“Deforestation poses a systemic risk to the finance sector — financial, material and reputational.” Yet less than a third of financial institutions have publicly recognised deforestation as a business risk, concluded last week’s Forest 500 report, published annually by Global Canopy, a not-for-profit organisation. Many of the banks cited in the report insisted they had deforestation policies in place, but were reluctant to comment on its findings.
Forest 500 tracks the policies and performance of the 350 companies and 150 financial institutions “most exposed to deforestation risk in their supply chains and investments”. Forty per cent of them still have not set a single policy on deforestation, it concludes.
