The French bank BNP Paribas, the leading European banking group, announced on Monday that it wanted to strengthen its policy to combat deforestation in Brazil and will require full traceability from companies by 2025.
The bank “thus undertakes to encourage its customers producing or purchasing beef or soybeans from the Amazon and Cerrado in Brazil to become + zero deforestation + and to demonstrate their progress transparently”, she indicates in a statement.
In particular, BNP Paribas “will not finance (companies) producing or buying beef or soybeans from land cleared or converted after 2008 in the Amazon”.
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Regarding the Cerrado, a savannah mainly located in Brazil and one of the ecosystems most threatened by deforestation, the bank “will encourage its customers not to produce or buy beef or soybeans from cleared or converted land (…) afterwards on January 1, 2020, in accordance with global standards “.
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But for the banking group, the absence of an exhaustive mapping of lands in Cerrado prevents for the moment from going beyond the incentive.
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In addition, BNP Paribas will ask its customers for full traceability of the beef and soybean sectors by 2025.
“The bank says it is ready only to encourage and not force companies active in the Cerrado”, criticized the NGO Reclaim Finance. “The only immediate exclusion measures apply to companies that continue to clear or convert land in the Amazon,” reclaim Finance emphasizes. “Very few companies are therefore concerned, given that a moratorium stipulating the end of deforestation linked to soya after 2008 already exists and is mostly respected.” The non-governmental organization also considers the 2025 target “far too late”.
Last week, an investigation by the NGO Global Witness pointed the finger at several French banks, including BNP Paribas, for their financing to agribusiness companies responsible for deforestation.
The bank had told Global Witness that all of its customers in the Amazon “were certified or engaged in a certification process” to ensure their practices were accountable.
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