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Report Fails Global Banks for Financing, Investment in Oil & Gas in Amazon Rainforest
Banks remain highly exposed to risk of fueling corruption, human rights violations, and environmental harms despite commitments; advocacy groups call for end to new financing by 2022, existing financing by 2025.
WASHINGTON
A new scorecard and report released today by environmental advocacy groups Stand.earth and Amazon Watch fails global banks for their financing and investment in the oil and gas industry in the Amazon rainforest, revealing that despite sustainability commitments and risk management screening processes, banks remain highly exposed to the risk of funding corruption, human rights violations, environmental harms -- and ultimately, climate chaos -- due to their ongoing relationships with companies and traders operating in the region.
"Our research reveals the environmental and social risk frameworks banks rely on are inherently flawed. Banks might follow what they consider best practices in ESR, but these policies have loopholes that allow money to continue to flow to companies involved in oil expansion, deforestation, biodiversity loss, pollution, corruption, and the violation of Indigenous peoples' rights. To put it simply, banks' current ESR policies are failing them. These policies do not adequately manage risks, are not strong enough to avoid Amazon destruction, and do not meet the urgent need to stop fossil fuel expansion globally," said Angeline Robertson, Senior Investigative Researcher at Stand.earth Research Group and one of the lead authors of the report.
- Read the report: https://www.stand.earth/BankingOnAmazonDestruction
- Photos and graphics: https://photos.app.goo.gl/heEXhJAYvibNHQZ66
This new report, titled "Banking on Amazon Destruction", comes on the heels of an August 2020 investigation revealing European banks financing the trade of Amazon oil from the headwaters region of Ecuador and Peru. This led to commitments by top banks to uphold their policies and end trade financing in that region, but the 2020 investigation also revealed additional relationships between banks, oil companies, and oil traders in contradiction with banks' ESR policies and risk management screening processes in the broader Amazon rainforest.
BANK SCORES & KEY FINDINGS
The report evaluated banks' ESR policies (risk management) versus their finance and investment in the Amazon (risk exposure), giving each bank positive and negative scores combined into an overall risk rating identifying the potential for banks' investments and financing to contribute to Amazon destruction. Rabobank, ABN Amro, and ING are at "moderate" risk; BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, UBS, Societe Generale, and Credit Agricole are at "high" risk; and Natixis, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank, and HSBC are at "very high" risk. All banks were provided a summary of their scoring and given the opportunity to respond before the release of the report. Among the key findings:
- BNP Paribas, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan Chase, Credit Agricole, Deutsche Bank, and UBS hold hundreds of millions of dollars in bonds issued to PetroAmazonas, the oil exploration unit of Ecuador's national oil company, PetroEcuador. PetroAmazonas is leading oil expansion in Yasuni National Park, a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve, where the process of building roads to access new oil drilling sites often triggers deforestation, and brings drilling to the doorstep of Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. The company is responsible for thousands of oil spills over the last decade.
- JPMorgan Chase and Deutsche Bank are dragging their heels on implementing sound ESR policies, including in the Amazon. JPMorgan Chase is the biggest banker for the fossil fuel industry worldwide, and it continues to fund Brazil's national oil company, Petrobras, which is ranked one of the largest fossil fuel expansion companies globally.
- Credit Suisse continues to finance the trade of oil from the Putumayo region in the Colombian Amazon, which faces heavy Indigenous resistance and brutal police crackdowns, despite existing biodiversity and human rights policies that clearly indicate it should not be financing in the region.
- Societe Generale, ABN AMRO, Citi, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, ING, Rabobank, and UBS all provide financing via revolving credit facilities to problematic oil traders including Gunvor and Vitol, which have been implicated in recent bribery scandals. This is happening despite all banks having corruption policies, but only viewing it as a business risk and not including it in their ESR frameworks.
Since the report text was finalized, Amazon Watch investigators have learned that JPMorgan Chase and Credit Suisse, along with another bank not listed in this report, recently helped arrange the issuance of a $150 million dollar bond for GeoPark, a Chilean oil company currently operating in the Colombian Amazon that is allegedly paying paramilitary groups to ensure the continuation of its operations on and near the territories of Indigenous groups that opposed oil operations.
