COP27 Publication and Breaking News Hub
Breaking News:
- Fossil Fuel Phase Out Day at COP27 {16 Nov}
- A New Data Forest Partnership – For Who? {14 Nov}
- Over 600 lobbyists for oil and gas at COP bearing false solutions {12 Nov}
- Report Published: Wall Street’s Dirtiest Secret: How Fossil Fuel Expansion Depends on Big Bank Finance {9 Nov}
- HLEG Report Crucial Tool For Advocacy; Could Be Improved on Human Rights and Deforestation {8 Nov}
- LEAF Coalition Creates Markets for Blood Carbon and Harmful Offsets {7 Nov}
- FCLP Must Get Funds To Indigenous Communities Without Offsets {7 Nov}
- FACT Dialogue Needs A Fifth Pillar For Success: Human Rights {7 Nov}
- Agri-Commodity Roadmap Raises Concerns Instead of Celebrations {7 Nov}
- Unilever: Landscape Level Actions Welcome; Carbon Bombs Are Not {7 Nov}
Statement on COP27:
For too long, those the least responsible for our climate crisis pay the highest price — often with their lives.
This United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP27), held on the African continent, highlights the ever-widening disparity between those profiting from and those punished by destructive and polluting industries. Enforceable agreements for a loss and damage solution enacted by the greatest polluting countries must be a priority. There needs to be a financial facility established to assist nations recover from ever-increasing disasters and support their sustainable energy structures. These solutions must be created with environmental justice and a just transition to a regenerative economy as guiding principles.
Loss and damage is not an abstract concept to people fighting deforestation and fossil fuel expansion. Sacred sites are routinely destroyed and livelihoods are decimated for profits to be pipelined out of thriving communities and into corporate coffers. Corporations must stop their destruction and fund equitable pathways towards decarbonization as well as the protection and restoration of nature under the sovereignty of the people most affected by climate chaos. They must honor international agreements and enable Indigenous peoples to control their lands while respecting their free, prior, and informed consent.
This type of systemic change happens with robust debate, necessary dissent, and civil advocacy. Activists fighting for human rights, a sustainable planet, and our collective future must be assured of their freedom to associate, assemble, and express these critical needs without arbitrary detention and punishment. There is no climate justice without open civic space.
The window for limiting warming to below 1.5 C is rapidly closing. The consequences of failing to meet that goal are catastrophic. It is time for urgent action! Polluters must pay for the costs of climate chaos. Financial systems that bankroll deforestation, fossil fuel expansion, and their associated human rights violations must be revolutionized by principles of climate justice. This page paper lays out the Rainforest Action Network’s latest research and activities for COP27. Working together, we can reorganize systems and financial flows to keep fossil fuels in the ground and keep forests standing.
Detailed Reports & Analysis:
The Rainforest Action Network outlines the specific policies that COP actors must adopt, especially in regards to corporate funding fossil fuel expansion and deforestation, in this position paper.
Banks often tout their climate plans and their support for the Paris agreements. However, it’s surprising to realize that since that time, just how much money goes into fossil fuel expansion alone.
To keep in line with Paris agreement goals, and save lives and livelihoods, there can be no new fossil fuel development.
This report, published on November 9th at COP27, presents the shocking amount of investment in industries that banks have promised to scale back.
MarketWatch coverage of the report launch: JPMorgan Chase and 5 other U.S. mega banks behind a third of the global funding expanding coal, oil and gas
The 13th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, the most comprehensive global analysis on fossil fuel banking to date, underscores the stark disparity between public climate commitments being made by the world’s largest banks, versus the reality of their largely business-as-usual financing to the fossil fuel industry.
The report documents that in the six years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with USD $4.6 trillion, with $742 billion in 2021 alone. 2021 fossil fuel financing numbers remained above 2016 levels, when the Paris Agreement was signed. Of particular significance is the revelation that the 60 banks profiled in the report funneled $185.5 billion just last year into the 100 companies doing the most to expand the fossil fuel sector.
Since the Paris Agreement was signed in 2015, Forests & Finance revealed that banks have provided USD 267 billion in credit (2016-2022 September) to just 300 forest-risk commodity companies operating in the world’s three largest tropical forest regions.
Read our policy assessment to determine if your money is destroying the rainforest and violating human rights:
All fossil fuel projects need three things: permits, financing, and insurance. Insurance companies are stepping up when it comes to their enabling of climate chaos. They roll out lots of climate plans – and we’ve scored their actions in this report with Insure Our Future.
Gas is one of the key fossil fuels that push us into climate collapse. Despite its misleading marketing as a cleaner fuel source, methane leaks and energy consumption to use gas makes it a worse greenhouse fuel than coal. The recent geopolitics has been seized upon as an excuse to expand this fossil fuel like never before – against the wishes of Ukrainians suffering the most. Communities all over the globe on the fence lines of gas companies are fighting back – read the report from one of these places, the Rio Grande Valley on the US/Mexico border.
Conflict Palm Oil undermines communities autonomy and rights to their lands while deforesting crucial ecosystems home to the world’s orangutans. To combat climate chaos, we must keep forest standing. Find out which big brands are causing climate disasters for palm oil.
As covered by the Financial Times, scientist criticisms of the Science Based Target initiatives (used by companies to justify their climate plans) has caused significant shake-ups, like the recent removal of Asia Pacific Resource International (APRIL). This highlights the risks and loopholes associated with SBTi’s target setting initiative, which must focus on transparency and accountability to ensure its commitment to scientific integrity is realized.
Search for links between financiers and deforestation-risk companies in our database, updated for COP: https://forestsandfinance.org/data/
See which financial institutions are most involved and how their environmental, social, and governance policies stack up by reviewing policy scores: https://forestsandfinance.org/bank-policies/