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deforestation
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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JBS Doesn’t Deserve a Place in Our Markets or on Our Plates
Even in industrial meat production, an industry known for its corruption and poor conditions, JBS stands out for the scope and severity of its violations.
Aug 20, 2025
Earlier this summer, JBS, the world’s largest meatpacking corporation, was approved to list on the New York Stock Exchange. The move was celebrated in business media as a milestone of corporate growth and a testament to the leadership of JBS’ 33-year-old CEO of their US division Wesley Batista Filho. But behind the headlines lies a far more troubling story, one of exploitation, impunity, and environmental devastation that should not be ignored.
Turning a blind eye to abuses at a company as large and powerful as JBS is dangerous, with the harms extending far beyond the meatpacking industry. Consumers, advocates, and investors must stop normalizing this behavior. We have the power and the responsibility to demand better.
JBS has built its empire not through innovation or sustainability, but through exploitation. Price fixing, child labor, wage theft, bribery, tax avoidance, deforestation, animal cruelty—these are not isolated scandals. They are core ingredients of JBS’ business model. And while many corporations would work to correct and address their abuses, JBS has repeatedly treated legal penalties and reputational damage as just another cost of doing business.
Even in industrial meat production, an industry known for its corruption and poor conditions, JBS stands out for the scope and severity of its violations. The company recently agreed to pay over $80 million to settle a beef price-fixing lawsuit. Earlier this year, the company was cited for illegally employing migrant children, some as young as 13, on overnight cleaning shifts in its slaughterhouses. Meanwhile, workers across its global operations report being injured, silenced, or discarded when they speak up.
We must stop sending the message that corporations can endanger workers, break the law, and destroy the environment without consequence, as long as they remain profitable.
A recent federal lawsuit filed by Salima Jandali, a former safety trainer at JBS’ Greeley, Colorado plant, alleges that she faced racial and religious harassment, was retaliated against for raising safety concerns, and was pressured to falsify injury reports. Her allegations closely mirror a separate class action lawsuit filed by Black workers at another JBS facility in Pennsylvania who describe enduring racist slurs, being passed over for promotions, and working in unsafe conditions.
Beyond the factory floor, JBS has long been linked to illegal deforestation and environmental destruction in the Amazon, both directly through its supply chains and indirectly through pressure on local ecosystems. The company’s climate footprint is staggering, with greenhouse gas emissions that rival those of entire countries. And yet, instead of reckoning with this impact, JBS continues to expand production and avoid accountability.
In Brazil, where the company is headquartered, the recent passage of most of the so-called “devastation bill” further weakens environmental safeguards and accelerates the damage. Now that President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva approved the bill, even with some environmental restrictions, it continues to grant free rein to agribusiness giants like JBS that profit from the destruction of forests and the displacement of Indigenous communities.
This is not a case of a few bad actors or isolated scandals. JBS has thrived because of weak enforcement, political influence, and a financial system that rewards short-term gains over long-term responsibility.
Just months before its New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) debut, JBS subsidiary Pilgrim’s Pride made a $5 million donation to the Trump-Vance Inaugural Committee. This is the context in which JBS was allowed to access US capital markets. Even though top proxy advisory firms, including Glass Lewis and Institutional Shareholder Services, urged shareholders to vote against the listing, citing serious governance concerns and lack of transparency, their warnings were ignored, and just this June, JBS began trading on the NYSE.
JBS now generates over $39 billion a year from its US operations alone, profits that are often routed through tax havens in Luxembourg, Malta, and the Netherlands. And when caught breaking the law, JBS often faces only minor consequences that rarely match the scale of the harm.
We must stop sending the message that corporations can endanger workers, break the law, and destroy the environment without consequence, as long as they remain profitable. There is another path forward. Consumers, advocates, and investors need to reject this status quo and demand change.
That starts with consumers actively choosing not to buy JBS products. Investors can divest from JBS and urge their asset managers to do the same. Universities, pension funds, and retirement plans can reexamine whether their portfolios are supporting a company with this kind of track record. At the same time, policymakers must push for stronger corporate accountability, not just in meatpacking, but across industries that harm people and the planet.
JBS should not be rewarded with more money, more access, and more influence. Instead, we must make JBS the example and let it serve as a warning about the costs of putting profit above all else. The future of our food system, our environment, and our communities depends on drawing the line and holding it.
