The world’s three largest money managers hold at least $46 billion in debt and equity in 24 oil companies operating in the Amazon, according to a new report from Amazon Watch. Those firms — BlackRock, Vanguard Group, and State Street — repackage these holdings into financial products in which their clients invest. This effectively enables them to evade scrutiny for “indirectly financing and enabling” industries responsible for Amazonian oil extraction and what the report describes as the firms’ complicity in “indigenous rights abuses, forest destruction, and climate chaos.”
All three firms say their hands are tied with regards to actually pulling their investments from carbon-intensive companies. All three firms also played a significant role in the election of three climate-conscious nominees to the ExxonMobil board of directors last week over the objections of management and have touted their ability to leverage major emitters in which they are invested to reduce their contribution to climate change. “As long as the world’s largest investors choose to place profits over people by continuing to pour money into the fossil fuel industry in the Amazon, our entire planet is at risk,” Moira Birss, a climate and finance campaigner at Amazon Watch, said in a statement. (E&E $)