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rainforest action network
Oreo’s Sweet Image Hides a Bitter Truth About Forests and Human Rights
Oreo may seem harmless. But when palm oil is sourced from destroyed rainforest or land taken without consent, the cost is not just environmental—it is human.
Feb 19, 2026
Oreo is marketed as “milk’s favorite cookie.” But behind that familiar blue package is a supply chain tied to rainforest destruction and violence against the people who defend their land.
Mondelēz International, the corporate giant that makes Oreo, has built a global snack empire worth nearly $40 billion a year. Its products line grocery shelves across the country. What most consumers never see is the palm oil that goes into those products—or the damage connected to its production.
Palm oil expansion remains one of the leading drivers of tropical deforestation. It is also linked to land grabs, intimidation, and violence against Indigenous and local communities who resist losing their forests.
According to Rainforest Action Network’s 2025 Keep Forests Standing Scorecard, Mondelēz ranked last among major consumer goods companies on deforestation and human rights safeguards. The company scored just 4 out of 24 possible points. Most alarming, it received zero points for having a public policy protecting Human Rights Defenders—people who face threats, criminalization, and violence for standing up to destructive development.
Communities should not be displaced for cookies.
Between 2015 and 2024, more than 6,400 attacks and over 1,000 killings of land and environmental defenders were documented worldwide. Industrial agriculture is a major driver of this violence.
These defenders are farmers, Indigenous leaders, journalists, teachers, and community members. They are protecting forests that stabilize the climate, regulate rainfall, and support biodiversity found nowhere else on Earth. They are also protecting their homes.
Mondelēz has been exposed more than once for sourcing palm oil linked to illegal deforestation in Indonesia’s Leuser Ecosystem—often called the “Orangutan Capital of the World.” The Leuser region is one of the last places on Earth where critically endangered species including rhinos, elephants, tigers, and orangutans still coexist in the wild. It is also home to Indigenous communities who depend on intact forests for survival.
Satellite monitoring continues to show forest loss in protected areas within this ecosystem. That means safeguards are failing.
Mondelēz promotes its “Snacking Made Right” campaign as proof of sustainability leadership. But marketing language does not stop chainsaws. Without enforceable policies and independent monitoring, companies continue to profit while forests fall.
The absence of a Human Rights Defender policy is not a minor oversight. It sends a message through the supply chain that violence and intimidation are not red lines. When corporations fail to adopt zero-tolerance policies against threats and criminalization, suppliers operate with fewer consequences.
This is not just about environmental damage. It is about whether communities have the right to say no when their land is targeted for development. It is about Free, Prior, and Informed Consent. It is about whether corporate profit outweighs human safety.
Deforestation is accelerating the climate crisis. Tropical rainforests absorb carbon and cool the planet. When they are cleared, that stored carbon is released, intensifying global warming. From stronger hurricanes to prolonged droughts and wildfires, the effects are already visible.
Corporations that rely on forest-risk commodities have the power to change this trajectory. Mondelēz could require full traceability for its palm oil supply. It could suspend suppliers linked to deforestation or violence. It could adopt a clear, public Human Rights Defender policy with zero tolerance for intimidation and criminalization. It could require proof that communities have granted Free, Prior, and Informed Consent before land is developed.
Instead, it continues business as usual.
Oreo may seem harmless. But when palm oil is sourced from destroyed rainforest or land taken without consent, the cost is not just environmental—it is human.
Communities should not be displaced for cookies. Forest defenders should not risk their lives so multinational corporations can maintain margins.
Mondelēz has the size and influence to shift industry standards. What it lacks is the political will.
Protecting forests starts with protecting the people who defend them. Until companies like Mondelēz adopt enforceable policies that prioritize human rights and end deforestation in their supply chains, their sustainability claims will ring hollow.
Consumers deserve snacks that do not come at the expense of forests and communities. And the people risking their lives to protect the planet deserve more than silence from the corporations profiting from their land.
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Banking on Climate Chaos Report Shows 'Tremendous' Financing Surge
"The time for climate justice is now, and that means ending fossil fuel investment at its source and holding banks and financial institutions accountable," said one Native American environmental activist.
Jun 17, 2025
The 16th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report, which was released Tuesday, found that dozens of the world's biggest banks committed $869 billion to firms engaged in fossil fuels in 2024—a "tremendous" increase from the overall fossil fuel financing that was recorded the year prior, according to the authors of the study.
The report comes a few months after the World Meteorological Organization announced a new milestone in the climate crisis: Not only was 2024 the warmest year in a 175-year observational period, reaching a global surface temperature of roughly 1.55°C above the preindustrial average for the first time, but each of the past 10 years was also individually the 10 warmest on record.
The new report analyzed the globe's 65 largest banks by assets according to S&P Global's annual rankings and was authored by several climate-focused groups, including Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Sierra Club, Indigenous Environmental Network (IEN), and others.
The report has been endorsed by hundreds of organizations in dozens of countries, according to a statement from RAN, and all banks in the report were given the opportunity to review the financing attributed to them prior to the report's release.
Big picture, the report shows that Wall Street investment banks and other financial institutions are "complicit in the climate crisis," according to Tom BK Goldtooth, executive director of the Indigenous Environmental Network and study co-author.
"The time for climate justice is now, and that means ending fossil fuel investment at its source and holding banks and financial institutions accountable," Goldtooth added.
The bank financing compiled in the report includes things such as the role banks play in facilitating bond issuances or their lending of money, according to the methodology section. Banks play a crucial role in enabling fossil fuel production because, as senior research strategist at RAN Caleb Schwarz explained, fossil fuel companies are quite rich but they don't have enough capital to finance their projects solely on their own.
