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amazon rainforest
Report Reveals $2 Billion of New Financing by Big Banks for Oil and Gas in the Amazon
"These investments are complicit in genocide: They are killing our culture, our history, and destroying the biodiversity of the Amazon.”
Oct 21, 2025
A day after the Brazilian state-run oil firm Petrobras announced it would begin drilling for oil near the mouth of the Amazon River "immediately" after obtaining a license despite concerns over the impact on wildlife, an analysis on Tuesday revealed that banks have added $2 billion in direct financing for oil and gas in the biodiverse Amazon Rainforest since 2024.
The report from Stand.earth—and Petrobras' license—come weeks before officials in Belém, Brazil prepare to host the 2025 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), where advocates are calling for an investment of $1.3 trillion per year for developing countries to mitigate and adapt to the climate emergency.
Examining 843 deals involving 330 banks, Stand.earth found that US banks JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America, and Citi are among the worst-performing institutions, pouring between $283 million and $326 million into oil and gas in the Amazon.
The biggest spender on oil and gas in the past year has been Itaú Unibanco, the Brazilian bank, which has sent $378 million in financing to oil and gas firms for extractive activities in the Amazon.
"Oil and gas expansion in the Amazon endangers one of the world’s most vital ecosystems and Indigenous peoples who have protected it for millennia," said Stand.earth. "In addition to fossil fuels leading global greenhouse gas emissions, in the Amazon their extraction also accelerates deforestation, and pollutes rivers and communities."
The group's research found that banks have directly financed more than $15 billion to oil and gas companies in the Amazon region since the Paris Agreement, the legally binding climate accord, was adopted in 2016. Nearly 75% of the investment has come from just 10 firms, including Itaú, JPMorgan Chase, Citi, and Bank of America.
The analysis comes weeks after the UN-backed Net-Zero Banking Alliance said it was suspending its operations, following decisions by several large banks to leave the alliance that was established in 2021 to limit banks' environmental footprint, achieve net-zero emissions in the sector by 2050, and set five-year goals for reducing the institutions' financing of emissions.
"Around 1,700 Indigenous people live here, and our survival depends on the forest. We ask that banks such as Itaú, Santander, and Banco do Nordeste stop financing companies that exploit fossil fuels in Indigenous territories."
Devyani Singh, lead researcher for Stand.earth's new bank scorecard on fossil fuel financing, noted that European banks like BNP Paribas and HSBC have "applied more robust policies to protect the sensitive Amazon rainforest than their peers" and have "significantly dropped in financing ranks."
But, said Singh, "no bank has yet brought its financing to zero. Every one of these banks must close the existing loopholes and fully exit Amazon oil and gas without delay.”
More than 80% of the banks' Amazon fossil fuel financing since 2024 has gone to just six oil and gas companies: Petrobras, Canada's Gran Tierra, Brazil's Eneva, oil trader Gunvor, and two Peruvian companies: Hunt Oil Peru and Pluspetrol Camisea.
The companies have been associated with human rights violations and have long been resisted by Indigenous people in the Amazon region, who have suffered from health impacts of projects like the Camisea gas project, a decline in fish and game stocks, and a lack of clean water.
“It’s outrageous that Bank of America, Scotiabank, Credicorp, and Itaú are increasing their financing of oil and gas in the Amazon at a time when the forest itself is under grave threat," said Olivia Bisa, president of the Autonomous Territorial Government of the Chapra Nation in Peru. "For decades, Indigenous Peoples have suffered the heaviest impacts of this destruction. We are calling on banks to change course now: by ending support for extractive industries in the Amazon, they can help protect the forest that sustains our lives and the future of the planet.”
Stand.earth's report warned that both the Amazon Rainforest—which provides a habitat for 10% of Earth's biodiversity, including many endangered species—and the people who live there are facing "escalating threats" from oil and gas companies and the firms that finance them, with centuries of exploitation driving the forest "toward an ecological tipping point with irreversible impacts that have global consequences."
Oil and gas exploration is opening roads into intact parts of the Amazon and other forests, while perpetuating the new fossil fuel emissions that scientists and energy experts have warned have no place on a pathway to limiting planetary heating.
"With warming temperatures, the delicate ecological balance of the Amazon could be upset, flipping it from being a carbon-absorbing rainforest into a carbon-emitting savannah," reads the group's report.
Jonas Mura, chief of the Gavião Real Indigenous Territory in Brazil, said "the noise, the constant truck traffic, and the explosions" from Eneva's projects "have driven away the animals and affected our hunting."
"Even worse: they are entering without our consent," said Mura. "Our territory feels threatened, and our families are being directly harmed. Around 1,700 Indigenous people live here, and our survival depends on the forest. We ask that banks such as Itaú, Santander, and Banco do Nordeste stop financing companies that exploit fossil fuels in Indigenous territories."
