SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
Agribusiness and big finance’s dirty alliance is anything but “green”
Fishbone deforestation Rondônia, Brazil August 5, 2016
When it comes to big polluters, few companies in the agribusiness sector can compete with the soybean farming giants of Brazil. Their environmental crimes include: land grabs, pesticide pollution and the deforestation of millions of hectares of biodiverse forests.1 Yet Brazil’s soybean barons have never acted alone. From the time they started bulldozing the Amazon and the Cerrado in the 1980s, they have been heavily financed by foreign pension funds, banks and most of the other captains of global finance.
Brazil’s soybean farming companies continue to depend on this foreign money to keep their chainsaws running, but getting access to it has become more difficult. Brazil’s soybean sector is under increasing international scrutiny, and foreign financial companies have their reputations to worry about. So Brazilian soybean companies and their backers are looking for a solution – one that keeps the money and soybeans flowing, while washing their hands of the environmental and social destruction they generate. This is where the new world of green finance comes in, with its claim to support investments based on environmental, social and governance (ESG) factors.
In January this year, Amaggi, the company perhaps most associated with Brazil’s soybean boom, launched a USD 750 million green bond on international markets to raise money for its purchase of certified soybeans and alternative energy projects.2 Amaggi is owned by Blairo Maggi, Brazil’s notorious “King of Soy” and winner of the Global Chainsaw Award. During his time as governor of the Brazilian state of Mato Grosso and as the federal Minister of Agriculture, Maggi oversaw and encouraged a huge expansion of soybean production into the biodiverse Cerrado. Maggi famously told the New York Times, “To me, a 40% increase in deforestation doesn’t mean anything at all, and I don’t feel the slightest guilt over what we are doing here.”3
AMAGGI. Photo: World Kings
Just prior to Amaggi’s green bond, Brazil’s biggest producer of soybeans, SLC Agrícola, issued its own USD 95 million green bond for what it calls “regenerative agriculture”. SLC’s farms cover 460,000 hectares of land, mainly in the Cerrado,where it has deforested at least 30,000 hectares of native vegetation and where it has been fined several times by Brazil’s federal environmental agency for its activities.4
The company says it intends to use the proceeds from its green bond to buy new fuel efficient tractors, “green fertilisers”, and various digital technologies to reduce its carbon footprint.5 Despite the company’s dubious track record, the bond buyers will have to trust SLC to calculate its emission reductions and a private company hired by SLC to certify them.6 This would be like Shell Oil issuing a “green bond” to buy sails for its oil tankers.
What are green bonds?
Bonds are similar to loans. They are used by companies or governments to raise money for their operations. A company uses a bond to raise a set amount of money from financial investors. The bond will specify the amount of money to be raised; when the money has to be repaid, and the interest that the company has to pay to the bond holders. Normally companies will use bonds to raise money because they can repay the funds over a longer period and at a lower interest rate than a loan from the bank.
Green bonds are supposed to be issued to fund activities with environmental benefits, such as forest recovery and conservation, energy efficiency and renewable energy, sequestration and storage of greenhouse gas emissions, sustainable waste management, or conservation of water resources.
When a company issues a green bond, they must hire a specialised company to certify that the activities funded by the bond meet the standards of the international green bond market and that the proceeds raised are used only for the stated activities. If a company fails to comply, the bond ceases to be a green bond and becomes just a traditional bond, which can generate an increase in interest rates in favour of the bond holder.
Green bonds are part of a larger category of bonds called, thematic bonds. While green bonds fund environmental projects; social bonds finance initiatives with social benefits in the areas of health, education, gender equity, housing, etc. Sustainability bonds, on the other hand, finance projects with mixed environmental and social benefits.
And more recently, issuers that do not have a current project to back, but are committed to some future voluntary sustainable goal, can also issue transitional or sustainability-linked bonds (SLB), which do not require funds to be linked to a specific project, opening the door even further to greenwashing practices.
Big finance, big greenwash
The soy companies in Brazil are not the only culprits.7 Across the world, the most notorious players in the expansion of industrial agriculture are turning to “green finance” to raise money. They include oil palm plantation companies, fish farming behemoths, pulp and paper manufacturers, meat and dairy giants, pesticide producers and commodity traders.(See Table 1).
Agribusiness is one of the fastest growing sectors in the global market for so-called thematic financing instruments – green, social or sustainable. The total value of green bonds devoted to agriculture and land, for example, shot up by 59% between 2019-2020.8
While the market for “green finance” is still relatively small – accounting for only USD 1.7 trillion out of a total global financial stock of USD 118 trillion – it is growing rapidly (see graph 1). The European Union’s recent EUR 20 billion “social bond” was over-subscribed by 14 times, meaning it could have raised EUR 233 billion, which would have made it the largest debt sale in the history of the European bloc. In so-called emerging countries, the World Bank estimates that the market for green bonds will reach USD 100 billion within the next three years and USD 10 trillion by 2030.9 A big chunk of that is on track to go to agribusiness.
This soaring demand for “green finance” is largely coming from big institutional investors and especially pension funds.10 In part, they are legitimately worried about investing in dirty industries that are out of step with international and national commitments to reduce greenhouse gases or protect biodiversity. But their deeper interest in green finance is how it can be used to maintain their control over the money supply.
Altering public policies to maximise corporate profit
Big finance is concerned about the growing support for regulations on their investments, as well as for public control over the financing and implementation of the infrastructure and social services required to deal with today’s multiple crises – be it climate change or Covid-19.
Green finance provides a way for financial companies to show that they can be trusted to oversee and administer “green” and “socially responsible” investments, and that laws and regulations that penalise and limit their lending to dirty companies are not needed. It also helps ensure that they are not sidelined by public programmes. Green finance keeps them in control over the flow of money, so they can continue to extract billions of dollars in fees and other charges.
Syngenta CEO J. Erik Fyrwald with Sally Jewel (TNC Global Board Member and also COSTCO Wholesale Board Member) discussing collaborating for more sustainable agriculture at the Bloomberg Sustainable Business Summit.
But the big financial companies want the public to bear the risks for their ventures. Green finance may be promoted by private financial companies but it depends heavily on governments. Only governments can generate demand by implementing laws and policies that force companies to make “green” investments, often in the form of taxes on carbon that are passed on to consumers and that disproportionately penalise the poorest.
Governments also generate demand through public-private partnerships (PPP) in infrastructure, social services and other projects. Financial companies love PPPs because the returns on their investments are guaranteed or “de-risked” by governments.11 For the public, however, PPPs mean that essential public services and infrastructure end up being organised to suit the profit demands of financial companies, rather than the diverse and basic needs of the population.
When it comes to the rapidly evolving “nature-based” side of green finance, governments are needed to commodify or privatise land and natural resources that corporations can use to sell carbon credits and “green” projects to access green finance. The allure of green finance has already enticed some governments overseeing major agribusiness expansion zones to implement land and environmental reforms that facilitate the transformation of land and “environmental services” into financial assets.12
This is the case in Colombia where a national programme called the “Investment Zones for Rural, Economic and Social Development” (ZIDREs) aims to allocate 7 million hectares of agricultural land to agribusiness companies.
The Brazilian government recently introduced legislation that simultaneously privatises large swaths of public land and allows agribusiness to issue bonds on financial markets using rural land as collateral. The bonds can be issued in foreign currencies and can be purchased by foreign companies or individuals.
With the creation of investment funds specifically in agro-industrial chains (called Fiagro), foreign capital can buy those agribusiness bonds – that may have land and environmental services as ballast – and have an opportunity to evade restrictions on foreign ownership of Brazilian farmland.13 A similar system was implemented in Argentina during its debt crisis in the 2000s with profound consequences. Today, 208 investment funds hold 235 thousand hectares of Argentine farmland via the issuance of USD 800 million in agribusiness bonds.14
In addition to de-risking, much of the actual “finance” in green finance also relies directly on the public sector, not the private. So far, the vast majority of green bonds have been issued by public banks and government-backed entities like the Société du Grand Paris which is responsible for Paris’ public transportation network, and development banks like the World Bank or Germany’s KfW. 15
Governments themselves have been increasingly issuing green bonds. The value of these sovereign green bonds increased by 37% in 2020, with most funds going to finance transportation infrastructure. In October 2020, the European Commission announced it would issue EUR 225 billion of its EUR 750 billion (USD 265.87 billion and USD 886.23 billion respectively) recovery debt in the form of green bonds – more than the total value of all green bonds issued in the world in 2019. 16
There has also been an exponential increase in so-called “social” bonds issued by multilateral banks and developing country governments to finance Covid-19 measures (known as pandemic bonds).17 Sovereign sustainability bonds, which have both “green” and “social” aspects, were up by more than 1000% in 2020.
