Porto Alegre: How Environmental Transparency Connected a R$ 1.7 Billion Project to the Financial Market
How Porto Alegre's Nova Ipiranga Urban Consortium Operation is transforming the city's relationship with its waterways.
City: Porto Alegre - Capital of Rio Grande do Sul state, Brazil
Population: 1.33 million
Project: Nova Ipiranga Urban Consortium Operation (Regenera Dilúvio)
Estimated Investment: ~R$ 1.7 billion (Phase Zero: R$ 202 million)
Scope of Impact: 1,624.6 hectares across 16 neighborhoods
Key Deliverables: 586,000 m² of new linear parks, 56 km of bioswales, over 45 km of bike paths, and 259,000 m³ in flood control retention basins.
Project Status: Advanced planning, technical structuring, and legal modeling phase (construction has not started yet).
Major urban and climate transformations start with transparent data and the right connections. When the city of Porto Alegre, the capital of the state of Rio Grande do Sul, located in southern Brazil, home to approximately 1.33 million residents, conceived the Nova Ipiranga Urban Consortium Operation, the challenge went far beyond cleaning up the Dilúvio Stream.
The project was designed to fundamentally transform the city’s relationship with its waterways—turning the area into a green and blue infrastructure network that connects neighborhoods, enhances the urban landscape, and builds resilience against extreme weather events. However, to move from vision to reality, this transformative approach required a solid technical foundation, legal strategy, and engagement with the right partners.
The urban and climate challenge
The Dilúvio Stream flows through one of Porto Alegre’s most strategic corridors, where soil impermeability, untreated wastewater discharges, and recurrent flooding demanded an integrated climate adaptation and resilience strategy.
Spanning 1,624.6 hectares across 16 neighborhoods, the Nova Ipiranga Urban Operation integrates green and blue infrastructure across four core pillars:
Green and Blue Infrastructure: Linear parks, bioswales, and vegetated basins for stormwater retention and heat island mitigation.
Drainage and Sanitation: Dry-weather sewage interception, eco-barriers, and flood attenuation reservoirs.
Sustainable Mobility: Expanded sidewalks, public transit upgrades, and the creation of cycle networks and pedestrian bridges.
Housing and Social Inclusion: Land tenure regularization and social housing development for vulnerable families in the surrounding area.
View images from the preliminary design of the project:
CDP’s catalytic role and environmental transparency
Securing funding for complex climate projects requires demonstrating technical maturity and institutional governance. Consistently reporting sanitation, drainage, and green coverage data through the CDP platform enhanced visibility and provided a clear diagnosis of the city's real needs. This reduced information asymmetry, demonstrated the project’s alignment with ESG criteria used by development banks, and made it easier for prospective funders to grasp its strategic relevance and measurable impact.
CDP acted as a strategic bridge, connecting city officials with a panel of experts and potential financiers at an early, formative stage. This engagement provided valuable market feedback and accelerated the project’s technical maturation. While no financial loan contracts have been formally signed as a result of these initial steps, the matchmaking allowed the city to establish preliminary dialogues and structure the proposal alongside key development finance institutions, such as the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB) and the Brazilian Development Bank (BNDES).
“The ClimAction event provided by CDP allowed us to present our proposal to potential funders, receive expert feedback, and pinpoint exactly what needed refinement to boost feasibility. Environmental reporting and transparency are critical to this process—they highlight a city’s real-world challenges, build credibility, and enable trackable results. Climate projects must be more than just transformative; they must be clear, measurable, and transparent.”
Concrete progress and project structuring
Currently in its technical and legal structuring phase, aligning with market expectations and strengthening environmental baseline data drove key milestones in the project’s development:
Advanced Studies: completion of the Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA/RIMA) and refinement of legal, urbanistic, and economic modeling.
Financial Structuring: a model anchored in the issuance of Certificates of Additional Construction Potential (CEPACs) to leverage private investment for public space enhancements.
Institutional Dialogue: progression of discussions with multilateral lenders, including initial engagement with the IDB and advanced project structuring with BNDES.
Phase Zero: definition of a priority R$ 202 million initial investment package to break ground on the Linear Park.
Key takeaways for other cities
Use transparency as your gateway: consistently reporting environmental and social data builds trust and validates the urgency of investment.
Engage the market early: presenting preliminary concepts to financiers allows cities to align projects with market requirements before finalizing formal studies.
Design systemic projects: integrating drainage, mobility, housing, and ecological restoration unlocks broader funding streams and maximizes positive impact.
Explore more case studies
Discover how organizations are benefiting by disclosing through CDP. Browse our full selection of disclosure-related case studies.