Big banks and investors are making a killing from destroying nature. Together we can stop them

The world’s rainforests, wetlands and savannahs are some of the richest and most biodiverse places on earth – and crucial for tackling climate change. 

But big banking deals are leaving these wonders of nature perishing in an inferno fuelled by corporate greed. 

This is happening at great speed and on a global scale. Will you help Greenpeace expose the truth – and demand global leaders cut off the funding that’s destroying our planet?

With a major global biodiversity conference (COP16) in October, we have a vital opportunity to secure more action to help protect forests from destruction.

Trillions are going into companies hellbent on destroying nature for profit

Big banks and other financial institutions are financing the destruction of large swathes of biodiversity across the planet. Governments and the private sector are pouring trillions into harmful subsidies, and corporations are destroying nature for industrial agriculture, meat, soy, timber, paper and mining. 

Greenpeace recent analysis, shows that the UK’s financial sector is the world’s fourth largest source of both credit to, and investment in, major corporate players in sectors linked to the destruction of rainforests and other climate critical ecosystems.

This makes it particularly important for the UK to tackle these financial flows, and ultimately align the financial sector to climate and biodiversity protection goals.

Many of us will remember images of the Amazon rainforest burning in 2019, day after day, for weeks. This is still happening. Every summer since, more and more irreplaceable nature has gone up in smoke. 

As well as the Amazon, it’s happening in the Brazilian Pantanal and Cerrado – mainly for industrial meat and soy. 

It’s happening in Indonesia, where volunteer firefighters are risking their lives to stop man made fires clearing precious rainforest and peatlands to make way for the palm oil industry. 

The fuel for this senseless destruction is trillions of dollars from big banks, investors and other financial institutions. And the consequences for the planet are disastrous.

The Amazon rainforest could even lose the ability to produce rain within a matter of years. The world’s greatest rainforest – one of Earth’s most important defences against climate change – could completely collapse. All just so corporations can make more and more money.

Together, we can push governments to stop this senseless destruction 

It is outrageous that as we approach the landmark date of 2030, we are still waiting on promises made well over a decade ago – both from the industrial agriculture and food sectors driving deforestation, and from governments. 

Banks and companies are failing to act, so we need governments to step in. Leaders across the world have already signed global agreements to stop money pouring from big banks into ecosystem destruction.

In 2022, nearly 200 governments signed the Global Biodiversity Framework, committing to stop nature destruction, shift subsidies away from destructive practices and to reform the financial sector, including to regulate financial flows to align with nature protection. Governments also committed to deliver at least $20 billion USD a year in nature finance to the Global South by 2025 to protect biodiversity globally. 

Now in October 2024, we have a vital opportunity. Governments will present their plans at the Biodiversity COP16, taking place in Colombia, on how they’ll enforce nature protection, and we’ll be there to hold them to account. 

Throughout the year Greenpeace has been exposing those responsible for driving the destruction. We will bring crucial evidence to COP16 and other vital negotiations in the future by:

• Investigating the money flows funding the destruction   
• Monitoring deforestation with Amazon flyovers and an on the ground team to expose the nature crimes
• Lobbying by our global political team to push back against the lobbying of the finance sector and industries driving ecosystem destruction
• Raising awareness to put pressure on governments to take the right steps forward towards biodiversity protection and providing at least US$ 20 billion of international finance from global north to global south countries.
• Warning financiers and investors to suspend any support for and investment in Amazon forest destroyer and climate polluter JBS, the biggest cog in the destructive industrial meat sector, as it plans to list shares on the New York Stock Exchange
• Amplifying the voices of the frontline communities fighting and surviving the fires 
• Mobilising millions to show our governments that they must hold the financial sector to account and get them to invest in our futures. 

The movement of people demanding governments protect nature is growing stronger

For centuries, Indigenous Peoples and local communities have opposed the destruction of nature for profit. 

And people all over the world are joining their fight, taking action against greedy financial corporations exploiting weak government regulation.

The banks don’t value what we value. A rainforest earmarked for logging is not just a line on a loan account. It’s someone’s home. It’s a treasure of scientific discoveries. It’s the common heritage of humanity.

No one wants to wake up, turn on the news and learn that there’s no more Amazon rainforest left. In fact, the climate just couldn’t afford that. And no one wants to have to tell their grandchildren that jaguars and orangutans are extinct either. All just so banks and financial institutions, and the nature destroyers and climate polluters they enable, could keep making even more money.

Governments rightly promised to stop this scandal. It’s time we hold them to their word.