Debt-for-Nature Swaps
Within its new green economic recovery setup, the European Union is contemplating raising taxes on imports that have a high environmental impact. This entails imposing non-tariff barriers to commodities that have not “neutralised emissions” in their countries of origin. This would accelerate the demand for agroindustrial “fixes” by major agricultural commodity producing countries to access green finance and markets.
On the other hand, emerging market countries, in the midst of a severe economic crisis and a dramatic increase in their indebtedness, do not have money to finance this green push in their economies or to pay extra pollution taxes. Green sovereign debt bonds linked to biodiversity and carbon emissions targets are gaining prominence in the debt negotiations of these countries.
The World Bank and the IMF intend to bring a concrete proposal to the United Nations Food Systems Summit (23 September, 2021) for the issuance of green sovereign bonds in order to leverage resources at a time of strong investor demand for environmental assets.
Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay, also intend to take a common stance at the upcoming UNFSS through the Southern Agricultural Council (CAS) on the environmental services provided by agricultural and agroforestry systems in Latin America and the Caribbean which hold half of the world’s forests and biodiversity.
To do so, the countries are working to set a definition for the value and rules for establishing markets for carbon credits and also for other ecosystems services such as water regulation and biodiversity maintenance. 18
The Debt-for-Nature swaps consist in lowering the debt service cost of countries that meet the sustainable goals of the 2030 agenda, either by paying less interest or with carbon or biodiversity credits. According to the Climate Bond Initiative, the issuance of themed sovereign bonds by the end of 2020 soared to USD 97.7 billion, with 22 issuing countries.
Even the purchasing of green bonds could arguably be described as public. The biggest buyers of green bonds are, alongside development banks, institutional investors such as pension funds and asset managers like BlackRock. Most of the funds they manage are workers’ retirement savings – now worth over USD 50 trillion dollars. This is fundamentally people’s money, from which financial companies are making fortunes by extracting fees.
In 2018, the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC) and Europe’s largest investment fund manager, Amundi, launched a USD 2 billion fund to invest in emerging markets’ green bonds.
So far, the buyers have almost entirely been development banks like the IFC, France’s Proparco, the European Investment Bank and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, as well as public pension funds, such as the French public service supplementary pension scheme (ERAFP) and Swedish pension funds Alecta, AP3 and AP4.19
To a lesser extent, corporations are starting to issue their own thematic bonds, but with more flexible environmental, social and governance criteria. Some of the big corporate green bonds from the past two years include those from the pharmaceutical giants Pfizer (USD 1.3 billion) and Novartis (USD 5.8 billion), one from Alphabet (the holding company for Google), and a USD 1 billion bond from Amazon to fund generic projects that “advance people and the planet”.20
In 2021, the Kellogg Company became the first processed food corporation to issue a sustainability bond (USD 363 million) to “address the interconnected issues of wellbeing, hunger relief and climate resiliency, including projects where the raw material for your business comes from, land use and natural resources, as water management.”21
The key question is what actually constitutes a “green” investment? A dirty company like Amaggi or Shell can raise green funding for some segments of its operations where it may be putting in place alternative energies, while continuing to engage in overall business practices that contribute massively to the climate crisis and other environmental disasters.
Furthermore, the gatekeepers of this flimsy system are not neutral parties, but are largely private companies in Europe, like Sustainalytics, who depend on green bonds to stay afloat.22
Art by Boy Dominguez
One of the fastest growing instruments of green finance, “sustainability-linked” bonds (SLB) and bank loans, takes these weaknesses to an extreme. These bonds and loans are issued without specifying which projects the proceeds are destined for or what the social and environmental benefits will be.
The corporate issuer is free to allocate the proceeds to any activity with the mere promise of changing its behaviour and reaching voluntary targets at a future date. In general, if the issuer fails to achieve a sustainability target, it has to pay back the debt at a higher rate, meaning that the investors actually benefit when a company fails to reduce the ecological or social damages caused by its operations.
Sustainability-linked bond sales grew from USD 5 billion in 2019 to USD 19 billion in April 2021, attracting big polluters like the Italian energy company Enel, which issued a USD 4 billion SLB, and pension fund managers like APG of the Netherlands, one of the big buyers of Enel’s SLB.23
APG admits that the flexibility of SLBs make them susceptible to greenwashing, but this didn’t stop it from spending USD 886.23 million on a SLB issued by the British supermarket chain Tesco as part of its pledge to cut its greenhouse gas emissions by 60% by 2025.24
The European Central Bank has also included SLBs in its asset purchase programme.25 This is important because, given the sheer size of its green bond offerings, the EU will likely become the standard setter for the “taxonomy” of green finance (i.e. what is and what is not considered “green”).
Beyond its problematic endorsement of SLBs, the EU is also moving to include natural gas and other dirty energy activities within the scope of its green finance programme due to heavy lobbying by corporations and several member states. Meanwhile, as noted by economist Daniela Gabor, “European commitments to develop in parallel a system that works towards penalising dirty lending have evaporated.”26
Even with all this greenwashing, corporations are not carrying out enough “green” activities to absorb the money that big finance has on the table. So the “green” has to be invented, and agribusiness is well-positioned to provide the land and natural resources that can serve as collateral.
Agribusiness to the rescue
The food system accounts for over a third of all global greenhouse gas emissions, and agriculture takes up the largest share of emissions within this sector. Agriculture is also a leading cause of deforestation and land degradation – both of which have major implications for the climate. This means that agriculture is critical to reducing emissions and could help take CO2 out of the atmosphere by restoring it to the soil.
For agribusiness, therefore, there is a huge opportunity to access green finance for operations they claim will reduce their emissions, and to get paid through carbon credits for avoiding deforestation or regenerating soils on their farms or among their suppliers.
Samunnati.
To make this happen, agribusiness companies are working aggressively with corporations from other sectors and corporate-dominated spaces like the Food and Land Use Coalition, the World Economic Forum and The Food Systems Summit to push for so-called “nature-based solutions” with an emphasis on land use and the agricultural sector.27
These”nature-based solutions” are supposed to offset corporate greenhouse gas emissions by planting trees, protecting forests or tweaking industrial farming practices to store carbon in plants and the soil. This year, the United Nation’s Food and Agriculture Organisation and The Natural Conservancy launched three reports on “agriculture nature-based solutions“ that maintain that “regenerative agriculture practices” can both reduce greenhouse gas emissions from agriculture to (net) zero and provide a cheap way for other sectors to offset their emissions in line with global 2030 emission reduction targets.28
Nature-based solutions have been widely criticised for distracting from and postponing the real emissions cuts that must be made, and for depending on a massive grab of indigenous peoples’ and peasants’ lands and forests.29 Despite this, the corporate interest in nature-based solutions, regenerative agriculture and other forms of carbon credits and offsets from agriculture continues to grow.
Swiss food giant Nestlé has made “regenerative agriculture” projects a central part of its net-zero plan, with expectations that it will allow the company to offset 13 million tonnes of its greenhouse gas emissions per year by 2030, an amount roughly the size of the total annual greenhouse gas emissions for a small country like Latvia.30
In August 2021, the Japanese conglomerate Mitsubishi bought a 40% stake in Australian Integrated Carbon, which works with Australian farmers to adopt farming practices that sequester carbon in soils to then sell carbon credits to polluting companies like Mitsubishi who want to offset their fossil fuel emissions.31 Similarly, the seed and chemical giant Bayer is pursuing a carbon credit business in Brazil and Argentina through a project called PRO Carbono.32
For agribusiness companies, if they can develop financial instruments – such as green bonds, that enable them to tap into it, the potential pot of money is huge. The UK-based Climate Bonds Initiative claims that Brazil’s agribusiness sector alone could raise upwards of USD 135 billion by 2030 through green bonds linked to sustainable agricultural practices.33
Climate Bonds Initiative certified its first Brazilian agribusiness green bond in 2020 to a company called Rizoma Agro that focuses on converting large-scale grain farms in the Cerrado to “regenerative” practices that rebuild carbon in soils.34
Bunge and Syngenta also received green bank loans for projects in the biodiverse Cerrado area, in this case to expand soybean plantations over pasture areas instead of forested areas35. These “regenerative agriculture” projects will produce certified “deforestation-free” soybeans, even though the conversion of pasture lands to soybeans in the Cerrado is known to displace cattle production into the Amazon rainforest and to cause numerous other environmental damages36.