RED FLAGS OVER EXCLUSIONS, REVOLVING CREDIT FACILITIES
The International Energy Agency's sweeping call for nations around the world to stop investing in new fossil fuel supply underscores the need for banks to take more stringent actions to decarbonize their portfolios. However, the report reveals most banks continue to rely on policies that don't curb oil expansion in the Amazon, preferring instead to "tilt" oil companies rather than divest or defund.
The report identified that many banks lack deforestation exclusions that include the oil and gas sector, and their biodiversity exclusions focus on traditionally protected areas such as UNESCO World Heritage Sites while ignoring the vital role that Indigenous territories play in protecting biodiversity. And despite a long legacy of pollution from the oil and gas industry in the Amazon, the report uncovered only three banks with pollution exclusions. The report also flags additional blind spots in banks' lending policies: the use of revolving credit facilities, the lack of Indigenous consent, and inadequate grievance processes.
- Banks provide revolving credit facilities worth billions of dollars to their oil trading clients, but don't always ask how the money will be spent, which means that clients may fund projects, transactions, and companies that wouldn't otherwise pass banks' ESR screening processes.
- Even when banks screen for Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC), they often fail to acknowledge that Indigenous peoples must be able to give, change, or take away consent at any time -- or else it isn't free.
- Very few banks have adequate and accessible grievance processes to address violations to their policies, and when they do, they put the burden on other stakeholders -- many of whom have less power and fewer financial resources -- to raise issues.
"For centuries, Indigenous peoples have been responsible for the preservation of the largest forest on the planet. We are being killed for defending our home. An Amazon biome-wide exclusion of all oil and gas finance and investment, aimed at stopping oil expansion in the most biodiverse place on the planet, will keep the Amazon Rainforest off the precipice of a disastrous ecological tipping point, eliminate toxic oil-related disasters, and end rights violations perpetrated by the industry. This is the path for a possible planet and the way for us to guarantee that our rights are respected. The financial sector must invest in recovering what has already been lost and finance the solutions our peoples offer to humanity in the climate change era," said Jose Gregorio Diaz Mirabal, General Coordinator of the Coordinating Body of the Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon Basin (COICA).
AMAZON AT A TIPPING POINT
The Amazon rainforest is nearing a tipping point thanks to the massive degradation of this interconnected ecosystem. Scientists define the tipping point as the moment at which enough deforestation occurs that the Amazon will no longer be able to sustain itself, which will trigger the dieback of the entire rainforest. Due to the looming nature of these threats, which would have massive implications in the region and for the global climate, advocacy groups Stand.earth and Amazon Watch are calling for:
- An immediate commitment to no new oil and gas financing and investment in the Amazon biome by the end of 2021.
- The extension of existing Amazon oil trade finance exclusions to the entire Amazon biome by the end of 2021.
- A commitment to exit all loans, letters of credit, and revolving credit facilities for all oil traders (especially those implicated in corruption controversies) active in the Amazon biome as soon as possible, or at the latest by the end of 2024.
- A commitment to ending all existing oil and gas financing and investment in the Amazon biome as soon as possible, or at the latest by the end of 2025.
"The Amazon rainforest is the last place on Earth that oil expansion should happen -- especially at a time when we know that no fossil fuel expansion should occur at all. If banks have Arctic exclusions to protect biodiversity and fragile ecosystems, and the same logic can be applied to the Amazon, then why don't banks have exclusions for the Amazon? The Amazon rainforest is at a tipping point. Are banks going to continue to rely on mediocre risk management policies that they don't even follow, or take a bold step that will actually end their contribution to the destruction of this critical ecosystem?" said Moira Birss, Climate and Finance Director at Amazon Watch.
Stand.earth (formerly ForestEthics) is an international nonprofit environmental organization with offices in Canada and the United States that is known for its groundbreaking research and successful corporate and citizens engagement campaigns to create new policies and industry standards in protecting forests, advocating the rights of indigenous peoples, and protecting the climate. Visit us at
LATEST NEWS
ACLU Slams Senate Push to Crack Down on Campus Criticism of Israel
"The ability to criticize governments and their policies is a critical component of our democracy."
Nov 14, 2024
The ACLU on Thursday sent a letter to U.S. senators arguing that bipartisan legislation which backers claim would combat antisemitism on university campuses would actually be an affront to free speech protections and censor legitimate criticism of the Israeli government as it carries out atrocities in Gaza, the occupied West Bank, and Lebanon.
