Major banks in the European Union have granted a total of €256 billion in loans since the Paris Agreement in 2015 to companies that pose a direct threat to forests, savannahs and other critically affected ecosystems, a report by Dutch firm Profundo and published by Greenpeace and Global Witness reveals.
The study, co-signed by fifteen other NGOs including Belgium’s Fairfin and BOS+, highlights the role of Belgian financial institutions such as KBC Group, BNP Paribas, ING Group and Deutsche Bank. They have reportedly given €100 billion of credit between 2016 and 2023 to “sectors that are destroying nature”.
These banks, alongside smaller players like Argenta, Belfius Bank, Ackermans & van Haaren and Banque Degroof Petercam, have also invested €8.8 billion in sectors posing a threat to climate and nature.
Monitoring reports by NGO AidEnvironment have potentially linked four of the six named groups – Bunge, Cargill, JBS and Marfrig – to 270,000 hectares of deforestation, solely in Brazil.
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The researchers also point to a legal loophole in the European anti-deforestation regulations (EUDR), adopted in May 2023. Although it mandates that companies can only sell products not resulting from deforestation and legally produced in the EU, it does not prevent financial flows towards “the destruction of ecosystems”, the NGOs observe.
The organisations behind the study are calling on the EU to implement regulations to “put an end to the financing of companies that are destroying nature”, and for the financial sector to align with climate goals and targets for biodiversity.