Meanwhile, in 2019, Marfrig, a major Brazilian beef producer and one of the worst climate polluters in the agribusiness sector that was exposed last year for purchasing cattle from illegally deforested areas of the Amazon, issued a USD 500 million SLB to finance the implementation of a “deforestation-free” tracking system for cattle it purchases from the Amazon biome!37
Even the financial companies that bought up huge swaths of farmland in Brazil and other parts of the world over the past decade are now investigating ways to generate carbon credits from their operations and to attract investment from pension funds and other institutional investors by marketing farmland as a green investment play.38
Canada’s Caisse de Dépot et Placement pension fund, one of the world’s most important buyers of green debt and a major investor in farmland in Brazil’s Cerrado, issued its own USD 1 billion green bond in May 2021. It intends to use part of the proceeds to buy more farmland.39
Digital agriculture companies also stand to win big from green finance. The early batch of green finance instruments indicates that many of the proceeds will be used to fund the adoption of digital technologies in agriculture under the assumption that these can create efficiency and reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
Moreover, carbon credit and green bond-funded projects require the adoption of digital technologies for monitoring and certification. This is the case with a project in the Southern Cone of Latin America that Cargill, the world’s largest agribusiness company, is financing through a USD 30 million investment in a Land Innovation Fund.40
The project measures, tracks and provides a continuous digital record of the soil emissions produced by soybean farmers supplying Cargill.
All of this clearly adds up to more corporate and financial control; it is a lot harder to see how it will make things greener.
Turning off the money supply for corporate agriculture
Investment in the expansion of agribusiness can never be “green”. Nor does it seem possible for big finance to invest in anything other than agribusiness when it comes to agriculture. Both depend on the financialisation of nature and the relentless dispossession of people’s control over their lands, forests, waters and biodiversity. Under global finance’s new green architecture, the formula remains the same: capture public goods and spending to maximise profits for a select group of investors, while providing large polluting corporations with access to a new source of “green” money to maintain business as usual. The only difference this time is that “nature” is being used directly for the issuance of debt.
Whether it is called “green” or “socially responsible”, nothing good can come out of the marriage of big finance and corporate agribusiness. Food sovereignty – the only viable solution for climate justice – will not be financed by Wall Street or the City of London, nor will it be constructed by Cargill and Bayer. It can only be built when people take back control over their lands, seeds, knowledge, and the money supply too.
Green finance ventures by agribusiness
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Company
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Green finance mechanism
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Notes
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Green bond worth USD 94 million issued in 2020. It was raised in green agribusiness bonds (Agribusiness Receivables Certificates) to be applied in digital and low Carbon Farming Practices, Integrated Systems (Crop-Livestock) in its 460 thousand hectares of soy, maize and cotton monoculture plantations. The green bond was issued through Bradesco bbi, Itaú and Santander banks.
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The second party opinion (SPO), Resultante, listed in its report several passages linking SLC Agricola with environmental crimes and land grabbing. Although it was approved, the issuance of the green bond was validated with the recommendation of not allocating the funds to those questionable areas.
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Sustainability bond worth USD 750 million in 2021 to be applied to its 170 thousand hectares in a mix of environment projects such as renewable energy and land use, as well as in socio-economic activities as job creation. The bond was coordinated by BNP Paribas, Bradesco Securities, Inc., Citigroup Global Markets, Inc., Itaú BBA USA Securities, Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Rabobank and Santander Investment.
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Amaggi group is the largest exporter of soybean from Brazil and is a major buyer of soybean from known deforesters like SLC Agrícola and BrasilAgro, and has not yet agreedto a 2020 cut-off date for land clearing in the Cerrado region.
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Green bond of EUR 75 million (USD 89 million). to be issued in Europe in 2021. Proceeds will be used for various activities including reducing greenhouse gas emissions and expanding its farming operations.
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AgriNurture Inc. is a company based in the Philippines that received early backing from Cargill’s hedge fund Black River and the Far Eastern Agricultural Investment Company of Saudi Arabia. It has become one of the largest farming companies and agricultural exporters in the country through the development of large-scale farms and plantations, most recently for maize in Mindanao.
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Olam has secured three “green” loan facilities since 2018 from different consortiums of banks: a sustainability-linked loan of USD 500 million in 2018, a USD 525 million sustainability-linked revolving credit facility in 2019 and a USD 525 million sustainability loan in 2020– all to be used for general spending but with an interest margin dependent on Olam’s ability to meet various targets. In 2019 it launched the world’s first “digital loan” of USD 350 million.
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Olam is an Indian non-resident company based in Singapore. It is one of the world’s largest commodity traders and has invested heavily in farming operations and contract farming schemes, particularly in Africa and Latin America. It is part-owned by Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund Temasek and Japan’s Mitsubishi. It claims to have 2.4 million hectares under direct management, including a controversial 144,000 hectare oil palm plantation concession in Gabon.
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Sustainability-linked loan with 20 banks, worth USD 2.3 billion in 2019. ING, BBVA and Rabobank acted as sustainability coordinators. ABN AMRO has acted as coordinator and facility agent.
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It was the largest loan by an agricultural trader. The loan is linked to a general year-on-year improvement target of ESG performance, assessed by SPO Sustainalytics and increasing its traceability of Brazilian agri-commodities. In late 2020, the World Bank’s International Financing Corporation (IFC) began subsidising the traceability of the direct suppliers of soybean in Matopiba, in the Cerrado region (Brazil).
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In July 2021, Samunnati issued a USD 4.6 million agricultural green bond via the market platform Symbiotics. The proceeds are to be “fully allocated towards climate smart agriculture.”
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Samunnati is an Indian micro-credit lender for farmers and agribusiness. Its investors include the US pension fund TIAA and the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation.
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A ten-year loan of USD 50 million to soybean suppliers in Cerrado to support a deforestation-free target. This is Santander Bank and The Nature Conservancy (“TNC”) financial mechanism that is not formally considered as green finance, but that links the expansion of soy to a “compliance with environmental law” in Brazil.
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The Responsible Commodities Facility (RCF) and the Soft Commodities Forum Platform, bring together giant agribusiness traders (ABCD, Cofco, Viterra -ex Glencore Agriculture) to issue new “green” agribusiness debt instruments for the expansion of soybean plantations over pasture areas.
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Cargill
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Land Innovation Fund, created with Cargill’s USD 30 million to support the expansion of soybean over degraded pasture areas in Argentina and Paraguay’s Cerrado and Grand Chaco. The fund is incorporating the suppliers into a traceability chain for measuring soil carbon emissions. The Bank of Cargill is increasing its use of agribusiness bonds to fund soybean suppliers, with a rise of 30% in 2020 in Agribusiness Letters of Credit. The company is part of the Brazilian Initiative
for Green Finance to support the emission of green bonds in agriculture.
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Cargill is perhaps the soybean trader most linked to deforestation and fires in their supply chain. In 2019, Nestlé stopped sourcing all of its purchases of Brazilian soy from Cargill with the trader not being able to trace soybeans from its suppliers. In 2020, Norwegian Grieg Seafood did not allow any funds from its Green Bond worth USD 103 million to be used to purchase feed supply from Cargill until the company had significantly reduced itsrisk of soybean-related deforestation in Brazil.
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Onesustainable transition bond worth USD 500 million issued in 2019 through BNP Paribas, ING and Santander, to purchase deforestation-free cattle from direct suppliers in Amazonia.
Onesustainability-linked loan worth USD 30 million in 2021 as part of green financing to support Mafrig’s transition to a no-deforestation requirement across its entire chain.
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The first labelled “transition bond” issued in the world, after the green bonds held by one of the world’s biggest beef producers were refused by investors. The bond was re-labelled to support high-emitting companies that do not fit green bonds requirements to clean up their supply chain. Only two other transition bonds of this kind were issued in 2020 due to the lack of reliability.
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Green bond worth USD 5 million issued as a green agribusiness bond (Agribusiness Receivables Certificates) to support the expansion of regenerative and organic agriculture production in its 1200 hectares located in São Paulo, Brazil. It was structured by the financial consultancy Ecoagro.
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The first certified agriculture green bond issued in the world, according to the new CBI principles for the agriculture sector. According to Rizoma’s founding partner, Pedro Paulo Diniz, regenerative agriculture has the potential to offset “more than 100% of human carbon emissions” and often “has more biodiversity than a native forest”.
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Ventisqueros
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Chilean salmon farmer Ventisqueros announced at the end of 2020 that it had landed a USD 120 million green loan from banks Rabobank and DNB. The proceeds will fund the expansion of production from the current 40,000 metric tonnes to 60,000 metric tonnes.
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In 2019, there was a massive escape of salmon from one of Ventisqueros’ farms in Chiloé leading to a complaint from the National Fisheries and Aquaculture Service (Sernapesca) before the Superintendency of the Environment and in court. The company has also refused to comply with a sentence issued by the Council for Transparency ordering them to provide Oceana with data on their use of antibiotics in 2015, 2016 and 2017.
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Mowi
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Mowi completed a USD 165 million green bond in 2020, the first green bond issued by a seafood company. The proceeds will be used for green projects as defined by Mowi’s green bond framework.
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Norway-based Mowi is the world’s largest aquaculture company and largest salmon producer. It is notorious for the aggressive tactics it deploys against critics and for the damage it has caused to the environment, particularly to wild salmon stocks.
