SINGAPORE, Oct 15 (Reuters) – Banks have lent as much as $595 billion since 2020 to companies that contribute to tropical deforestation and ecosystem destruction, research commissioned by a coalition of environmental groups showed on Wednesday.
• The Forests & Finance coalition said in its annual Banking on Biodiversity Collapse report that banks lent a total of $351 billion to “high-risk” agricultural commodity firms and another $244 billion to mining companies from 2020 to 2025.
• “These sectors are the primary drivers of deforestation, land degradation and community conflict across the tropical forest basins of South America, Southeast Asia and Central and West Africa,” it said.
• Banks “issuing the most high-risk credit still do not have adequate safeguards to mitigate the risks of serious environmental and social harm,” it said.
• Annual lending and underwriting to mining companies operating in tropical-forest-rich countries rose 55% between 2016 and 2025, from $23.7 billion to $36.7 billion, with the biggest increases in lithium and nickel financing.
• Annual forest-risk financing for agricultural commodities has also accelerated by 71% since 2016, from $37.9 billion to $64.7 billion, with beef industry financing up more than 50%, soy up 137% and pulp and paper up 157%.
• Banks have provided $67.1 billion to Indonesia’s pulp and palm oil sectors since 2020, contributing significantly to deforestation and peat drainage, and making areas like Kalimantan and Sumatra more vulnerable to fires and floods, it said.
• Haze from Indonesia’s most intense El Niño-fueled wildfire season in 11 years has caused a spike in respiratory illnesses and a dramatic decline in air quality in Singapore and Malaysia.
• A new round of talks on global biodiversity is set to get underway in Yerevan, Armenia, on October 19, with a “stocktake” set to show that countries remain way behind on achieving their 2030 conservation targets.
(Reporting by David Stanway; Editing by Thomas Derpinghaus)
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