Agriculture and food

This report reveals that the largest U.S. asset managers, BlackRock, State Street and Vanguard – known as the Big Three – have explicitly undermined efforts by consumer brands and agribusiness companies to halt deforestation. The Big Three collectively hold shares worth almost $700 billion in consumer brands with supply chain links to rainforest destruction, and tens of billions more in the agribusiness producers directly responsible for widespread deforestation. All three firms have voted against or abstained from voting on every single shareholder resolution requiring companies to act on deforestation since 2012, and lack clear policies to engage with companies on the issue, which is the second leading cause of climate change.

Forests and Finance is a website that reveals the role that finance plays in enabling tropical deforestation, which has been expanded to cover Brazil and Central & West Africa, as well as Southeast Asia. The website is a publicly searchable database, functioning as a transparency tool by providing CSOs and journalists a deep insight into financiers that are supporting forest-risk commodity companies. It is a joint initiative of the Forests & Finance Coalition, which includes Rainforest Action Network, Tuk Indonesia, Profundo, Amazon Watch, Repórter Brasil and BankTrack.

This new case study for Fair Finance Guide Netherlands shows that Dutch banks, insurance companies, and pension funds are financing deforestation in the Amazon and the Brazilian Cerrado-savannah, contributing to human rights violations, climate change, biodiversity loss and large-scale animal suffering.

The palm oil industry has seen considerable transformation in the last few years, as suppliers that are not compliant with NDPE policies have been increasingly excluded from supply chains. However, these gains are undermined when the same suppliers enter supply chains via spot purchases. Yet, little is known about the spot market. This paper seeks to provide information on the market, how it operates, and highlight the risk it presents to NDPE compliance efforts.

Widespread fires in Brazilian tropical forests were at the center of media attention in 2019. NGOs, politicians and celebrities called for action to stop deforestation for soy and livestock, the main cause of the fires. Indonesia also endured extensive blazes in 2019, often linked to deforestation for palm oil. Forests in Brazil and Indonesia capture carbon, retaining vast amounts of carbon dioxide and regulating global temperatures. Fires release that stored CO2 back to the atmosphere, contributing to further climate change. This report describes the main drivers of the fires in Brazil and Indonesia, the actors involved, the political context, and the risks for investors.

Palm oil refiners are a strategic bottleneck in the global supply chain. Since 2014, the largest refiners have adopted No Deforestation, No Peat, No Exploitation (NDPE) policies, the strongest private instrument to cut the direct link between deforestation and palm oil. Refiners commit to NDPE policies that cover their plantations and the plantations of their third-party suppliers. This market mechanism functions best when the entire industry follows commitments. However, non-cooperating refiners continue to leak unsustainable palm oil into the market.

Socfin group is a Luxembourg-based holding which is involved in oil palm and rubber production in Asia and Africa, with about 400,000 hectares of concessions in ten countries. It is 39% owned by the French group Bolloré and 54% owned by the Belgian businessman Hubert Fabri. The objective of this report is to get a better overview of the Socfin group’s ownership and holding structure.

The trend to integrate sustainability factors into financial regulatory frameworks is creating compliance, legal and reputational risks for local banks and investors financing forest-risk commodities in tropical countries. International banks and investors exposed to these supply chains may also be affected. Based on public sources and interviews, this report analyses the integration of sustainability in financial regulation on the international level, as well as in the regulatory frameworks of five countries with tropical forests: Brazil, Colombia, Peru, Indonesia and Malaysia.

This paper maps players in the Matopiba (a region in the Brazilian Cerrado) soy supply chain, focusing on midstream crushing as well as compound feed and livestock sectors in key soy processing markets. Their soy consumption is connected to considerable deforestation risk.

This report, based on data from the Forests&Finance database, released by Rainforest Action Network, TuK Indonesia, WAHLI, Jikalahari and Profundo reviews the progress of Indonesia’s Sustainable Finance reforms over the past 5 years. It shows that while new standards have started to improve the requirements on banks to disclose Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) risks in their portfolios, major loopholes remain. These problems are further compounded by lack of bank implementation on the obligations they do have. The banks assessed failed to properly disclose - much less address - serious ESG risks identified in the operations of their major clients. Unreported risks included use of fire to clear land, labor violations, human rights violations, peatland development and deforestation. The report presents a suite of policy recommendations to close regulatory loopholes, improve bank risk management processes, and to increase transparency and accountability to the public and communities impacted by reckless bank financing.

The expansion of the palm oil industry in the last ten years was partially in response to the anticipated demand for biofuels worldwide. The expected EU biodiesel boom did not materialize, resulting in a systemic oversupply of palm oil in Southeast Asia. A number of recent policy initiatives may bring about significant shifts in the enduser markets of palm oil-based biodiesel starting January 1, 2020. The geographical markets and the sectors with growing biodiesel demand are not traditionally known for their strict sustainability demands, and therefore may pose new leakage market risks.

This report analyses deforestation risks linked to the “JJF Holding de Investimentos e Participações" land-grabbing case in Formosa do Rio Preto in the Matopiba region of the Cerrado biome (Brazil). The JJF Holding case, one of the largest land grabbing incidents in Brazil, is linked to land tenure insecurities that cover 366,000 hectares in one of the key Cerrado soyproducing areas. The land tenure insecurities expose soft-commodity traders like Bunge, ALZ and Cargill, to deforestation and financial risks