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Long-term loan for the recovery of degraded pasture areas by soybean planting via the Reverte programme, led by Syngenta in partnership with TNC and Itaú bank. Although not formally a “green loan”, the Itaú bank already reserved USD 86 million to “restore” 30 thousands hectares in Cerrado with soybean and other inputs provided by Syngenta.
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The Reverte programme announced by Syngenta aims to “restore” 1 million hectares by 2025. In addition to using green finance to sell inputs and the obligation to use the traceability system, the Syngenta Group traded the seeds in exchange for the soybean harvest (barter operation) and operated the export of the company’s first cargo ship of soybeans from Brazil to China.
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Three Green bonds totalling USD 639 million in 2020 and 2021 coordinated by Morgan Stanley to produce ethanol from maize and produce 100% renewable energy.
One sustainability-linked bond worth USD 26 million with Credit Suisse Bank and one sustainability-linked loan of USD 33 million in 2020 with Santander bank, conditioned to: reducing the carbon footprint; improving the traceability of suppliers, and disclosure and transparency in its annual reports.
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This was the first green agribusiness bond for the bioenergy sector, called Agribusiness Receivable Certificates (CRA). The company produced 100% of ethanol for maize. The bioenergy sector, along with the forestry sector, is one of the biggest issuers of green and sustainability bonds.
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Suzano S.A.
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Four Green bonds since 2016 totalling USD 1.6 billion for pulp and paper industrial forestry. The offering was coordinated by J.P. Morgan, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Bank of America, BNP, Crédit Agricole, MUFG, Santander, Rabobank, SMBC Nikko, Scotiabank and Mizuho.
Two sustainability-linked bonds (SLB) totalling USD 1.2 billion in 2020 and another USD1 billion SLB issued in June 2021, through BNP Paribas, BofA, J.P. Morgan, Mizuho, Rabo Securities and Scotiabank.
Onesustainability-linked loan worth USD 1.6 billion in January 2021 operated by BNP Paribas.
Both SL bonds and loans are linked to reducing the company’s direct emissions and water consumption across all its operations and purchases (scopes 1 and 2) and also have an “inclusion” target to have woman in leadership positions.
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Suzano was the first issuer of green bonds and sustainability-linked bonds in Brazil and has 37% of its debts tied to green finance. Suzano S.A has more than 1 million hectares of industrial pine and eucalyptus monoculture plantations in Brazil and is historically linked to a series of human rights violations against local communities and the labour rights of its workers.
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Sustainability bond worth USD 95 million issued in 2018 by the USAID initiative Tropical Landscapes Financing Facility (TLFF) through BNP Paribas in partnership with WWF. The bond was issued to fund 88 thousand hectares of rubber plantation for PT Royal Lestari Utama (RLU), an Indonesian joint venture between France’s Michelin and Indonesia’s Barito Pacific Group.
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Asia’s first sustainability debt instrumentand part of the Memorandum of Understanding between UN Environment and BNP Paribas that was signed at the One Planet Summit in Paris in December 2017. The target is to reach USD 10 billion of innovative sustainable finance by 2025 for projects that support sustainable agriculture and forestry in ways that help solve the climate crisis.
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1 Claire Acher, “Brazil soy trade linked to widespread deforestation, carbon emissions”, Mongabay, 3 April, 2019. https://news.mongabay.com/2019/04/brazil-soy-trade-linked-to-widespread-deforestation-carbon-emissions/
2 Ana Mano, “UPDATE 1-Brazil’s Amaggi soybean producer prices $750m green bond –CFO”, Reuters, January, 2021.
3 Jenny Gonzales, “Soy King Blairo Maggi wields power over Amazon’s fate, say critics”, Mongabay, 13 July 2017. https://news.mongabay.com/2017/07/soy-king-blairo-maggi-wields-power-over-amazons-fate-say-critics/
4 Caio de Freitas Paes, “Trader Cargill, pension fund TIAA linked to land grabs in Brazil’s Cerrado”, 3 February 2021. https://news.mongabay.com/2021/02/trader-cargill-pension-fund-tiaa-linked-to-land-grabs-in-brazils-cerrado/; Global Witness, “Razing the stakes”, 6 May 2020. https://www.globalwitness.org/en/campaigns/forests/razing-stakes/
6 Resultante, “Second Opnion. Relatório Final”, CRA verde. 24 November 2020. Accessed August 2021.https://isecbrasilsiteblob.blob.core.windows.net/ri-files/EMISS%C3%95ES/ISEC/CRA/EMISSAO%2020%20SERIE%2001/RESULTANTE_SLC_Relat%C3%B3rio%20Final_CRA%20Verde_24112020_v.2.pdf. See also: https://www.slcagricola.com.br/ra2020/en/pdf/slc_ra_2020_1.pdf
7 To see the Brazilian private companies that have issued thematic bonds access the database of Sitawi specialized consultancy (SPO) seehttps://www.sitawi.net/noticias/sitawi-lanca-primeiro-banco-de-dados-de-titulos-verdes-no-brasil/. See also Climate Bond Initiative: “Agriculture sustainable finance state of the market: Brazil briefing paper 2021”.https://www.climatebonds.net/files/reports/cbi-brazil-agri-sotm-eng.pdf
8 Climate Bond Initiative (CBI), “Sustainable Debt. Global state of the market 2020”, p.9. https://www.climatebonds.net/files/reports/cbi_sd_sotm_2020_04d.pdf . The updated green bond market data is mostly based in CBI data, the only global certifier of green bonds.
10 To see all investors that have signed public statements and participated in the green bond market see:https://www.climatebonds.net/get-involved/investor-statement
11 Daniela Gabor, “Private finance won’t decarbonise our economies – but the ‘big green state’ can”, The Guardian, 4 June 2021. https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/04/private-finance-decarbonise-economies-green-state
12 GRAIN, “Digital Fences: Financial enclosure of agricultural land in South America”, 22 September 2020.https://grain.org/e/6531
13 The new private finance vehicle,Fiagros, is based on the Brazilian Securities Commission’s Resolution No. 39/2. Besides changes to the land law (Law 13.465/17), the rural credit instruments (Law 13.986/2020), and the agribusiness bonds (Law 14.130/2021), the legislature also approved a payments for environmental services law (14.119/2021) that includes carbon credits, environmental reserve quotas and green bonds.
14 GRAIN, “Digital Fences”, 2020. See the complete cases in the Annex available in Portuguese and Spanish:https://grain.org/system/attachments/sources/000/006/141/original/PT_zonas_de_expans-o_e_investimento_na_Am-rica_do_Sul_PDF_18_09.pdf
15 See Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI). 2020. Op cit. p. 7. Development Banks have issued 68% of the total sustainability bonds, worth USD 108 billion. The World Bank, through the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development, has been the largest issuer of these bonds totalling USD 81 billion in 2020, tripling its investments compared to 2019. It also provides technical assistance to other issuers, particularly in the process of issuing green, social, or sustainability (GSS) sovereign bonds by developing countries, in CDI. 2020. Op.cit. p.12
16 Mehreen Khan. “Is Brussels green bond washing?”, Financial Times, 19 October 2020. https://www.ft.com/content/38130bf9-2bcc-494e-9b71-889d517edc7a
17 China tops the list of the largest issuers of these social bonds, raising USD 68 billion, mainly in pandemic bond. CBI.2020. op.cit. p.14.
https://dialogochino.net/es/clima-y-energia-es/43781-argentina-apuesta-a-un-canje-verde-de-su-deuda-soberana/
19 “Green bond fund of the year, Initiative of the year: Amundi and IFC’s Emerging Green One”, Green Finance, 2 April 2019: https://www.environmental-finance.com/content/awards/green-social-and-sustainability-bond-awards-2019/winners/green-bond-fund-of-the-year-initiative-of-the-year-amundi-and-ifcs-emerging-green-one.html; Rachel Fixsen, “Alecta, ERAFP among backers of $1.4bn EM green bond fund,” IPE Magazine: 19 March 2018: https://www.ipe.com/alecta-erafp-among-backers-of-14bn-em-green-bond-fund/10023735.article; “Amundi’s one-year-old green bond fund ‘ahead of schedule’,” Environmental Finance, 4 March 2019: https://www.environmental-finance.com/content/analysis/amundis-one-year-old-green-bond-fund-ahead-of-schedule.html
20 Climate Bond Initiative (CBI), 2020. op.cit. p. 11. Other corporations issuing green bonds in 2020 include Volkswagen (USD 2.3 billion) Daimler AG (USD 1.1 billion) and Volvo (USD 588 million). p.6. See also Environmental Finance. Sustainable Bonds insight 2021. https://www.environmental-finance.com/assets/files/research/sustainable-bonds-insight-2021.pdf
21 Mich Battle Creek,“Kellogg Company Announces Pricing of its Inaugural Sustainability Bond”, Kellogg’s, May 11 2021. https://newsroom.kelloggcompany.com/2021-05-11-Kellogg-Company-Announces-Pricing-of-its-Inaugural-Sustainability-Bond
22 These external specialised agents, as Second Part Opinion (SPOs) or certification agencies, follow parameters also created by private specialised agencies and adopted by the international green bond market as the International Capital Market Association (ICMA) – responsible for elaborating the Principles of Green Bonds, Social Bonds, and the Guidelines for Sustainable Bonds; the World Bank; the International Finance Corporation (IFC); and the Climate Bonds Initiative (CBI).
