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hatrack

(59,442 posts)
Sat Nov 7, 2020, 10:28 AM Nov 2020

Since 2016, $153 Billion Invested By Banks In Deforestation, Palm Oil, Soy, Beef In Global South

EDIT

However, amid all the finger pointing at Bolsonaro, one arguably culpable group has gone largely unnoticed: some of the world’s big banks have been investing billions in companies — such as beef, soy and paper producers — whose activities can be linked to large scale and ongoing deforestation in the Brazilian Amazon.

Despite all the external pressure, and investment institutes’ own rhetoric about environmental responsibility, some of the largest Brazilian and international banks have invested no less than US$153.2 billion in companies whose activities risked causing damaging to forests in Brazil, Southeast Asia, Central and West Africa since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2016. The data comes from a study recently published by Forest & Finance (F&F), a coalition of international socioenvironmental campaign and research organizations, including Rainforest Action Network, TUK INDONESIA and Amazon Watch.

Although the Forest & Finance report doesn’t directly accuse any of the companies financed by the banks of violating Brazil’s environmental legislation, the report suggests that Brazilian financial institutions contributed about US$52 billion and the United States, about US$12 billion , to forest-risk companies.

While the F&F report names banks, it does not specifically name commodities companies linked to criminal deforestation. Mongabay attempts here, through its own investigation, to make some of those bank-commodities company connections — naming names.

EDIT

https://news.mongabay.com/2020/11/brazilian-and-international-banks-financing-global-deforestation-reports/

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