Save tropical rainforests from Blackrock-funded destruction by 11:59 pm TONIGHT!

Giant investment firm Blackrock is putting HUGE MONEY -- possibly YOUR MONEY -- behind companies wreaking terror on some of the world’s last great rainforests.

With each second that passes, Blackrock funnels more money to deforestation. It wields $10 TRILLION in assets.

Blackrock’s investments support companies that violently expel Indigenous people from their land, turning ecosystems stewarded by local communities into a wasteland of stumps and overturned earth. Agribusiness is the world’s leading cause of deforestation and the violent land conflicts that come with it -- and BlackRock is financing some of the worst companies out there.

We’re losing rainforests fast. But Blackrock won’t fight deforestation without your action!

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Dear Larry Fink and Michelle Edkins,

To repeat a question once posed by Al Gore: “Does BlackRock want to continue to finance the destruction of human civilization, or not?”

Back in 2019, eight US Senators urged BlackRock to disclose its due diligence regarding the deforestation wrought by the palm oil sector. Two months later, Liberian human rights attorney Alfred Brownell blasted BlackRock during his Goldman Prize acceptance speech for financing Golden Agri-Resources, a company responsible for vast rainforest destruction and human rights abuses. At your AGM in 2020, Amazonian Indigenous leaders challenged BlackRock to get its money out of Amazon destruction. In December of that year, you heard from eighteen Members of Congress urging the same thing – stop financing companies that are burning down the Amazon. Over the last several years, people ages 8 to 80 have held protests at BlackRock offices around the world demanding you divest from fossil fuels and defund deforestation.

Don’t you think it's time BlackRock developed a policy to categorically address the deforestation risk in your portfolios?

Environmental and human rights impacts – and climate impacts above all – are increasingly recognized to drive material risks to investment. Your clients and beneficiaries know it. Governments from the US and the EU to Asia know it. And youth around the world have begun to see BlackRock for what it is – one of the largest investors in the destruction of their future.

I know you’re listening. You have joined the Climate Action 100+ and the Net Zero Asset Managers’ Initiative. You’ve done all the symbolic and rhetorical things – but in the face of ugly attacks from the fossil fuel-funded right wing, you’ve backtracked on your commitment to tackling climate risk as investment risk. You can’t have it both ways. BlackRock should create and market deforestation-free funds as a default option for your clients. You should vote for shareholder resolutions to protect forests and human rights and vote out corporate board members who lag on climate. And you should put these and other actions into an investment policy statement to make your priorities clear and to lead the way for your peers.

Until BlackRock chooses to engage with the people truly impacted by the abuses of your investee companies, and until BlackRock adopts strong policies to defund deforestation – and fossil fuels – there is no reason to believe that BlackRock’s rhetoric about sustainability and social purpose has any merit.

Leading responsible investment firms have begun to develop comprehensive policies to address deforestation risk, and BlackRock should do the same. It is both a moral and an economic imperative. You have tremendous power – and the world needs you to start using that power responsibly. I urge BlackRock to adopt a strong deforestation risk policy across all your portfolios.

Thank you.

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