China Talks Green, More Than Doubles Investments That Destroy Forests - Soy, Pulp, Timber, Beef - In Less Than 10 Years
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A new report from the advocacy group Global Witness, published Thursday, tracks financing from China’s top banks to companies that rely on the world’s tropical rainforests for commodities, including timber, pulp, paper, beef, soy and palm oil. It finds that major Chinese banks bankrolled a total of $23 billion to these businesses between 2018 and the middle of 2024. From 2013 to 2018 China provided only $12 billion in credit to companies that source products that have higher risks of causing deforestation. Over the next five years, from 2019 to 2024, that figure jumped to $20.1 billion. The increase indicates “that the financial sector has failed to adjust lending practices to mitigate the damage some of these companies are wreaking upon global forests,” the report says.
China is the world’s largest importer of “soft commodities,” which include soy, beef and forest products, and is also home to the world’s biggest banks, giving it a growing and critical role in the fate of the world’s forests. But, the report points out, the country has no policy that restricts imports of illegally deforested goods and no regulations that prevent its financing from flowing to companies with possible ties to illegal deforestation. These are critical blind spots, critics say, especially with China’s geopolitical and economic power on the rise.
Merel van der Mark, a researcher with the Forests & Finance coalition, said it’s difficult to prove a definitive link between a particular financier and an instance of illegal deforestation. But, she said, “the lack of critical questions and proper due diligence make the deforestation possible. There’s definitely a strong role these banks play.”
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The new analysis excludes national banks in Brazil, which are the biggest bankrollers of forest commodities in South America, and in southeast Asia, where Indonesian and Malaysian banks provide most of the forest-risk funding. Chinese banks are the top financiers of forest-risk companies in central and west Africa, home to the vast tropical forests of the Congo basin. Excluding these banks, Chinese banks surpass European and American banks in providing financing to companies that have track records of illegal deforestation, the report says. The top Chinese banks providing funding, according to the report, are the Bank of China, CITC and the Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, the world’s largest bank.
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https://insideclimatenews.org/news/30052025/china-touts-green-financing-as-banks-pour-billions-into-deforestation/