The group's letter comes two weeks after Axiosreported that Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) "recently promised Jewish leaders that he would try later this year to pass" the House-approved Antisemitism Awareness Act, or S. 4127.
"Instead of addressing antisemitism on campus, this misguided legislation would punish protected political speech," said ACLU senior policy counsel Jenna Leventoff, who signed the letter with Christopher Anders, director of democracy and technology.
"At a time when civil rights enforcement on campus could not be more critical, this bill risks politicizing these vital protections by censoring legitimate political speech that criticizes the Israeli government," Leventoff warned. "The right to criticize government actions is the most fundamental protection provided by the First Amendment—and this includes the actions of foreign governments. The Senate must continue to block this bill and protect free speech."
"It would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism."
The letter highlights that "federal law already prohibits antisemitic discrimination and harassment by federally funded entities. S. 4127 is therefore not needed to protect against antisemitic discrimination; instead, it would likely chill free speech of students on college campuses by incorrectly equating criticism of the Israeli government with antisemitism."
As Israeli forces—armed by the Biden administration and U.S. Congress—have bombed and starved Palestinians in Gaza over the past 13 months, students colleges and universities across the United States have held protests urging their education institutions and government to divest from the assault, which is the subject of a genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
Some campus administrations—under pressure from Zionists in Congress—have called in law enforcement to violently crack down on protesters and enacted new policies intended to limit anti-genocide demonstrations by students and faculty.
"The ACLU does not take a position on the conflict between Israel and Palestine, but it does staunchly defend the right of those in the United States to speak out on domestic and international political matters," the organization emphasized. "The ability to criticize governments and their policies is a critical component of our democracy."
As the letter explains:
This bill directs the Department of Education to take the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's (IHRA) working definition of "antisemitism" into consideration when determining whether alleged harassment was motivated by antisemitic intent and violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VI prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in programs receiving federal financial assistance, including in higher education. The federal government itself has interpreted Title VI to prohibit harassment or discrimination against Jews, Hindus, Muslims, and Sikhs as well as others when that discrimination is based on the group's actual or perceived shared ancestry or ethnic characteristics. These existing protections are critically important, particularly in the current environment.
The IHRA working definition, however, is overbroad. It equates protected political speech with unprotected discrimination. Enshrining this definition into regulation would chill the exercise of First Amendment rights and risk undermining the Department of Education’s legitimate and important efforts to combat discrimination. Criticism of Israel and its policies is political speech, squarely protected by the First Amendment.
"The IHRA definition of antisemitism is also unconstitutional," the letter continues, citing a case about Republican Texas Gov. Greg Abbott's executive order directing the state's higher education institutions to craft policies based on the controversial language.
The letter points out that even "the lead author of the original IHRA definition, Kenneth Stern, has himself opposed the application of this definition to campus speech, noting that codifying this definition would lead campus administrators to 'fear lawsuits when outside groups complain about anti-Israel expression, and the university doesn't punish, stop, or denounce it.'"
The ACLU specifically warned that "S. 4127 could result in colleges and universities suppressing a wide variety of speech critical of Israel or in support of Palestinian rights in an effort to avoid investigations by the department and the potential loss of funding, even where such speech is protected and does not qualify as harassment."
"Even where administrators do not take formal action, students and their organizations, faculty, and university staff may be deterred from speaking and organizing on these issues," the group added. The bill would also "likely inspire an increasing number of complaints focused on constitutionally protected criticism of Israel," taking time away from "meritorious" filings.
The Senate majority leader has faced intense pressure to bring the bill to a vote as this session of Congress winds down. Axios noted that Florence Avenue Initiative, a nonprofit that doesn't have to disclose its donors, "has spent about $5 million on an ad campaign blasting Schumer, the highest-ranking Jewish lawmaker, for his inaction."
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World's Largest Coral Found in Pacific, Unharmed by Planetary Heating
"While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope."
Nov 14, 2024
Scientists announced on Thursday their discovery of the largest coral ever documented off the coast of the Solomon Islands in the South Pacific Ocean and celebrated the fact that the massive underwater ecosystem appears to be unharmed by planetary heating—but said the discovery underscores the need to urgently protect marine environments.
Scientists and filmmakers from National Geographic's Pristine Seas research program, which aims to push governments to protect the oceans, visited a remote site near the Solomon Islands in mid-October, and initially thought the large object just below the ocean's surface was part of a shipwreck.
