More About End Amazon Crude

Climate Activists Ramp Up Pressure on BlackRock During Fires Week of Action

Despite positioning itself earlier this year as a financial firm that leads on climate, BlackRock continues to be a major financial investor in the deforestation commodity companies currently fueling the fires in the Amazon. BlackRock is a top investor in deforestation-risk commodities around the world, and despite vague commitments to prioritize "sustainability," the company lacks clearly defined policies to prevent deforestation or safeguard the rights of Indigenous peoples in its investments. The depth of BlackRock's greenwashing is astounding.

European Banks Urged to Stop Funding Oil Trade in Amazon

Indigenous people in headwaters region say financing harms communities and ecosystems

Marlon Vargas, the president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, said: "I wonder if the executives of banks in Europe know the real cost of their financing. How can they possibly sleep peacefully knowing their money leaves thousands of indigenous peoples and communities without water, without food and in devastating health conditions due to the pollution of the Coca and Napo rivers?"

European Banks Financing Trade of Amazon Oil to the U.S.

Groundbreaking report exposes a range of European banks have provided $10 billion USD in trade financing for over 155 million barrels of oil from the Ecuadorian region of the Amazon Sacred Headwaters to refineries in the U.S.

Why in the world would any bank that has policies on advancing human rights, sustainability, and climate change be financing the flow of oil from the Amazon Sacred Headwaters region in Ecuador to US refineries? Makes you wonder if there's a little hypocrisy in play. Our report led by Stand.earth Research Group in partnership with Amazon Watch uncovered some serious findings.

European Banks Face Indigenous Calls to End Amazon Oil Trade

European banks committed to backing action on climate change face allegations of double standards from indigenous groups in Ecuador after a report named them as major players in the trade in oil from the Amazon rainforest.

Indigenous Resistance Expels Oil Company GeoPark from Peruvian Amazon

The Chile-based oil company's announcement follows years of protests, lawsuits, outreach to major shareholders, and direct advocacy with the CEO

"GeoPark's departure from Block 64 is a testament to the vision and persistence of the Achuar people and Wampis Nation, both of which have a long history of successfully expelling oil companies from their ancestral territories. Let this be the final nail in Block 64's coffin," said Andrew Miller, Advocacy Director at Amazon Watch.

Is BlackRock the New Vampire Squid?

The investment giant casts itself as socially responsible while contributing to the climate catastrophe, evading regulatory scrutiny, and angling to influence a Biden administration

Luiz Eloy, a member of the Terena people and a lawyer with the Association of Indigenous Peoples of Brazil, said in an email that BlackRock has "changed absolutely nothing to alter its investment strategy, which pours money into the very companies that brutalize us and take down forests on an industrial scale. Talk means nothing to us, not after so many of us have died and lost our homes."

Report Names the Banks Financing Destructive Oil Projects in the Amazon

Funding these projects runs counter to these companies' own statements of support for climate actions, including the Paris climate agreement, activists say

Five of the biggest financial institutions in the world invested a combined $6 billion in oil extraction projects in the western Amazon between 2017 and 2019. According to Moira Birss of Amazon Watch, only pressure from civil society can stop the extraction of these natural resources without guaranteeing the conservation of the environment and the rights of Indigenous people.