Banking on Biodiversity Collapse 2026 Global Report

Following a summer of heatwaves, droughts and fires across Europe, forecasts of a “super” El Niño are warning countries across the tropics of what could be the most extreme fire season in decades. Fires this year are already severe with larger burned areas in Indonesia and Brazil compared with the same period last year. Yet fire is not the natural disaster many assume it to be. It is the predictable outcome of weakened social and environmental safeguards, disrupted Indigenous and traditional stewardship, and extractive production models that steadily deplete the resilience of natural ecosystems.

This year’s assessment of bank sustainability policies across the agro-commodity sectors shows that the banks issuing the most high-risk credit still do not have adequate safeguards to
mitigate the risks of serious environmental and social harm. The assessment measures the scope and strength of banks’ publicly available policies; it does not establish whether those
policies are consistently implemented or have prevented harm in practice.

Building on our Mining & Money report last year, this report focuses its analysis on the role of finance in metal/mineral mining in tropical forest-rich countries. Rising geopolitical instability, militarisation, energy supply shocks and AI infrastructure expansion are driving unprecedented demand for minerals such as copper, lithium, cobalt and rare earth elements, as governments and companies race to secure supply chains.

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