Who’s bankrolling AMAZON destruction? (RAINFOREST ACTION NETWORK)

 

On October 16th, it was World Food Day, and while you’re tracking the rising costs of groceries, we’re following the money behind an agribusiness system that’s driving up costs for families and tearing down forests – and demanding that banks stop financing it. Our new report, Banking on Biodiversity Collapse, launched this week, and it shows that bank financing for tropical forest commodities like soy, beef, cocoa and coffee grew 20% in a single year, a decade after the Paris Agreement. SIGN THE PETITION

Earlier this year, the industry association representing major soy traders withdrew from the Amazon Soy Moratorium – a critical safeguard that’s helped to keep soy grown on newly deforested land out of their supply chains. In April, tens of thousands of you told Chase, Bank of America and Citi to act. They said nothing, and kept financing the money flowing. Our investigations reveal the financial backing behind forest destruction. Since 2020, these three banks have provided almost $4 billion in financing attributed to the tropical forest operations of agribusiness giants ADM, Bunge, Cargill, and Louis Dreyfus. And the money kept flowing after the industry abandoned the moratorium: researchers identified $172 million from these banks to ADM, Bunge, and Louis Dreyfus since January. Tell these banks: make forest protections and Indigenous rights binding conditions of financing. Now the traders are pushing for infrastructure expansion for export through the Amazon, including a 993 km railway through the rainforest, dredged rivers, and new export ports. Indigenous communities are fighting back, and winning. This year they occupied Cargill’s grain terminal in Santarém for 33 days and forced Brazil’s government to scrap its plan to dredge the Tapajós river. The project is still pushing ahead, and they need us to hold back the money. TAKE ACTION NOW The banks have so much leverage. They can make forest protections and respect for Indigenous rights binding conditions of financing – and withhold money when companies fail to comply. We’re demanding that they uphold the Amazon Soy Moratorium’s core protections, prevent further deforestation and ecosystem conversion in the Amazon and Cerrado, and refuse financing for the Northern Arc infrastructure expansion threatening communities and rivers. Add your voice to the demand that these banks stop bankrolling destruction. In solidarity, The Forest and Finance Team, Rainforest Action Network

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