23 Xuan Sheng Ou Young. “Why investor appetite for sustainability-linked bonds is growing”, BNP Paribas Asset Management Blog, 22 July 2021.https://investors-corner.bnpparibas-am.com/investing/why-investor-appetite-for-sustainability-linked-bonds-is-growing/
24 APG. “Sustainability bonds: new opportunities, but avoid greenwashing”, 9 July 2021. https://apg.nl/en/publication/sustainability-linked-bonds-new-opportunities-but-avoid-greenwashing/
25 Stephen M. Liberatore, “Sustainability-linked bonds do not fit our impact framework”, Nuveen, A TIAA company 2021. https://www.nuveen.com/global/insights/income-generation/sustainability-linked-bonds-do-not-fit-our-impact-framework
26 Daniela Gabor, “Private finance won’t decarbonise our economies – but the ‘big green state’ can”, The Guardian, 4 June2021: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/jun/04/private-finance-decarbonise-economies-green-state
27 For more on FOLU and the agribusiness greenwashing lobby promoting “nature-based solutions” see, GRAIN, “Corporate greenwashing: “net zero” and “nature-based solutions” are a deadly fraud”, 17 March 2021: https://grain.org/en/article/6634-corporate-greenwashing-net-zero-and-nature-based-solutions-are-a-deadly-fraud
28 The FAO/TNC reports are here: http://www.fao.org/land-water/overview/integrated-landscape-management/nature-based-solutions/en/. There is no international definition or criteria on “regenerative agriculture” but the examples in the reports highlight a mix of traditional and industrial practices such as no-till farming, crop rotation, precision agriculture technologies and gene editing for the production of biofertilisers and microorganisms. For FOLU’s perspective on the concept, see: “Growing Better. Ten Critical Transitions to Transform Food and Land Use”, 2019, especially “Critical Transition 2. Scaling productive and regenerative agriculture”, https://www.foodandlandusecoalition.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/FOLU-GrowingBetter-GlobalReport-ExecutiveSummary.pdf. For the World Economic Forum’s view see: “The Future of Nature and business”, 2020. http://www3.weforum.org/docs/WEF_The_Future_Of_Nature_And_Business_2020.pdf
29 See for example, Corporate Accountability, Global Forest Coalition, Friends of the Earth International, “The Big Con: How Big Polluters are advancing a “net zero” climate agenda to delay, deceive, and deny”, June 2021: https://www.corporateaccountability.org/resources/the-big-con-net-zero/
30 GRAIN, “Corporate greenwashing: “net zero” and “nature-based solutions” are a deadly fraud”, 17 March 2021: https://grain.org/en/article/6634-corporate-greenwashing-net-zero-and-nature-based-solutions-are-a-deadly-fraud
31 Andrew Marshall, “Mitsubishi and AIC team up for carbon farming credits”, The Land, 4 August 2021: https://www.theland.com.au/story/7370631/mitsubishi-buys-into-carbon-farming-with-aic-partnership/?src=rss
32 “Bayer lança programa no Brasil para captura de carbono na agricultura”, Reuters, 27 May 2021. https://www.reuters.com/article/commods-bayer-carbono-idBRKCN2D82T8-OBRBS and “Bayer anuncia el lanzamiento de la primera fase de la iniciativa Carbono en la Argentina”, Bayer, 22 July 2021. https://www.conosur.bayer.com/es/bayer-lanza-la-iniciativa-de-carbono-en-argentina
33 “Título verde pode injetar R$ 700 bilhões na agricultura brasileira até 2030”, Nova Cana, 7 January 2021. https://www.novacana.com/n/industria/financeiro/titulo-verde-injetar-r-700-bilhoes-agricultura-brasileira-2030-070120
34 “Ecoagro and Rizoma Agro announce the world’s first Green Bond Certified under the Climate Bonds Standard for Agriculture”, CBI, 2 September 2020. https://www.climatebonds.net/resources/press-releases/2020/09/ecoagro-and-rizoma-agro-announce-worlds-first-green-bond-certified
35 About Green finance and green bonds by agribusiness in Brazil see: Grupo Carta de Belém. “Mapeamento das distintas iniciativas sobre recuperação econômica e retomada verde”. December 2021. Especially Gabriela de Oliveira Junqueira. Relatório Final. Eixo 1 e Junior Aleixo. Relatório Final, Eixo 2. An executive report will be published by the end of 2021.
36 From 2000 to 2014, more than 80% of soybean expansion in the Cerrado took place over areas of pasture and other crops, driving the advance of cattle ranching into the Amazon forest, particularly in northern Mato Grosso and southern Pará states in Diana Aguiar and Maurício Torres. “Deforestation as an instrument of land grabbing: enclosures along the expansion of the agricultural frontier in Brazil”, Agro é Fogo,
37 Jasper Cox, “Brazil bonds make green investors look ridiculous,” Global Capital, 27 August 2019: https://www.globalcapital.com/article/28mtxz67sok79sit5mosg/tuesday-view/brazil-bonds-make-green-investors-look-ridiculous; “Brazil beef giants linked to illegal Amazon deforestation”, Mongabay, 11 December 2020: https://news.mongabay.com/2020/12/brazil-beef-giants-linked-to-illegal-amazon-deforestation/; and for information on Marfrig’s GHG emissions see GRAIN and IATP, “Emissions impossible: How big meat and dairy are heating up the planet”, July 2018: https://grain.org/e/5976
38 GRAIN, “The global farmland grab goes green”, 10 May 2021: https://grain.org/e/6667
39 Elisabeth Jeffies, “Hard reality: Why Canada’s pensions are blazing a trail in green bond issuance”, Capital Monitor, 15 July 2021. https://capitalmonitor.ai/institution/asset-owners/canadas-pensions-are-world-leaders-in-green-bond-issuance/ ; https://www.cdpq.com/sites/default/files/medias/pdf/en/CDPQ_GreenBond_Framework_SPO2021.pdf
40 Land Innovation Fund. https://www.landinnovation.fund/.
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SPECIAL REPORTS AND PROJECTS
How Carbon Markets are Exploiting Marginalised Communities in the Global South Instead of Uplifting them
The billion-dollar fiction of carbon offsets
Carbon markets are turning indigenous farming practices into corporate profit, leaving communities empty-handed.
For Janni Mithula, 42, a resident of the Thotavalasa village in Andhra Pradesh, cultivating the rich, red soil of the valley was her livelihood. On her small patch of land grow with coffee and mango trees, planted over decades with tireless care and ancestral knowledge. Yet, once a source of pride and sustainability, the meaning of these trees has been quietly redefined in ways she never agreed to.
Over a decade ago, more than 333 villages in the valley began receiving free saplings from the Naandi Foundation as part of a large-scale afforestation initiative funded by a French entity, Livelihoods Funds. Unbeknownst to Janni and her neighbours, these trees had transfigured into commodities in a global carbon market, their branches reaching far beyond the valley to corporate boardrooms, their roots tethered not to the soil of sustenance but to the ledger of profit and carbon offsets.
The project claims that it would offset nearly 1.6 million tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent over two decades. On paper, it is a triumph for global climate efforts. In reality, the residents’ lives have seen little improvement. While the sale of carbon credits has reportedly fetched millions of dollars for developers, Janni’s rewards have been minimal: a few saplings, occasional training sessions, and the obligation to care for trees that she no longer fully owns. These invisible transactions pose a grave risk to marginalised communities, who practice sustainable agriculture out of necessity rather than trend.
Also Read | COP29: The $300 billion climate finance deal is an optical illusion
The very systems that could uplift them—carbon markets intended to fund sustainability—end up exploiting their resources without addressing their needs.
Earlier this year, the Centre for Science and Environment (CSE) and Down To Earth (DTE) released a joint investigative report on the functioning of the voluntary carbon market in India. The report critically analysed the impacts of the new-age climate solution, its efficacy in reducing carbon emissions, and how it affected the communities involved in the schemes.
The findings highlighted systemic opacity, with key details about the projects, prices, and beneficiaries concealed under confidentiality clauses. Developers also tended to overestimate their emission reductions while failing to provide local communities with meaningful compensation. The report stated that the main beneficiaries of these projects were the project developers, auditors and companies that make a profit out of the carbon trading system.