Fossil fuel financing had been in on the decline between 2021 and 2023, dropping by $215 billion during that time period to $707 billion—meaning the rise in 2024 is a turnaround of over $162 billion.
"This growth in fossil fuel finance is troubling because new fossil fuel infrastructure locks in more decades of fossil fuel dependence," according to the report. "While various macroeconomic and political factors likely influenced specific decisions, at the end of the day, what matters is the outcome: Banks poured even more money into the expansion of the fossil fuel industry, despite the clear societal need for them to do the opposite."
Other topline findings include that the 65 banks featured in the report have committed $7.9 trillion in fossil fuel financing since 2016, and over two-thirds of the banks upped their fossil fuel financing between 2023 and 2024.
The world's biggest offender when it comes to fossil fuel financing in 2024 was JPMorgan Chase, which tallied $53.5 billion in fossil fuel financing, per the report. Bank of America came in second place.
"This should be a wake-up call to national governments and regional supervisory bodies that they need to step in," said Allison Fajans-Turner, bank engagement and policy lead at RAN and one of the co-authors of the report, on Tuesday. "Banks are not policing themselves. Regulators need to set rules to manage the financial risk that banks are putting into the system."
The authors of the report lay out several demands for banks, including that they drop all finance for fossil fuel expansion, adopt "binding and mandatory emissions reduction targets for upstream, midstream, and downstream fossil fuels," and increase financing for a "just transition," among others.
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Insurance Giant Chubb Shows 'Promising Leadership' by Dropping Texas LNG Project
"Chubb has the potential to lead the industry and raise the bar for AIG and Liberty Mutual to follow suit," said one campaigner.
Aug 06, 2024
Climate, environmental, and Indigenous rights defenders on Tuesday welcomed news that global insurance giant Chubb dropped out of a highly controversial methane gas project on the Texas Gulf Coast after months of grassroots community pressure.
The Sunrise Project published an insurance certificate obtained via a public information act request showing that Chubb is no longer insuring the Rio Grande liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminal in Brownsville. Houston-based NextDecade—which touts itself as a "sustainable LNG" company—says Phase I of Rio Grande LNG is currently under construction and that the 984-acre site "will be the largest privately funded infrastructure project in Texas."
In addition to exacerbating the climate emergency, Rio Grande LNG threatens land and sites sacred to the Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe, which opposes the project.
"When you do the due diligence and understand Indigenous rights, this project is a no-go," Carrizo/Comecrudo Tribe of Texas Chair Juan Mancias said in a statement. "Investors and major banks have dropped Rio Grande LNG, and now insurers are following suit because the claims of the fossil fuel companies can't be trusted—here, or anywhere in Texas."
According to the Sunrise Project:
This is the latest setback for the not-yet-built project that would harm the coastal landscape of the Rio Grande Valley as one of the last pristine areas of the Texas coastline—a haven for wildlife, fishing, tourism, and recreation and home to Latine and Indigenous communities—into an industrial methane export hub. Years of campaigning was a likely factor in the insurer backing away. Five banks—SMBC, Société Générale, Credit Suisse, and privately, two additional banks—committed to not financing the project after pressure from community leaders.
Community members voiced the impacts that the methane terminal's gas storage tanks, flare stacks, pipelines, and explosion risks pose to the Port of Brownsville, including the city of Brownsville and those known as the "Laguna Madre": Port Isabel, South Padre Island, Laguna Vista, Long Island Village, and Laguna Heights. The cumulative impacts on soils, air and water quality, community health, vegetation, wildlife, threatened and endangered species, tourism, commercial fisheries, and noise would be significant.
"We tell companies the truth about these projects that would be an environmental disaster for our South Texas community. It feels good to be heard," said Bekah Hinojosa of the South Texas Environmental Network. "I expect other insurers like AIG and Sompo to drop next because the LNG facility, the pipeline, the company—they're losers with a dangerous project."
In June, hundreds of Gulf Coast residents traveled to Chubb's New York office to protest the company's insurance of fossil fuel projects including Rio Grande LNG, Texas LNG, Freeport LNG, and Cameron LNG. Six activists were arrested for blocking the main entrance to Chubb's building. The protest—one of several targeting fossil fuel funders and insurers—was part of the Summer of Heat, a civil disobedience campaign aimed at getting Wall Street to stop funding planet-heating oil, gas, and coal projects.
Ethan Nuss of Rainforest Action Network (RAN) asserted that "Chubb is showing some promising leadership by pulling out of Rio Grande LNG."
"Now Chubb must take the next step of becoming a true climate leader and stop insuring all methane," Nuss added. "Now Chubb must take the next step of becoming a true climate leader and stop insuring all methane. Chubb has the potential to lead the industry and raise the bar for AIG and Liberty Mutual to follow suit."
In February, RAN and the consumer advocacy group Public Citizen published a report revealing that at least 35 different insurance companies were underwriting Rio Grande LNG. The report named Chubb and AIG as the world's two most prolific insurers of fossil fuel projects.
"AIG has tripped over itself to insure Rio Grande LNG in the wake of Chubb's exit," Public Citizen insurance campaigner Rick Morris said on Tuesday.
"This move is the latest in a long pattern of insuring and investing in fossil fuels that shows AIG's climate and human rights commitments aren't worth the paper they're written on," he added. "We have one message for AIG: We won't stop fighting until you drop these disastrous projects."
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