When the balding Australian first stepped off the riverboat and into the isolated pocket of northeastern Peru's Amazon jungle in 2010, he had what seemed like a noble, if quixotic, business plan.
An ambitious real estate developer, David Nilsson hoped to ink joint venture agreements with the regional government of Loreto province and the leaders of the indigenous Matses community to preserve vast thickets of the tribe's remote rainforest. Under a global carbon-trading program, he wished to sell shares of the forest's carbon credits to businesses that hope to mitigate, or offset, their air pollution.
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