"These companies have no commitment to the environment, to Indigenous and traditional peoples, or to the future of the planet," he added. "These investments are complicit in genocide: They are killing our culture, our history, and destroying the biodiversity of the Amazon.”
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'Historic Mistake': Brazil Opens Up Amazon to New Oil Drilling Ahead of Global Climate Summit
"For us all to have a future, the oil industry can have no future," said one campaigner.
Oct 20, 2025
As climate leaders and policymakers arrive in Belém, Brazil next month, for the global climate summit that officials have pledged will stand apart from previous conferences due to its emphasis on "implementation," the country's government-run Petrobras firm will be drilling for oil just over 200 miles away in the Amazon, after the company was granted a license Monday.
Petrobras said it plans to begin drilling immediately in a project that will last about five months at the mouth of the Amazon River—the Foz de Amazonas region.
Despite President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva's reputation as an international climate leader, he has claimed that oil revenue will help fund Brazil's transition to renewable energy, but Ilan Zugman, Latin America and Caribbean director at the grassroots climate action group 350.org, said Monday that in granting the license, the Brazilian Institute of Environment and Renewable Natural Resources (IBAMA) was "doubling down on a model that has already failed."
Petrobras is planning to drill an oil well at an offshore site, Block 59, that is 310 miles from the mouth of the Amazon.
IBAMA previously denied Petrobras the license, saying the company had not provided adequate plans for how it would protect wildlife in the case of an oil spill.
"The history of oil in Brazil shows this clearly: huge profits for a few, and inequality, destruction, and violence for local populations."
In September, the agency approved a pre-operational environmental assessment and said a new "fauna simulation" would take place after the license was issued, allowed Petrobras to prove after obtaining permission for drilling that it would protect wildlife.
The Amazon region is home to about 10% of the planet's wildlife, and climate advocates have raised alarm that the river's currents would swiftly bring the damage from an oil spill straight to the habitats of many animals and plants.
Brazilian NGO the Climate Observatory said the approval of the license "sabotages" the 30th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP30), which World Meteorological Organization Secretary-General Celeste Sauro said recently "aspires to be a turning point, a moment when the world shifts from ambition to implementation."
Last year was the first year to exceed 1.5°C above average preindustrial temperatures, and the previous 10 years have been the warmest on record. Scientists and the International Energy Agency have warned that no new oil or other fossil fuel projects have a place on a pathway to reaching net-zero global carbon emissions by 2050.
“The decision is disastrous from an environmental, climate, and sociobiodiversity perspective," said the Climate Observatory.
The group told The Guardian that civil society organizations would be taking the Brazilian government to court over the license, saying its approval was rife with "illegalities and technical flaws."
Despite IBAMA's approval, an opinion signed by 29 staff members at the agency in February said they recommended denying the license due to the risk of “massive biodiversity loss in a highly sensitive marine ecosystem."
Zugman called the decision a "historic mistake."
"The history of oil in Brazil shows this clearly: huge profits for a few, and inequality, destruction, and violence for local populations," said Zugman. "Brazil must take real climate leadership and break the cycle of extraction that has led us to the current climate crisis. We urgently need a just energy transition plan, based on renewables, that respects Indigenous, quilombola, and riverside peoples and guarantees them a leading role in decisions about climate and energy—including at COP30."
Earlier this year, Indigenous leaders representing dozens of Amazon ethnicities and tribes signed a declaration demanding that officials at COP30 "nullify oil blocks that have not had the consent of Indigenous people," "halt investment in new oil infrastructure," and create phase-out plans for oil and gas operations.
Nick Young, co-head of story and communications at Greenpeace International, called IBAMA's decision "disastrous."
"A spill here would be catastrophic and uniquely hard to contain in the Amazon plume," said Young. "And in addition to the risk of oil spills, the science clearly shows that we cannot afford to burn even existing oil reserves, let alone new ones."
"For us all to have a future, the oil industry can have no future," he added. "It makes zero sense to allow them to find new oil to throw on the fire."
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Amazon Countries Shouldn’t Have to Fight Environmental Crime Alone
While progress among Amazon countries is laudable, we also need countries from outside the region to take a stand against environmental crimes, illegally sourced natural resources, and illicit financial flows stemming from environmental destruction.
Sep 11, 2025
On August 22, leaders from the eight Amazon countries gathered to take stock of current efforts to protect the world’s largest rainforest and river basin. The meeting came at a time when the Amazon faces unprecedented threats from illegal logging and mining, unchecked expansion of ranching and farming into protected areas, uncontrolled megafires, and rising levels of crime and violence. 2024 was the fifth worst year on record for deforestation in the Amazon region, with over 4.3 million acres of forest lost. Meanwhile, illegal gold mining in the Amazon has doubled since 2018, expanding into increasingly remote and ecologically sensitive areas and threatening the safety and well-being of local communities.