Carbon markets: The evolution
On December 11, 1997, the parties to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCC) convened and adopted the Kyoto Protocol with the exigence of the climate crisis bearing down on the world. The Kyoto Protocol, revered for its epochal impact on global climate policy, focused on controlling the emissions of prime anthropogenic greenhouse gases (GHGs). One of the key mechanisms introduced was the “Clean Development Mechanism”, which would allow developed countries to invest in emission reduction projects in developing countries. In exchange, the developed countries would receive certified emission reduction (CER) credits, or carbon credits as they are commonly known.
One carbon credit represents the reduction or removal of one tonne of CO2. Governments create and enforce rules for carbon markets by setting emission caps and monitoring compliance with the help of third-party organisations. For example, the European Union Emissions Trading System (EU-ETS) sets an overall cap on emissions and allocates allowances to industries. A financial penalty system was also put in place to prevent verifiers and consultants from falsifying emissions data. The impact of these renewable projects is usually verified through methods such as satellite imagery or on-site audits.
Companies such as Verra and Gold Standard have seized this opportunity, leading the designing and monitoring of carbon removal projects. Governments and corporations invest in these projects to meet their own net-zero pledges. The companies then issue carbon credits to the investing entity. Verra has stated that they have issued over 1 billion carbon credits, translating into the reduction of 1 billion tonnes of greenhouse gas emissions. However, countless case studies and reports have indicated that only a small fraction of these funds reach the local communities practising sustainability.
Article 6 under the Paris Agreement further concretised and regulated the crediting mechanism to enable countries interested in setting up carbon trading schemes. However, the parties failed to reach a consensus regarding the specifics of Article 6 at COP 27 and COP 28. So, climate finance experts and policymakers were very interested in the developments taking place at the COP 29 summit in Baku, Azerbaijan. Unlike its predecessors, the COP 29 summit has seen a diminished attendee list, with major Western political leaders including Joe Biden, Ursula von der Leyen, Olaf Scholz, and Emmanuel Macron failing to make it to the summit due to the increasingly turbulent climate within their own constituencies.
From a post-colonial perspective, carbon markets have been viewed as perpetuating existing global hierarchies; wealthier countries and corporations fail to reduce their emissions and instead shift the burden of mitigation onto developing nations. | Photo Credit: Illustration by Irfan Khan
Sceptics questioned whether this iteration of the summit would lead to any substantial decisions being passed. However, on day-two of the summit, parties reached a landmark consensus on the standards for Article 6.4 and a dynamic mechanism to update them. Mukhtar Babayev, the Minister of Ecology and Natural Resources of Azerbaijan and the COP 29 President, said: “By matching buyers and sellers efficiently, such markets could reduce the cost of implementing Nationally Determined Contributions by 250 billion dollars a year.” He added that cross-border cooperation and compromise would be vital in fighting climate change.
India has positioned itself as an advocate for the Like-Minded Developing Countries (LMDCs) group, with Naresh Pal Gangwar, India’s lead negotiator at COP 29, saying, “We are at a crucial juncture in our fight against climate change. What we decide here will enable all of us, particularly those in the Global South, to not only take ambitious mitigation action but also adapt to climate change.”
The COP 29 decision comes in light of the Indian government’s adoption of the amended Energy Conservation Act of 2022, which enabled India to set up its own carbon market. In July 2024, the Bureau of Energy Efficiency (BEE), an agency under the Ministry of Power, released a detailed report containing the rules and regulations of the Carbon Credit Trading Scheme (CCTS), India’s ambitious plan for a compliance-based carbon market. The BEE has aimed to launch India’s carbon market in 2026.
CSE’s report highlighted the challenges and possible strategies that the Indian carbon market could adopt from other carbon markets around the world. Referring to this report, Parth Kumar, a programme manager at CSE, pointed out how low carbon prices and low market liquidity would be prominent challenges that the nascent Indian market would have to tackle.
The Global South should be concerned
Following the landmark Article 6.4 decision, climate activists called out the supervisory board for the lack of discussion in the decision-making process. “Kicking off COP29 with a backdoor deal on Article 6.4 sets a poor precedent for transparency and proper governance,” said Isa Mulder, a climate finance expert at Carbon Market Watch. The hastily passed decision reflects the pressure that host countries seem to face; a monumental decision must be passed for a COP summit to be touted as a success.
The science behind carbon markets is rooted in the ability of forests, soil, and oceans to act as carbon sinks by capturing atmospheric carbon dioxide. This process is known as carbon sequestration, and it is central to afforestation and soil health restoration projects. However, the long-term efficacy and scalability of these projects have been repeatedly questioned. The normative understanding of carbon markets as a tool to mitigate climate change has also come under scrutiny recently, with many activists calling the market-driven approach disingenuous to the goals of the climate movement.
From a post-colonial perspective, carbon markets have been viewed as perpetuating existing global hierarchies; wealthier countries and corporations fail to reduce their emissions and instead shift the burden of mitigation onto developing nations. Olúfẹ́mi O. Táíwò, Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University, said, “Climate colonialism is the deepening or expansion of foreign domination through climate initiatives that exploit poorer nations’ resources or otherwise compromises their sovereignty.” Moreover, the effects of climate change disproportionately fall on the shoulders of marginalised communities in the Global South, even though industrialised nations historically produce the bulk of emissions.
There have also been doubts surrounding the claiming process of carbon credits and whether the buyer country or the country where the project is set can count the project towards its own Nationally Determined Contributions (NDCs). Provisions under Article 6 of the Paris Agreement state that countries cannot use any emission reductions sold to another company or country towards their own emissions targets. However, this has become a widespread issue plaguing carbon markets. The EU has recently been criticised for counting carbon credits sold to corporations under the Carbon Removal Certification Framework (CRCF) towards the EU’s own NDC targets. This has led to concerns over the overestimation of the impact of mission reduction projects.
Also Read | India needs climate justice, not just targets
Carbon offset projects, additionally, alienate local communities from their land as the idea of ownership and stewardship becomes muddled with corporate plans on optimally utilising the land for these projects. For example, in 2014, Green Resources, a Norwegian company, leased more than 10,000 hectares of land in Uganda, with additional land being leased in Mozambique and Tanzania. This land was used as a part of afforestation projects to practise sustainability and alleviate poverty in the area. However, interviews conducted with local Ugandan villagers revealed that the project forcibly evicted the local population without delivering its promises to improve access to health and education for the community. These concerns highlighted how the burden of adopting sustainable practices is placed on marginalised communities.
While carbon markets are rightfully criticised, they remain a key piece of the global climate adaptation puzzle. Addressing the issues surrounding transparency and equitable benefit-sharing with local communities could lead to carbon markets having a positive impact on climate change. The system must ensure that larger corporations and countries do not merely export their emissions, but instead implement measures to reduce their own emissions over time. It is also imperative to explore other innovative strategies such as circular economy approaches and nature-based solutions that are more localised, offering hope for a just and sustainable future.
Adithya Santhosh Kumar is currently pursuing a Master’s in Engineering and Policy Analysis at the Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands.
Source: frontline.thehindu.com
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In November 2022, word got out that Ferdinand Marcos Jr, the freshly minted president of the Philippines, wanted to set up a sovereign wealth fund. People scratched their heads. What wealth? The Philippines is mired in debt! It was quickly understood that this was a kind of vanity project, meant to improve the image of a man who came to power because of his family name.
Marcos’ father ruled the Philippines from the mid-1960s to the mid-1980s with an iron fist. Known more for kleptocracy and the brutality of martial law, the Marcos name needed a face-lift, local media put it. Marcos boasted that a sovereign wealth fund would boost investor confidence and attract resources to fund big projects in infrastructure or agriculture. He even dubbed it “Maharlika Fund”, a nod to the mythical warrior figure that his father claimed to personify during World War II.
Vanity aside, Marcos’ proposal raised fears of graft and corruption. After all, not long ago, Malaysia’s sovereign wealth fund (known as 1MDB) was exposed as a multi-billion dollar money laundering scheme for the personal benefit of Prime Minister Najib Razak, who now sits in jail. Yet, Marcos managed to get his proposal onto his country’s legislative agenda in a matter of weeks, and brought it to international investors in Davos and Tokyo for their approval as well.
What are these “sovereign wealth funds”? How are they being used? What link, if any, do they have with people’s struggles around food sovereignty, land grabbing and today’s deepening climate crisis?
Rise of sovereign wealth funds
The first sovereign wealth funds were set up in the 19th century, and grew slowly throughout the 20th. The idea, at first, was rather simple. If a state has excess resources – perhaps mineral wealth or a sudden boom in foreign exchange from exports – these should be tucked away for future use for the benefit of society.