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Development Banks’ Factory Farm Investments Harm the Climate and Local Communities
Despite clear evidence of the harms of industrial livestock, new research showed that in 2024, 11 leading international finance institutions invested $1.23 billion in factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture supply chains.
Jul 06, 2025
The World Bank’s mission is to “create a world free of poverty on a livable planet.” However, the institution, along with its peer development partners, pumps billions of dollars into factory farming, appearing to turn a blind eye to the significant harm it causes.
We cannot meet the 1.5°C Paris agreement goal without reducing emissions from livestock. Animal agriculture is a leading cause of climate breakdown; already responsible for around 16% of global greenhouse gas emissions and set to rise.
Factory farming is also tearing apart our thriving ecosystems. In Latin America, high demand for industrial grazing pasture and land for growing animal feed has fueled devastating deforestation: 84% of all Latin America’s forest loss in the last 50 years can be attributed to land claimed for livestock farming. Factory farming also pollutes soils and freshwater sources that wild animals and rural communities rely on.
Development banks tasked with tackling poverty and climate change owe it to current and future generations to use their investments to help spur the transition toward more sustainable diets and forms of food production.
Yet despite clear evidence of the harms of industrial livestock, new research I conducted for the Stop Financing Factory Farming Coalition (S3F), based on data from the Early Warning System, showed that in 2024, 11 leading international finance institutions (IFI) invested $1.23 billion in factory farming and wider industrial animal agriculture supply chains. This is five times more than what they spend on more sustainable non-industrial animal agriculture projects. The World Bank and its private sector arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC), were together responsible for over half the funding for industrial animal agriculture.
One of the investments IFC made last year was a $40 million loan to build a soybean crushing plant in Bangladesh, used to mass-produce animal feed. The soybeans will require an estimated 354,000 hectares of land annually to be grown, and will be sourced from Brazil and Argentina where soy production is associated with destruction of sensitive ecosystems. Communities living near the plant have documented the existing and potential impacts such as the contamination of coastal waters and freshwater sources, which would consequently lead to a reduction in the local fish stocks that local communities rely on to guarantee their livelihoods, and brought their concerns in front of representatives of the U.S. government.
Over the last 20 years, IFC has also made a number of investments in Pronaca, the largest food producer in Ecuador, to expand its factory farm operations. The company has built pig and poultry farms in Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, a region home to natural forest and Indigenous Peoples. Local Indigenous communities documented how the farms have polluted water resources that are traditionally used to sustain their livelihoods, forcing community members to migrate to preserve their traditional cultures.
Other IFIs have also made harmful investments. The European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) boldly claims all its investments have been Paris-aligned since January 2023; however, recent spending to expand multinational fast food chains in Eastern Europe seem to show a different scenario. During the first half of 2025, the EBRD has provided $10 million for the expansion of KFC and Taco Bell restaurants in the Western Balkans, and proposed an equity investment of $46 million for the expansion of Burger King and Louisiana Popeyes in Poland, Romania, and Czech Republic.
The latter investment would have led to the opening of 600 restaurants in the region, with large adverse impacts in terms of public health and emissions of greenhouse gases. Restaurant Brands International, which owns Burger King and Popeyes, reported approximately 29 million metric tons of carbon dioxide-equivalent emissions along its value chain in 2024, more than the entire emissions of Northern Ireland. Thankfully, following civil society pressure, the investment was not approved by the EBRD’s Board of Directors.
While the overall picture is bleak, there is real room for hope. Between 2023 and 2024, IFI investments in factory farming nearly halved, and investments in more sustainable approaches tripled, from $77 million to US$244 million. Examples of promising investments include the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency and the Inter-American Development Bank providing support to smallholder farmers using climate-friendly techniques.
This is clearly good news; however, it remains too early to tell if these figures are a one-off blip, or part of a longer-term trend. My hope is that the next round of investment data will show that harmful investments have dropped further—if not stopped completely—and more sustainable ones additionally increased.
Development banks tasked with tackling poverty and climate change owe it to current and future generations to use their investments to help spur the transition toward more sustainable diets and forms of food production, rather than replicating and expanding the broken systems that are wrecking our planet. By only investing in animal agriculture projects that are sustainable—following agroecological principles such as promoting species diversity and using nature’s resources efficiently—banks can help move us closer toward “a world free of poverty on a livable planet.”
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