IP GROUPS URGE EUROPEAN BANKS TO GET OUT OF AMAZON OIL TRADE

European banks committed to backing action on climate change face allegations of double standards from indigenous groups in Ecuador after a report named them as major players in the trade in oil from the Amazon rainforest.

Stand.earth and Amazon Watch said ING, Credit Suisse, Natixis, BNP Paribas, UBS and Rabobank were the largest backers in the shipment of about $10 billion of dollars of Ecuadorian crude to US refineries over the last decade, Matthew Green, Alexandra Valencia and Simon Jessop reported for Reuters on August 12, 2020.

Each of the banks identified, having reviewed the report here referred to environmental commitments they had made, such as to back the 2015 Paris climate accord, protect forests and support United Nations sustainable development goals. But indigenous communities resisting oil industry plans to push deeper into their territories said any bank backing the trade from the Amazon was complicit in growing threats to the world’s largest rainforest.

“The banks are engaging in double standards,” Marlon Vargas, president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, told Reuters. “To devastate the Amazon is to devastate life itself.” Spanning nine countries in South America, the Amazon rainforest faces worsening wildfires and clearing for agriculture and mining. Between 15% and 17% of the original forest has been destroyed, mostly since the 1970s, scientists say. The rainforest plays a vital role in regulating the Earth’s climate by absorbing carbon dioxide, which is one of the main greenhouse gases responsible for global warming. Scientists warn further damage could push the Amazon past a tipping point where it becomes a major emitter of the gas.