In the balance hangs the future of one of the most special and biodiverse places on Earth. The Amazon is home to a staggering 3 million species, including flagship species such as jaguars, pink river dolphins, and some of the largest eagles in the world. Beyond its incredible biodiversity, the Amazon rainforest plays a key role in our global defense against climate change, absorbing one-fourth of the carbon dioxide absorbed by all the land on Earth.
The Amazon is also critically important as a home to an estimated 40 million people (roughly the population of Canada), including an estimated 400 Indigenous groups speaking 300 languages. Amazon residents are facing complex threats including rising levels of violence and insecurity, mercury contamination from illegal mining, extreme weather events such as droughts and wildfires, limited state presence, and insufficient economic opportunity. Many of these challenges stem from the rising role of environmental crime in the region, which threatens local livelihoods, contaminates food and water sources, and empowers criminal organizations operating with increasing levels of violence and sophistication.
As leaders gathered at the Fifth Presidential Summit of Amazon Countries in Bogota, Colombia, it was clear to many of us attending that the stakes were high. On balance, the results of the summit were positive. Those of us working to combat environmental crimes were pleased to see countries formally commit to crucial issues, including:
- Addressing mercury use;
- Strengthening security cooperation in response to cross-border illicit activities in the Amazon Region, including environmental crimes, threats to environmental defenders, and human rights violations; and
- Increasing technical cooperation among member countries for the exchange of information, experiences, and best practices related to gold traceability.
While these commitments mark progress, much more is needed. Some of the commitments are quite vague, particularly around illegal mercury use. With over 200 tons of illegal mercury trafficked into the Amazon region over the past five years, and emerging accounts of Amazon children who cannot speak or walk due to exposure to this toxic substance, countries need to commit to far more than “advancing the development of initiatives that allow addressing” this deadly harm.
Yet the region will have a hard time addressing these challenges without cooperation from the countries that serve as the destination for products and profits deriving from the Amazon’s destruction. Our work at the FACT Coalition has shown how the profits from environmental crimes in the Amazon flow to financial hubs outside of the region, notably the United States.
Take gold, for example. Our research has shown that the United States is a major destination for both illegally sourced gold and the illicit funds associated with its sale. Other global financial and trade centers play similarly important roles. The United Kingdom is among the world’s largest gold centers and is home to influential standards-setting bodies such as the London Bullion Market Association (LBMA), and Switzerland is a global hub for gold refining. Could the Amazon region reasonably be expected to address illicit gold trading without engagement from these multibillion dollar markets?
The US should also resume recently-cancelled funding for international projects related to combating environmental crimes.
This is an important reminder that the devastating, rapidly growing environmental crimes threatening the Amazon with illicit extraction of natural resources do not occur in a vacuum. Illegally sourced natural resources from the Amazon region often enter global markets—and the illicit wealth they produce ends up far from the banks of the Amazon river, secreted away in shell companies, real estate, and other opaque structures.
While progress among Amazon countries is laudable, we also need countries from outside the region to take a stand against environmental crimes, illegally sourced natural resources, and illicit financial flows stemming from environmental destruction. They can do this by closing loopholes in their trade and financial systems, prosecuting environmental criminals, and cracking down on shell and front companies, the preferred financial getaway vehicle for environmental criminals.
Specifically, the US should address corporate and financial opacity in its own markets by implementing key reforms. This should include:
- Addressing the outsized role of US anonymous shell companies in environmental crimes by fully implementing the Corporate Transparency Act (CTA);
- Making transnational environmental crimes—such as those committed in the Amazon rainforest—an underlying offense for money laundering, which would help US prosecutors go after billions of dollars in dirty money driving environmental destruction;
- Requiring the same documentation needed to bring $10,000 in cash into the United States for $10,000 worth of gold, thereby closing a major loophole that is currently used by environmental criminals;
- Passing the bipartisan United States Legal Gold and Mining Partnership Act, which would establish a multi-year strategy to reduce the environmental and social impacts of illegal gold mining in the Western Hemisphere; and
- Ensuring that US government agencies working to protect the Amazon and combat environmental crimes have the resources they need to effectively do their job.
The US should also resume recently-cancelled funding for international projects related to combating environmental crimes. This should include support for formalization efforts for local workers, such as artisanal gold miners, helping to connect them with environmentally friendly techniques and responsible consumer markets.
It’s great to see Amazon countries committing to new measures to combat environmental crime. But they shouldn’t have to do it alone—especially when partnership from global allies could make all the difference.
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