A new Forests and Finance Coalition report finds top financial institutions, including JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America and BlackRock, support mining companies linked to deforestation, land-grabs, contamination and Indigenous rights violations.
According to the report, from 2016-24, major banks provided $493 billion in loans and underwriting to mining companies, including Glencore, Rio Tinto and Vale. As of June 2025, investors held $289 billion in bonds and shares of 111 transition mineral companies.
The report focuses on financing for companies mining critical minerals used in the global energy transition, including lithium, nickel, graphite and cobalt. Nearly 70% of these transition mineral mines overlap with Indigenous lands and roughly an equal amount is in regions of high biodiversity.
Such minerals are widely used in clean energy technologies, such as solar panels, wind turbines, batteries and electric vehicles (EVs). But the way mining companies extract and process them is driving widespread environmental destruction and human rights abuses, the report said.
Our findings shed light on the central role that financial institutions play in enabling this new wave of destruction as companies rush to expand mining operations as rapidly as possible, Steph Dowlen, forests and finance campaigner for the Rainforest Action Network, told Mongabay by email. While this extraction for raw minerals falls under a green, clean or renewable banner, its still extraction and the mining sector remains high-risk, dominated by companies with egregious track records on rights, the environment and corporate accountability.
The report assessed environmental, social and governance policy scores of 30 major financial institutions and found an average score of only 22%. Vanguard and CITIC scored the lowest, each with just 3%. The assessment found that many financial institutions lacked policies to prevent financing issues, including pollution, Indigenous rights abuses or deforestation.
Of all institutions assessed, 80% lacked policies on human rights defenders and none had safeguards for Indigenous peoples living in voluntary isolation. Many institutions (60%) lacked grievance mechanisms, which allow communities that have been negatively impacted by mining activities to seek justice. Also, 60% of institutions had no policies on tax transparency, which is key to preventing companies from shifting profits abroad and ensuring that mining revenues remain in the resource-rich countries.
Due to the significant overlap with transition minerals and Indigenous Territories, and high-biodiversity areas, there is an immediate need for governments, financial institutions and mining companies to stop and listen, Dowlen said. Indigenous Peoples and local communities have been raising the alarm for a long time but continue to face disproportionate harm as well as violence and intimidation for defending their rights and their lands.
BlackRock and JPMorgan Chase declined to comment on the report. None of the other institutions mentioned in this piece responded to Mongabays emails.
Banner image: An activist covered in mud poses with a sign that reads Vale assassin during a demonstration in Sao Paulo, Brazil, Feb. 1, 2019. Image by AP Photo/Victor R. Caivano.
