Happy birthday, Xilva!

Xilva celebrates its first anniversary this week, and it’s been an incredible journey so far. Our team came together from day one with a shared passion for solving the dual challenges of climate change and nature loss. And when we look back on the past year, there’s a lot to be grateful for and excited about. Here we share a few highlights in the words of some of the members of the Xilva team.

Susanne Wittig, co-founder at Brainforest, the Venture Studio for forests and climate that initiated and co-founded Xilva says: “We are thrilled to celebrate our first venture, Xilva, on their first full year since cooperation. As our ventures grow, our ecosystem of solutions for more biodiverse forests and better climate evolves and with it the positive impact we have. Congratulations to a great team!”

Gaining momentum

As Jamie Lawrence, co-founder and forest strategy lead says: “Our biggest success has been gaining the support of mission-aligned investors and team members”. That goes hand in hand with the positive early response from the market, garnered through the Xilva Pioneer Programme, which several companies have already joined.

The enthusiastic feedback provided by customers and partners so far entitles CEO Tim Duehrkoop to share: “I am very proud that we have happy customers who allow us to use them as a reference, and that we have channeled substantial amounts of money into sustainable forest projects.” In the past year, Xilva has signed contracts with clients in the watchmaking, fashion, packaging, and real estate industries, facilitating transactions that funded forests in Asia and Latin America and contributed to compensate for more than 150,000 tons of CO2.

The Gula Gula Food Forest Program in West Sumatra

Scaling positive impact

Xilva’s proprietary due diligence service - screening and grading of forest projects using Xilva GRADE - is a key part of its value proposition. In the past 6 months, the expert forest team at Xilva has developed its framework in-house and keeps updating it with new data sources and analytical models. The goal is to understand and disclose all the risks and benefits that come with each type of intervention.

In the words of Yeray Martinez, lead of forestry intelligence: “My biggest learning of this year: how the combination of different forest-related business models at the landscape level, including carbon, biodiversity, conservation/restoration, agroforestry, and sustainable forestry can generate a huge impact and at the same time have a very attractive financial performance.” In brief: “Forest abundance at scale!” — he quips.

From the left: Tim, Yeray, Lorenzo and Jamie discussing sustainable forestry in Navacerrada, Spain

Developing innovation

A strong and independent project assessment makes it easier and safer for companies to invest in forests because it lets them maximize their impact, lower transaction costs, and avoid the risk of greenwashing. But it also benefits the project developers with valuable feedback.

As Jamie explains, “The large majority of the forest projects we work with want to and can scale, and we can help them understand what it is exactly that capital providers need to know in order to be able to fund that growth.”

A trust-enabling technological solution

Xilva’s digital platform is the “engine” of scale: it’s where large amounts of data are gathered and processed to generate new insights. And equally important, it’s also the tool that provides an intuitive experience for the end users.

At the helm of this effort is co-founder and head of product Marike Carstens. “In the last 12 months I have learned how much the discussion in companies is changing: nature-based solutions are more often becoming part of corporate strategies — and not just in terms of net-zero pledges but as companies develop nature-or forest-positive strategies”. She affirms: “Trust and transparency are the decisive currency in collaboration — especially digitally supported”.

Marike and Nuria testing new data acquisition models

What’s next?

Xilva is celebrating its first birthday with the confidence that it is well-positioned to fulfil its vision. What are the next steps? A hint comes from Tim: “Carbon credits are not created equal — it is really important to look for projects that help biodiversity and improve local livelihoods”.

Curious to learn more? Follow us on Xilva.global and on Linkedin