Norway is the classic example. In the late 1960s, oil was discovered off its coast. Overnight, the country become unfathomably rich. After much debate, the government decided to set up a wealth fund – basically a piggy-bank belonging to all Norwegians. It is fed by a tax levied on the oil and gas extracted from Norway’s seabed, plus the revenues of Norway’s state-owned oil and gas companies.
This wealth is meant to be used “for present and future generations”. To ensure this, no one is allowed to touch the underlying pot of money itself, but the interest it earns each year goes into the national budget to pay for things like public health care, generous parental leaves, retirement pensions and public infrastructure. In concrete terms, Norway’s wealth fund contains $1.1 trillion. That money is invested in 9,000 publicly-listed companies across 70 countries around the world. The investments generate a return of about 3% a year, which is what goes into the national budget to provide everyone in Norway with those public services. It has become a source of national pride and unity across the political spectrum.
Many sovereign wealth funds were set up with a similar logic. The “wealth” may come from diamonds (Botswana) or copper (Chile), foreign currency reserves (China) or export earnings (Saudi Arabia). Even the state of Texas in the United States wrote into its constitution back in the 1850s that “available public lands” should be used to finance public schools. To do this, lands were either sold outright or were leased with the proceeds feeding a Permanent School Fund (a sovereign wealth fund) run by a trio of local civil servants. In all of these cases, the funds are created with resources that arguably belong to everyone and serve a public interest objective such as guaranteeing social rights (e.g. retirement for all in Norway) or covering national budget deficits in times of crisis (e.g. as happened with Covid-19 in Peru) or providing children with access to education (Texas).
Recently, however, governments have started diverging from this logic. Increasingly, sovereign wealth funds are being set up with no resources or wealth or sovereign character to speak of. Indonesia’s sovereign wealth fund, which was set up in 2021, is more like a “development” fund. It aims to secure foreign investment from companies, banks and funds in order to build local infrastructure and energy projects. Not much different from what the government already does. The Philippines’ proposal is more like a “public-private partnership” fund, as foreign investors will be asked to do joint ventures with the state or with local businesses. At one point, the government was proposing that the fund should be handed over to the private sector and listed on the stock market! Quite a number of small countries with no surpluses to speak of have set up sovereign wealth funds by offering citizenship to wealthy individuals (leading to corruption scandals as well).
Over the past two decades, the number of sovereign wealth funds has surged (see graph) and there are now more than 100 sovereign wealth funds around the world.[1] Collectively, they hold $10 trillion – which makes them the third largest economy, after the US and China, if they were a country. That figure is expected to reach $17 trillion by 2030. While most sovereign funds are national in scope, some are sub-national. The state of Queensland, in Australia, has one. Palestine has one. Even the city of Milan has one.
Some of these funds invest only abroad, some invest only at home and some do both. Key sectors they put their money in, to capture earnings, include energy, technology, health, finance and real estate. All told, sovereign funds are so massive that most people have probably had some connection to them, as they own bits of Alibaba, Flipkart, Uber, Slack, Grab, major airports, the world’s top football teams and social media like Twitter. Anyone paying for these is actually helping sovereign wealth funds take money home.
And while it seems to be a trend among political elites these days to think that setting up such structures can bring funds into the global South, 80% of sovereign wealth fund assets is currently parked in Europe and North America. In fact, one-third is in the US alone.
Agriculture: a critical concern
In dollar terms, food and agriculture represent just 2-3% of all sovereign wealth fund investments. While that sounds small, it is a politically sensitive and strategic sector for many governments. Contributing to national food security has been a historic role for sovereign funds, and it is a vital one for those of Singapore and the Gulf states.
At least 42 sovereign funds are currently invested in food and agriculture (see table). Some are major players, but many are less visible (see box). Their investments may be in largescale farmland acquisitions and production, such as orange groves in Brazil, cattle ranches in Australia or vertical pig farms in China. Some take the form of ownership stakes in global food commodity traders that ship grains, oilseeds and coffee across our oceans, like Bunge, COFCO or Louis Dreyfus. Yet others are positions in food retail systems like supermarket chains or delivery services, and the digital technologies that these operations increasingly rely on.
A handful of actors form the centre of gravity of global agricultural investing by sovereign funds. They are Temasek and GIC in Singapore; PIF in Saudi Arabia; Mubadala and ADQ in UAE; QIA in Qatar; RDIF in Russia; and COFIDES in Spain (see map). The Singaporeans and the Gulf states invest with their own food needs as a priority. RDIF brings big investors into Russia to help finance its export-oriented agribusiness sector. And COFIDES funds food projects around the world with one catch: a Spanish company must be directly involved in and profit from it, such as Borges with almond production in Europe or Pescanova with fish farming in Latin America. (Actually, there is a second catch: all of COFIDES’ overseas food and agriculture investments are loans.[2])
Quite a number of sovereign wealth fund ventures in agriculture are linked to concerns about land and water grabbing, whether directly and indirectly. In December 2022, Abu Dhabi’s government-owned ADQ, which has $110 billion in assets, got hold of 167,00 hectares of farmland in northeast Sudan.[3] It plans to grow sesame, wheat, cotton and alfalfa there, while it builds a massive new port nearby to ship the goods out. ADQ already owns:
- 45% of Louis Dreyfus Company, with its massive land holdings in Latin America, growing sugarcane, citrus, rice and coffee;
- a majority stake in Unifrutti, with 15,000 ha of fruit farms in Chile, Ecuador, Argentina, Philippines, Spain, Italy and South Africa; and
- Al Dahra, a large agribusiness conglomerate controlling and cultivating 118,315 ha of farmland in Romania, Spain, Serbia, Morocco, Egypt, Namibia and the US.
Therefore, the concerns are quite serious. Al Dahra stands accused of draining aquifers in Arizona, just so that it can produce hay to transport back to UAE to feed local dairy herds.[4]
Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund (PIF), one of the world’s top ten sovereign wealth funds in terms of assets, has $13.7 billion invested in agriculture. It owns several massive agribusiness conglomerates focused on livestock, dairy and fisheries. In 2021, it took 100% control of the Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Company (SALIC) which is engaged in meat and cereal production in Canada, Ukraine, India, Brazil, Australia and the UK.[5] The scale is enormous. In India, PIF produces its staple, basmati rice.
From Brazil, it gets its beef. In Australia, it operates 200,000 ha for sheep grazing and also buys lamb and mutton directly from producers. In Ukraine, it has 195,000 ha growing wheat, barley, maize and rice. PIF also owns 35% of Olam Agri, a major palm oil producer, and is building the largest vertical farm in the entire Middle East and North Africa region.[6] It is very strange, then, to learn that PIF’s new green financing instrument will explicitly exclude funding for any projects or expenditures associated with industrial agriculture or livestock![7] It shows the doublespeak of investors that expand intensive industrial food systems while needing to flash climate credentials.
Another very big player is Qatar. Its sovereign wealth fund has massive land holdings in Australia, through a stake in the 4.4 million ha Paraway Pastoral Company dedicated to livestock production. The fund allows Qatar to source its organic food supplies through Canada’s Sunrise Foods, which operates in Turkey, Netherlands, Russia, Ukraine and US. It owns poultry and seafood companies in Oman, and is now developing agriculture supply chains in East Africa. The Qatari wealth fund is connected to a Russian oil company which owns 50% of Agrokultura, which operates 200,000 ha of farmland in Russia. It also owns 14% of AdecoAgro with its 472,862 ha hectares under production in Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. It is now going into Kazakhstan for the same purposes – and in direct competition with the UAE.[8]
It is important to note that many of these arrangements between sovereign wealth funds and global agribusiness involve political guarantees. Qatar is one of the biggest investors in Glencore, with whom it has a deal to ensure its access to grains and shipping services in case of need. The same is true with Qatar and Turkey’s Tiryaki Agro Group. The fund’s agricultural arm, Hassad Food, has its own agreement with Sunrise Foods which ensures that in the event of any shortage in the Qatari market, the country’s need for grain, oilseeds and wheat will be met on a priority basis.[9] Similarly, when Abu Dhabi’s ADQ bought 45% of Louis Dreyfus – the world’s third largest commodity trader – it signed a side deal giving it priority access to food shipments in times of global crisis, as the world experienced recently during both Covid-19 and the Russian invasion of Ukraine.[10]
It is fair to say that the political strategy of leveraging sovereign wealth to get access to global food supplies works. What is never mentioned is at what cost. For many of these big investment projects expand and entrench largescale corporate agribusiness, with its contingent slew of land conflicts, water pollution, indigenous rights abuses, labour violations and spiralling climate emissions. And when it comes to the Gulf states or Singapore, these are very small populations draining the resources of much bigger ones. With sovereign funds, scale is baked in. Even when they do try to reckon with social and environmental contingencies, as in the case of PIF, their attempts at making investments green or socially responsible are shallow at best. Only Norway’s stands out as making strong commitments to scrutinise and withdraw from agribusiness companies associated with social and ecological crimes, as it has done with meat packers and soy producers in Brazil (Minerva, Marfrig, SLC Agricola and JBS) as well as rubber giant Halcyon Agri.[11]
So, to answer the question: what do these funds have to do with food sovereignty? The answer is: it’s twisted. They do provide food security for a few countries. And political elites increasingly like to use the term food sovereignty to characterise these missions, as it serves their nationalist, territorial and militarist frameworks.[12] But sovereign wealth funds crush real visions of food sovereignty as they take resources away from local communities and push a capitalist, industrialist food system – be it green or not.
