Global Day of Action for the Amazon

Banks and investors share the blame for the Amazon crisis.

Yesterday, Feedback along with 70 plus organisations, including Mighty Earth, Extinction Rebellion and Friends of the Earth, called for immediate action by the banks and investors providing the financial fuel for destruction in the Amazon. As we state:

“The Amazon is on fire. Investors share the blame. They need to become part of the solution.

 The primary blame for the current burning of the Amazon is being placed, rightly, on the violent, regressive and racist administration of Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro, who has explicitly encouraged illegal miners and ranchers to set fire to the lungs of the earth. But reckless multinational businesses’ exploitative practices created these conditions – and these same companies will likely be poised to profit as today’s fires opens up the door for tomorrow’s plantations and ranches.”

These companies, such as the meat giants JBS, Minerva and Marfrig do not act alone. Banks and institutional investors such as Barclays, HSBC and Prudential provide hundreds of millions of pounds of financial fodder in the form credit and equity, enabling the destruction of forests and greenhouse gas emissions on the scale of Big Oil.

Over the next months you will begin to hear more from Feedback about these vital issues, as we work to expose the banks and investors propping up “Big Livestock”. In the meantime, if you want to find out more about the businesses behind the destruction, check out the letter on our friend’s at Mighty Earth’s website and get a sneak peak of our new campaign: The Steaks are High.