Ecotierra

Co-founders Étienne Desmarais (CEO) and Karina Santana (COO) lead the firm. All investment activity flows through the URAPI Sustainable Land Use Fund, now managed by Ecotierra Capital. The firm has not publicly named an independent investment committee or external fund directors.

Ecotierra originates projects through its own operating teams in Colombia and Peru, building on more than 20 years of cooperative relationships that pre-date the firm. The ElevaFinca brand acts as an on-the-ground facilitator, connecting smallholder producer groups directly with international buyers who require traceable environmental and social impact.

Ecotierra is structured as a project developer and operator that also manages the URAPI Sustainable Land Use Fund. Its model bundles reforestation, carbon-credit origination, and commodity facilitation under one group, which gives it a hybrid posture — more hands-on than a typical impact fund, with permanent in-country staff building and running the underlying assets.

The URAPI Sustainable Land Use Fund finances agroforestry and reforestation on degraded land controlled by smallholder cooperatives. Returns are generated from three primary revenue lines: verified carbon credits, sustainably grown and marketed coffee, and commercial timber. The fund reports 7.3 million tonnes of CO2 equivalent sequestered or avoided and targets $248 million in new producer revenues.

ElevaFinca is Ecotierra’s in-house commodity-facilitation brand. It sits between producer cooperatives and export buyers, providing tailored inventory solutions that meet specific product-quality and impact-verification requirements. It effectively acts as the offtake and traceability arm of the Ecotierra ecosystem.

Pro-A is the nonprofit through which founders Étienne Desmarais and Karina Santana first helped coffee and cocoa cooperatives gain certifications and export readiness. Ecotierra was created in 2011 as a for-profit vehicle to scale the financing and operating solutions that Pro-A’s work proved were needed — the entities share a common origin but are operationally distinct.

Ecotierra has not publicly disclosed the legal structure or term of the URAPI fund. The firm describes URAPI as a fund targeting sustainable land use that Ecotierra Capital manages, and the group recently indicated it is pursuing complementary investment strategies. Whether those vehicles are closed-end, open-ended, or structured as permanent-capital vehicles has not been confirmed publicly.