• Finance is often portrayed as distant from environmental destruction, but in reality, it sits at the center: banks and investors decide which business models survive and which harms they will tolerate.
• Right now, a successful agreement called the Amazon Soy Moratorium, which has helped protect millions of hectares of forest by stopping major traders from buying soy grown on Amazon land deforested after 2008, is on the brink of collapse due to industry pressure — but banks can play a role in ensuring these traders stay in the pact and don’t let it unravel.
• “Financial institutions should make continued access to capital conditional on compliance with the moratorium’s core principles: no deforestation after 2008, full traceability, and zero tolerance for forest destruction in the Amazon biome,” a new op-ed argues.