Stand.earth and Amazon Watch said ING, Credit Suisse, Natixis, BNP Paribas, UBS and Rabobank were the largest lenders to ship about $10 billion of Ecuadorian crude to U.S. refineries over the past decade.
Each of the identified banks, after reviewing the https://www.stand.earth/publication/Amazon-Banks-report-EN report, referred to the environmental commitments it had made, such as support for the 2015 Paris meteorological agreement, protective forests and support for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals.
But indigenous communities that resist the oil industry’s plans to penetrate deeper into their territories said that any bank that supports the Amazon industry is complicit in the threats in development to the world’s largest rainforest.
“Banks have a double standard,” Marlon Vargas, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, told Reuters Marlon Vargas. “To devastate the Amazon is to destroy itself.”
The Amazon rainforest, which covers nine countries in South America, is facing worsening fires and cleanliness for agriculture and mining. About 15-17% of the original forest has been destroyed, basically since the 1970s, according to scientists.
Rainforest plays an important role in regulating Earth’s climate by absorbing carbon dioxide, which is one of the main greenhouse fuels to blame for global warming. Scientists warn that additional damage can push the Amazon beyond a tipping point at what would be a primary fuel emitter.
Rabobank of the Netherlands said in a statement that it had stopped financing Ecuadorian crude oil shipments earlier this year, adding that the considerations raised were “consistent with our political commitments and were a component of due diligence in our industry financial operations.”
French bank Natixis and Dutch bank ING have committed to address the considerations raised in the report. Swiss bank UBS said it had already rejected some crude oil agreements in the region due to considerations of indigenous territorial rights.
Credit Suisse stated that the issues raised did not constitute any violation of its oil and fuel lending policies and revised its policies on environmental and social risks.
French bank BNP Paribas said the report’s method was “opaque” and asked how the authors had come to the banks’ estimates of currency exposures.
The report also indicates that Deutsche Bank played a minor role, mainly in financing a shipment of crude oil from Ecuador in April. The bank, which said last month that hardened its fossil fuel loan policy, declined to comment.
‘REPUTATION RISK’
But offering specialized financing for a global oil, herbal and coal fuel industry, known as industry financing, is under additional scrutiny.
“While banks are committed to aligning their money with Paris targets, this opens up a new reputation risk border,” said Bruce Duguid, managing director of British asset manager Federated Hermes, who advises clients with more than $1 trillion in assets.
Much of Amazon’s oil industry passes through banks or its subsidiaries in Switzerland, which is a major hub for the global oil industry, according to the report.
In Ecuador, which relies on oil exports basically pumped through the state-owned Petroamazonas for a third of public sector revenue, indigenous teams claim that concessions have been granted without their consent.
An Ecuadorian court ruled last year that the Waorani people had not been properly consulted and banned drilling on half a million acres of their territory.
Last week, Amnesty International issued an appeal for the coverage of women in the Ecuadorian Amazon who claim to have been threatened with death for resisting oil extraction, mining and logging. We don’t know who those threats are.
Fears about the effect of oil extraction in the Amazon intensified in April when a pipeline broke, depriving 27,000 indigenous people of their main water source.
And plans to drill hundreds of additional oil wells in Ecuador’s Yasuni National Park, which sits atop a major concession, have caused alarm. Home to jaguars, howler monkeys, pink dolphins, macaws and toucans, the UNESCO World Heritage Site is one of the most species-rich habitats on the planet.
“Let these banks contribute to the conservation and coverage of Mother Earth,” said Sandra Tukup of the Shuar network in the Amazon.
The Ministry of Energy and Petroamazonas did respond to requests for comment.
“Our priority is to take care of the environment and a harmonious relationship with the communities in our operational areas,” executive chairman Carlos Bermeo wrote in a Petroamazonas magazine last month.
MIXED ANSWERS
Natixis said he understands that oil export financing can inspire the planned expansion of Yasuní National Park.
“So we’re talking to similar parts … to assess how to deal with these considerations through financial innovation in the industry,” he said in a statement.
While ING questioned his exposure calculations and said two oil investors named in the report were no longer customers, he also said he was discussing tactics for his review of Amazon-related transactions.
“Percentage of many of the considerations defined in the report and we are serious about the factor internally,” he said.
However, the bank stated that the lack of certification systems comparable to those used to determine the origin of many tropical agricultural products made “traceability” in the oil and fuel industry difficult.
UBS told Reuters that it had refused to secure transactions when the origin of oil was “verifiable” in violation of its standards, adding those that protect indigenous territorial rights and United Nations heritage sites, and that it was “committed to maintaining the highest level of environmental and social standards.” Array
Credit Suisse reported that the report referred to its oil and fuel policy, which restricts the financing of projects that may threaten conservation or indigenous rights, but those policies were applied to “commercial financing services”.
He said the report’s approach was “vague and opaque” and made it “very difficult to comment, even in general terms, on the alleged activities of BNP Paribas.”
BNP Paribas stated that the report listed the precise rates of transactions assessed, nor did it provide data on “the breakdown of banks’ alleged corporate-consistent monetary exposures consistent with the year.”
Moira Birss of Amazon Watch said BNP Paribas had won a draft report more than two weeks before its publication and may have only asked for more details.
“Banks now have the opportunity to fill the gaps in industry financing and give a genuine sense of what they say about the climate and rights of indigenous peoples,” he said.
(Additional report through Brenna Hughes Neghaiwi at ZURICH, Julia Payne in LONDON and Melanie Burton in MELBOURNE; edited by Alexander Smith)
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