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Santander, JPMorgan Chase, and Citi Lead in Financing of Oil and Gas Extraction in the Amazon

Latest edition of the annual Banking on Climate Chaos report illustrates the banks’ massive support for corporations destroying the Amazon biome and the world’s climate

SAN FRANCISCO (Chochenyo and Karkin Ohlone Lands) — The 14th annual Banking on Climate Chaos report offers new insight into the dire impacts of financing for oil and gas extraction in the Amazon, thanks to contributions from Stand.earth’s in-house investigative research team, Stand.earth Research Group (SRG), and collaboration from AmazonWatch.

As the most comprehensive annual analysis of global fossil fuel banking and finance, the 2023 report shows that JPMorgan Chase and Citi have been the largest financiers of extractivism in the Amazon since 2016. In 2022, the Spanish bank Santander made the largest investment of any bank toward oil and gas extraction in the Amazon, funneling $169 million in that year alone. These banks are the focus of an in-depth analysis currently underway by SRG, which is scheduled for publication later this year.

“For us, it is a matter of life and death. If the financing of new expansions continues, the banks will be responsible for the disappearance of the uncontacted tribes and the deaths of our leaders. In this context, we demand that banks and other financial institutions stop supporting new extractive expansions in our home, the Amazon,” said the Indigenous leader Julio Cusurichi, president of the Madre de Dios River Native Federation and winner of the 2007 Goldman Environmental Prize for his defense of indigenous peoples in isolation and initial contact.

“This report comes as the Peruvian Congress has presented a bill to eliminate the indigenous reserves of 25 uncontacted villages for oil, logging, and mining exploitation”, he added.

This is the first year that the Banking on Climate Chaos report has included an analysis of Amazon oil and gas financing as a result of a collaboration with Stand.earth Research Group and AmazonWatch.

In the seven years since the Paris Agreement was adopted, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels globally with an investment of $5.5 trillion USD. The Banking on Climate Chaos report shows that U.S. banks dominate fossil fuel financing globally, accounting for 28% of investments made in 2022 and upcoming research from Stand.earth Research Group suggests that this is also the case for oil and gas financing in the Amazon. JPMorgan Chase remains the world’s worst funder of climate chaos since the Paris Agreement. Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America are still among the top fossil financiers globally and for Amazon oil.

As the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change affirmed in its March 2023 report, fossil fuel expansion must stop in order for humanity to have a chance at avoiding unacceptable harm to millions of people alive today and countless generations to come, and use of fossil fuels across all sectors must decline sharply*. Scientists assert that the window of opportunity is rapidly closing to remain below 1.5˚C of warming and to build a secure, liveable, and sustainable future. Stopping extractivism in the Amazon is key to achieving this.

Banking on Climate Chaos is authored by Rainforest Action Network, BankTrack, Indigenous Environmental Network, Oil Change International, Reclaim Finance, Sierra Club, and Urgewald. Over 550 organizations from more than 70 countries around the world endorsed the report and are calling on banks to stop funding climate destruction.

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Media contact: 

Communication Amazon Campaign Team: amazoncomms@stand.earth