Gonzalo Castro de la Mata

He is the founder of Ecosystem Services LLC, a company that generates carbon offsets through avoiding deforestation of the Amazon rainforest (REDD). Previously, he was the Managing Director of Sustainable Forestry Management (SFM) for the Americas, where he was responsible for seminal investments that generated the first carbon credits from native plantations and forest conservation. He has been the Head of Biodiversity at the Global Environment Facility, the largest source of funds to address global environmental challenges, and a Lead Environmental Specialist at the World Bank. He was also Director and Vice-President of WWF’s Latin American and Caribbean Program in Washington, and founder and CEO of Wetlands for the Americas.

in 2014, he was awarded the Prize "Peruanos al Bicentenario" (Bicentennial Prize) by Diario El Comercio in the Environmental Category for his essay "Pais de Leyenda".

In 2013, he was one of the two high-level independent international experts engaged by the United Nations to assess the social end ecological impacts of the Barro Blanco Dam in Panama, which found serious consultation deficiencies in indigenous communities.

In December 2013 he was selected as a Member of the World Bank's Inspection Panel and in November 2014 became its eleventh chairman, a position he held until 2018.

Castro de la Mata received a Ph.D. in Ecology and Population Biology from the University of Pennsylvania in 1988, and M.Sc. (1985) in Biophysics and B.Sc. (1983) in Biology degrees from Cayetano Heredia University in Lima, Peru.

Gonzalo Castro de la Mata (full name Gonzalo Castro de la Mata Valdivia) is a Peruvian ecologist born in 1961 in Lima, Peru. He is recognized as a global leader in the promotion of sustainability with emphasis on innovative free market solutions to environmental issues.