At the end of 1998, a consortium made up of the Environmental Enterprises Assistance Fund (EEAF), a Brazilian bank (Banco Axial) and Sustainable Development Inc. (SDI), in collaboration with the International Finance Corporation (IFC) of the World Bank, announced that they had raised the capital necessary to establish a private, for-profit, ecological venture capital fund for Latin America called Terra Capital.
The fund invests in small and medium-sized companies, financing the initial investment of expansion, restructuring, development of new products, etc.
It makes investments of between US $ 500,000 up to a maximum of 15% of the total capital committed in projects related to agricultural exploitation, forest management and conservation, ecotourism and other activities related to biodiversity, whose environmental criteria are defined by a Biodiversity Advisory Committee.