Cinematographer Manu San Félix dove into the water to examine the object and found that it was actually a huge network of coral polyps.
The coral was found to be 34 meters (111 feet) wide and more than five meters (16 feet) high—larger than a blue whale and big enough to be viewed from space.
The mega coral, or pavona clavus, is thought to be about 300 years old, and scientists said it could provide insight into historical conditions in the world's oceans.
"Protecting the reef cannot make the water cooler, cannot prevent the warming of the ocean. We need to fix that, we need to reduce carbon emissions."
Enric Sala of the Pristine Seas project compared the discovery to "a big patch of old growth forest," telling New Scientist that the coral, which is not showing signs of the bleaching observed in a growing number of reefs around the world, is providing shelter and sustenance to fish, shrimp, worms, and crabs.
"Large adult coral colonies like this contribute significantly to the recovery of coral reef ecosystems due to their high reproductive potential," Eric Brown, a coral scientist toldEuronews. "While the nearby shallow reefs were degraded due to warmer seas, witnessing this large healthy coral oasis in slightly deeper waters is a beacon of hope."
But Sala told Euronews that the coral is not necessarily "safe from global warming and other human threats."
Record-breaking ocean temperatures have caused coral bleaching events across the planet over the past two years, impacting biodiversity in the world's oceans as well as increasing the risk of sea-level rise and impacting tourism industries in coastal areas.
Sala said the discovery should push governments to protect more of the world's oceans. About 8.4% of the Earth's ocean is under a marine protected area (MPA) designation, and the Biodiversity Beyond National Jurisdiction treaty was finalized in 2023, pledging to protect the biodiversity of the oceans.
Establishing more MPAs alongside climate action, Sala said, will help shield coral like the one found near the Solomon Islands from pollution and the effects of planetary heating.
"Protecting the reef cannot make the water cooler, cannot prevent the warming of the ocean," Sala told New Scientist. "We need to fix that, we need to reduce carbon emissions. But MPAs can help us buy time by making the reefs more resilient."
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'We Are Unafraid': In Face of Trump Win, Champions of Working Class Vow Epic Fight
"We must raise the standard of living for our members and the entire working class through unity, solidarity, and working-class power," said UAW president Shawn Fain. "No matter who is in the White House."
Nov 14, 2024
The results of last week's U.S. elections were cataclysmic for the Democratic Party, which lost control of the White House and Senate as the Republicans gained a trifecta, but economic justice advocates on Wednesday said that for many working people, the fight for a better standard of living and a political system that places people over Wall Street profits remains the same.
United Auto Workers (UAW) president Shawn Fain acknowledged in a letter to members that while the election outcome was not one that "our union advocated for, and it's not the outcome a majority of our members voted for, our mission remains the same."
"We must raise the standard of living for our members and the entire working class through unity, solidarity, and working-class power," said Fain. "No matter who is in the White House."
Noting that "in a democracy, the four most important words are: The People Have Spoken," Fain suggested that the Democratic Party did not convince a key constituency—working people, including an estimated 78% of Americans who live paycheck-to-paycheck—that it represents their interests, and as a result handed the presidential victory to President-elect Donald Trump.
While the UAW endorsed Vice President Kamala Harris and Fain campaigned with her, he said, "for us, this was never about party or personality. As we have said consistently, both parties share blame for the one-sided class war that corporate America has waged on our union, and on working-class Americans for decades."
Trump ran an openly xenophobic campaign, but won the support of low-income voters from a range of ethnic backgrounds as he demonized undocumented immigrants and made outlandish, racist claims about Ohio residents from Haiti, sticking to his longtime narrative that immigration—not corporate greed—is to blame for the country's housing crisis, economic inequality, and stagnant wages.
"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90%... the party that rejects Elon Musk and the entire American oligarchy."
As numerous progressives have pointed out since the election, the Biden administration has introduced a host of pro-worker policies and Harris unveiled numerous economic justice proposals during her brief campaign—but her decision to campaign with billionaire businessman Mark Cuban and unveil a more Wall Street-friendly tax proposal have been criticized moves that highlighted the Democratic Party's close ties to rich donors and muddied her message to working families.
With the Democratic Party still taking part in the "one-sided class war" referenced by Fain, the UAW leader said that the union "stand[s] today where we stood last week."
