Saints at home, sinners away.
By Matt Rendell, Latin America Desk.
Sport is full of teams that cannot reproduce their unbeatable home form when they are playing away. So is banking. International financiers who are generous sports sponsors at home lie behind half of all oil and gas operations in the faraway Amazon rainforest. The hypocrisy is not just shocking: it is a threat to life on the planet.
Kiyoshi via Unsplash
Through carbon emissions, oil leaks and corruption, fossil fuel companies operating in the Amazon region endanger biodiversity, water quality, the rainforests, the atmosphere, the region’s Indigenous Peoples and their territories. Yet the oil and gas sector can only operate with the complicity of the international financial system.
A major report from Amazon Watch and Stand.earth, entitled ‘Greenwashing the Amazon: How Banks Are Destroying the Amazon Rainforest While Pretending to be Green, documents how just six international banks – Citibank, JPMorgan Chase, Itaú Unibanco, Santander, Bank of America, and HSBC – have been responsible for almost half of direct financing for oil and gas operations in Amazonia between 2003 and 2023. With the exception of HSBC, these banks continue to finance the operations of state-owned and private oil and gas companies in Brazil, Peru, Colombia, and Ecuador.
The 56-page study notes that “Amazonia is close to a tipping point and this is a threat not only to those who live in the region, but also to the continuity of life on the planet. The lives of hundreds of Indigenous and traditional communities, thousands of species, and the stability of our planet’s climate are at stake”.
Despite statements on websites, reports, and promotional materials suggesting a commitment to protecting people and nature, and addressing climate change, biodiversity loss, and the exploitation of Indigenous Peoples, the banks continue to finance destructive operations.
Outside the report’s scope, but worth commenting on here, is the key role of sportswashing in steering public awareness away from the banks’ damaging Amazon policies.
Citigroup, now branded Citi, which channelled US$ 2.4 billion into fossil fuel investments in the Amazon basin between 2003 and 2023, is the major player. Best known as a Worldwide Partner of the Ryder Cup, and for sponsoring Team USA in the 2012, 2014, and 2016 Olympic and Paralympic Games. Paris 2024 marked a change of strategy, hinging on individual US Paralympians. Citi head of enterprise marketing and brand engagement, Tina Davis, told the website Marketing Brew:
“When we measured the partnership and we looked at what it did for our reputation, what it did for brand preference, goodwill toward communities, all of that, all those numbers went up, up, up. They would go up on Olympics overall, but when you then layered in Paralympics, it was off the charts…Quickly, the Paralympians became our favorites.”
The second largest fossil fuel investor in the region during the period 2004-2023 was JPMorgan Chase. The New York-based finance company is the main financier behind the controversial European Super League proposal, intended to rival current UEFA tournaments.
In February 2024, JPMorgan Chase signed a naming rights partnership with soccer team Inter Miami CF, since when its home stadium in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, has been the Chase Stadium. Good news for football in Florida, bad news for the Amazon.
Itaú Unibanco, third in the list of Amazon fossil fuel investors also has a Florida connection. Itaú Unibanco has sponsored the Miami Open tennis tournament for 17 years, and recently announced a renewed agreement until 2028. Considered the most valuable brand in Brazil, Itaú Unibanco associates itself with Brazil’s national sport via its three-decade sponsorship of the Brazilian Football Confederation, renewed in 2022 until 2026.
The euphoria of footballing success contrasts miserably with JPMorgan Chase’s role (alongside UBS), in the recent issuing of a $150 million dollar bond for GeoPark, a Chilean oil company currently operating in the Colombian Amazon that is allegedly paying paramilitary groups to ensure the continuation of its operations on and near the territories of Indigenous groups opposed to oil operations.
The list goes on and on, illustrating the crucial importance that the banks themselves attach to sports sponsorship in humanising inhuman policies enacted abroad to their home publics.
There is some good news. Prior to December 2022, HSBC’s Environmental and Social Risk Management (ESRM) policy was assessed as very limited – among 14 banks ranked by their policy and financing in the Amazon in 2021, only JPMorgan Chase performed worse.
However, in December 2022, HSBC updated its policy to introduce an effective moratorium on no new finance for oil and gas exploration, appraisal, development, and production for projects in Amazonia. The commitment is a major step towards management of the threats facing Amazonia and an acknowledgement of the global importance of the region and the legacy of adverse impacts from oil and gas.
After reviewing the environmental policies of other banks with major operations in Peru - Credicorp Capital (of the group linked to BCP), BBVA, Scotiabank and Interbank - the Peruvian website OjoPúblico found that they do not have clear provisions to avoid the adverse impact of the fossil fuel industry with a focus on the Amazon.
Two of these banks invest heavily on sports sponsorship. In a press release, the BBVA calls itself “the sports bank.” BBVA has been a major sponsor of the NBA and numerous US professional basketball teams, the Spanish and Mexican football leagues, Turkish basketball, the Venezuelan national football team, River Plate and Boca Juniors in Argentina, and on and on.
Scotiabank proudly announces that it “supports sponsorship initiatives that reach across the arts, hockey, football, and golf landscapes.”