it closed down in September 2025.
Hilton da Silva Nascimento, from the Brazilian Center for Indigenous Work (CTI), said he sees great potential in climate finance, but is alarmed by the practices of carbon businesses on the ground: “Carbon is the new rubber. What we are witnessing is a green gold rush that puts profits before the long-term well-being of communities.”
The experts consulted by Mongabay agreed that murky deals — either a result of lack of competence or bad faith — can have serious social consequences, even if carbon credits are never issued. Bringing them to light becomes all the more important, they said.
“The impact that unfulfilled promises can have on communities is a matter that must be taken seriously,” said Igor Richwin, a technical adviser for Indigenous organizations who supported the development of Brazil’s first ever guidelines on carbon projects in Indigenous territories in 2010.
Richwin said that prevailing business models tend to fuel competition over territories, disregard local governance and spark internal conflicts. In that process, he said, business interests often prevail over what should matter most: territorial protection and the social well-being of the very communities meant to be at the center of decision-making.
This investigation was produced with support from the International Center for Journalists (ICFJ).
Banner image: The Javari River forms the border between Brazil and Peru. Image by Rhett A. Butler for Mongabay.
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Previously Published on news.mongabay with Creative Commons Attribution
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