"We stand for bringing back American jobs," said Fain. "We stand for taking on corporations that break their promises to American workers. And we stand against the same things we've always stood against. We will never support the destruction of the union movement. We will never support efforts to divide and conquer the working class by nationality, race, and gender. We will never support handouts to the ultra-wealthy or paying for it by cutting crucial federal investments."
"We are unafraid to confront any politician who takes actions that harm the working class, our communities, and our unions," he said.
Fain's comments came as progressive lawmakers including Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) spoke at an event titled Delivering for the Working Class.
While the caucus is set to be in the minority in the House and Senate for at least the next two years, the senators used the event to rally Democratic leaders to "learn the right lessons" from Trump's victory.
As Democrats decide who they answer to, Warren asked, "Is it going to be a handful of billionaires? We know what kind of policy they want to set. Or are we going to show voters that Democrats are the ones who are willing to unrig this economy?"
Sanders suggested that Fain's rallying of the UAW's more than 400,000 members will also be a key to fighting Trump's agenda, including Republicans' plans to make cuts to Social Security and Medicare and his likely reversal of Biden's pro-worker policies.
"The antidote to enormous economic and political power on the part of the few is mass organizing at the grassroots level among working people—to stand up and fight for an economy that works for all," said Sanders.
Just after the election last week, Sanders became one of the first members of the Democratic caucus to release a statement on the party's major losses, driving home the same message he has repeated during his decades in public service: "It should come as no great surprise that a Democratic Party which has abandoned working-class people would find that the working class has abandoned them."
On MSNBC on Wednesday, Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-Wash.), the chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said the election results in several red states proved that many of Trump's supporters prioritized working class issues.
"Voters actually want the populist, popular ideas that we have been pushing at the Progressive Caucus, certainly, for quite some time," said Jayapal. "They went to the ballot in three states that voted for Donald Trump... and they voted for a higher minimum wage, they voted for paid sick leave."
Voters in Alaska and Missouri approved ballot measures requiring a higher minimum wage and demanding that employers provide paid sick leave; Nebraska voters also supported a measure allowing workers to earn paid sick leave.
Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich on Thursday also took a close look at voting figures, writing at his Substack newsletter that the election didn't deliver "a very big mandate" to Trump as the president-elect claimed, or even "a 'red shift' to Trump and the Republicans."
"It was a blue abandonment," he wrote. "We now know that 9 million fewer votes were cast nationwide in 2024 than in 2020. Trump got about a million more votes than he did in 2020 (700,000 of them in the seven battleground states). That's no big deal... The biggest takeaway is that Biden's 9 million votes disappeared... So what happened to the 9 million?"
Reich posited that 9 million potential voters refused to vote for Trump, but also didn't turn out for the Democratic Party because they were left thinking, "They don't give a damn about me."
"The task for the Democrats is what it should have been all along: remaking the party into the party of the bottom 90%—the party of people who don't live off stocks and bonds, of people who are not CEOs or billionaires like Mark Cuban, the party that rejects Elon Musk and the entire American oligarchy," he wrote. "Instead, the Democratic Party must be the party of average working people whose wages have gone nowhere and whose jobs are less secure."
He continued:
Blue-collar private-sector workers earned more on average in 1972, after adjusting for inflation, than they are earning now in 2024. This means today's blue-collar workers are on average earning less in real dollars than their grandparents earned 52 years ago.
Yet the American economy is far larger than it was 52 years ago. Where did the additional money go? To the top. So what's the Democrats' task? To restructure the economy toward more widely shared prosperity.
In his statement on Wednesday, Fain said the lives and daily struggles of many working class voters are unchanged after the election.
"Today, our members clock in to the same jobs they clocked into last week," said Fain. "You face the same threats—corporate greed, Wall Street predators, and a political system that ignores us. And we are driven by the same force, as outlined in our UAW Constitution generations ago: 'The hope of the worker in advancing society toward the ultimate goal of social and economic justice.'"
Fain urged union members to get involved in "political action on every level of government, in every state, in every sector has an impact on every contract, every organizing drive, and every standard we win as a union," while Sanders implored the Democratic Party to urgently "determine which side it is on in the great economic struggle of our times."
"It needs to provide a clear vision as to what it stands for," wrote Sanders in a Boston Globe op-ed on Tuesday. "Either you stand with the powerful oligarchy of our country, or you stand with the working class. You can't represent both."
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