Bankrolling Ecosystem Destruction

This blog was slightly adapted from the original posted by Greenpeace

A new report by a coalition of NGOs, including Greenpeace, Milieudefensie and Harvest, shows that 135 key actors in ecosystem risk sectors have received more than one-fifth of their total global credit since the 2015 Paris Agreement, and just under one-tenth of their current global investment, from EU-based financial institutions.

The report lays out the importance of EU regulation of the financial sector to align finance with the global 1.5°C and biodiversity targets, including ending any new provision of financial services to groups that contribute to nature destruction.

The Forests & Finance dataset was a key source for this report, though for this report, finance was attributed at group level to both financial institutions and beneficiaries. No attempt is made to attribute finance to a particular commodity sector or subsidiary of a group, as is done for the Forests & Finance data.

Six of the nine planetary boundaries that earth scientists have defined as needing to be respected in order to ensure a stable global environment have already been breached, causing interlinked crises – notably climate change, ecosystem collapse and biodiversity loss – with industrial agriculture and other land-use activities as key contributors. As these crises intensify around the world, people in the Southern hemisphere are experiencing extreme food and water shortages, while Indigenous communities fight the violation of their human rights.

Industrial agriculture is not only a key driver of environmental destruction but is also pushing millions of small- and medium-scale farmers into destitution, and the situation is likely to get worse unless people and ecosystems are put before profits.

Download the report here