These days, investment in planetary destruction is gauche. In recent months, major companies from Amazon to Microsoft have pledged to prioritise sustainability (though their plans to do so have been problematic at best). As environmental activists have targeted financial institutions for their investment in climate-warming activities, those firms have also made commitments to clean up their act. But new research shows they’re doing a pretty shitty job at it.
A new report from environmental and indigenous rights group Amazon Watch reveals that five of the world’s biggest banks are funding crude oil extraction in the western Amazon. The five financial institutions highlighted—Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, and BlackRock—have provided tens of billions of dollars to oil companies to operate in Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia.
Oil and gas sites already spread over two thirds of the rainforest in Ecuador and Peru. Extracting fossil fuels isn’t just a major direct contributor to the climate crisis. It also results in deforestation, thereby destroying an essential carbon sink and ancestral territories on which indigenous people and tens of thousands of species depend. The report notes that since many oil and gas exploration sites are in remote areas, drilling requires constructing new roads deep in the rainforest, which “paves the way for further rainforest destruction from illegal logging, illegal mining, new settlements, and pipeline spillage.”
The sick irony is that in some cases, these investments contradict the sustainability pledges which some of the firms have volunteered in recent months. In January, BlackRock, for instance, promised to “fundamentally reshape finance to deal with climate change.” Shortly after BlackRock’s announcement, JPMorgan Chase announced new restrictions on financing coal and Arctic oil and gas, environmental commitments from its asset management arm, and a plan to finance more clean energy. But the report states that as of 2019’s fourth financial quarter, BlackRock holds $US2.5 ($4) billion of stocks and bonds in oil companies extracting crude oil in the Amazon, and JPMorgan Chase holds has contributed over $US890 ($1,452) million to Amazon crude oil extraction.
These investments come despite “explicit opposition from indigenous groups on the ground and the worsening of the climate crisis that such activity promotes,” Amazon Watch said in a statement.
As the climate crisis becomes even worse, we need to rapidly phase out of oil and gas drilling and protect and expand the planet’s natural carbon sinks. And while some banks are talking a good game, their money is walking in the opposite direction.