Putting the public interest first
Sovereign wealth funds can be a good idea if they really are sovereign (run by the people), if the resources they harness are democratically sourced and organised, and if they have a genuine public welfare mandate. We actually need more commitment to public approaches to reverse the growing inequality and privatisation that is undermining people’s rights to healthcare, housing, transportation, food, education and retirement in most countries around the world.
But there is a danger. There are increasing calls to set up sovereign wealth funds to solve government problems – from building a new capital city in Indonesia to plugging an alleged deficit in France’s pension system. But these newer funds are just tools to channel money into government coffers or private enterprises. They are not built on any collective resource or aimed at protecting a public wealth for the benefit of future generations. They seem to have little to do with traditional sovereign wealth funds, apart from the name. For that reason, they should be scrutinised and if they don’t genuinely serve the public interest they should be stopped. Similarly, those that contribute to land or water grabbing should be challenged and stopped, too.
Agriculture may not be the number one sector that these funds gravitate towards to generate wealth. But politically, geopolitically and strategically, food security is a core concern of theirs and will continue to be, requiring our critical scrutiny as well.
We need good public services that provide for public well-being. Sovereign wealth funds – despite their name – need to be put to a more scrupulous test to see if they have a role to play in that agenda.
Less visible players: Big players aside, many sovereign wealth funds participate in financing the direction of food and agriculture.[13]
• Angola’s sovereign wealth fund is investing in food and agriculture in Africa through a private equity fund that is targetting the production of maize, beans, soybeans, rice and cattle.
• Australia’s sovereign wealth fund has a Future Drought Fund since 2019. Currently holding A$4.5 billion, its sole aim is to “provide secure, continuous funding to support initiatives that enhance the drought resilience of Australian farms and communities.” Its investments must deliver returns of 2-3% above the consumer price index.
• Bolivia has a sovereign wealth fund that was set up in 2012 with state surplus funds and a loan from the central bank. It invests domestically in both public and private enterprises involved in honey production, fruit processing, aquaculture, dairy, quinoa and stevia.
• Brunei’s new sovereign wealth fund is considering investing in agriculture, in partnership with the Malaysian Investment Development Authority.
• Not much is known about how China’s sovereign wealth funds invest. The China Investment Corporation has $1.3 trillion, making it the largest in the world. It invests in agriculture overseas and reported a remarkable return of 14.27% on its overseas holdings in 2021. Equally remarkable, alternative investments, which include private equity and farmland, are said to account for 47% of its overseas portfolio. China’s National Social Security Fund is also a sovereign wealth fund and is invested domestically in agriculture through its private equity portfolio.
• France’s sovereign fund is known to be a big investor in agriculture and food, both domestically and abroad. One very controversial foreign project it is connected to is led by Arise IIP, a subsidiary of Olam, in Chad.[14]
• Gabon’s sovereign wealth fund, built from oil revenues, runs a private equity fund that invests in the food and agriculture sector. It also invests directly in agriculture and farmland projects at home.
• The National Development Fund of Iran has some $24 billion, most of it from oil and gas revenues and all of it invested domestically. According to some sources, 1% is invested in water and agriculture, including farmland ownership, a sector the fund wants to invest more in.
• Ithmar Capital, a state investment company, serves as Morocco’s sovereign wealth fund. Details are lacking but their strategy is to co-invest in Moroccan agribusiness operations with foreigners such as Spain’s COFIDES or Gulf state investors.
• Nigeria, like Abu Dabhi and Spain, has its sovereign wealth fund investing in fertiliser production. This is a very strategic concern.
• Palestine’s sovereign wealth fund is a public company that does local impact investing. Its initial funds came from the Palestinian Authority. It is invested in a 50 hectares seedless grape farm, looking into investing in animal feed production and helping set up a National Agriculture Investment Company.
• Türkiye Wealth Fund has 2% of its investments in food and agriculture, as of 2019.
• In the US, the states of Texas, New Mexico and Alaska have sovereign wealth funds that are heavily invested in farmland, whether directly or through private equity funds. The agribusiness operations they fund are in some cases domestic and in others overseas (usually in the Southern Cone of Latin America or Australia).
• Vietnam’s State Capital Investment Corporation is invested in agriculture/farmland through a joint venture with the State General Reserve Fund of Oman, showing how co-investing is a common strategy of sovereign funds.
|
Sovereign wealth funds invested in farmland/food/agriculture (2023)
|
|||
|
Country
|
Fund
|
Est.
|
AUM (US$bn)
|
|
China
|
CIC
|
2007
|
1351
|
|
Norway
|
NBIM
|
1997
|
1145
|
|
UAE – Abu Dhabi
|
ADIA
|
1967
|
993
|
|
Kuwait
|
KIA
|
1953
|
769
|
|
Saudi Arabia
|
PIF
|
1971
|
620
|
|
China
|
NSSF
|
2000
|
474
|
|
Qatar
|
QIA
|
2005
|
450
|
|
UAE – Dubai
|
ICD
|
2006
|
300
|
|
Singapore
|
Temasek
|
1974
|
298
|
|
UAE – Abu Dhabi
|
Mubadala
|
2002
|
284
|
|
UAE – Abu Dhabi
|
ADQ
|
2018
|
157
|
|
Australia
|
Future Fund
|
2006
|
157
|
|
Iran
|
NDFI
|
2011
|
139
|
|
UAE
|
EIA
|
2007
|
91
|
|
USA – AK
|
Alaska PFC
|
1976
|
73
|
|
Australia – QLD
|
QIC
|
1991
|
67
|
|
USA – TX
|
UTIMCO
|
1876
|
64
|
|
USA – TX
|
Texas PSF
|
1854
|
56
|
|
Brunei
|
BIA
|
1983
|
55
|
|
France
|
Bpifrance
|
2008
|
50
|
|
UAE – Dubai
|
Dubai World
|
2005
|
42
|
|
Oman
|
OIA
|
2020
|
42
|
|
USA – NM
|
New Mexico SIC
|
1958
|
37
|
|
Malaysia
|
Khazanah
|
1993
|
31
|
|
Russia
|
RDIF
|
2011
|
28
|
|
Turkey
|
TVF
|
2017
|
22
|
|
Bahrain
|
Mumtalakat
|
2006
|
19
|
|
Ireland
|
ISIF
|
2014
|
16
|
|
Canada – SK
|
SK CIC
|
1947
|
16
|
|
Italy
|
CDP Equity
|
2011
|
13
|
|
China
|
CADF
|
2007
|
10
|
|
Indonesia
|
INA
|
2020
|
6
|
|
India
|
NIIF
|
2015
|
4
|
|
Spain
|
COFIDES
|
1988
|
4
|
|
Nigeria
|
NSIA
|
2011
|
3
|
|
Angola
|
FSDEA
|
2012
|
3
|
|
Egypt
|
TSFE
|
2018
|
2
|
|
Vietnam
|
SCIC
|
2006
|
2
|
|
Gabon
|
FGIS
|
2012
|
2
|
|
Morocco
|
Ithmar Capital
|
2011
|
2
|
|
Palestine
|
PIF
|
2003
|
1
|
|
Bolivia
|
FINPRO
|
2015
|
0,4
|
|
AUM (assets under management) figures from Global SWF, January 2023
|
|||
|
Engagement in food/farmland/agriculture assessed by GRAIN
|
|||
[1] Important sources used for this report include: Javier Capapé (ed), “Sovereign wealth funds 2021”, IE University, Madrid, Oct 2022, https://docs.ie.edu/cgc/SWF%202021%20IE%20SWR%20CGC%20-%20ICEX-Invest%20in%20Spain.pdf; Global SWF, “2023 Annual report”, New York, Jan 2023, https://globalswf.com/reports/2023annual; the websites of Global SWF (https://globalswf.com) and SWF Institute (https://www.swfinstitute.org/) as well as Preqin Ltd.
[2] See the COFIDES database, sector “Agri-food”, https://www.cofides.es/en/projects?field_direccion_country_code=All&field_sector_target_id=2
[3] Reuters, “Sudan to develop Red Sea port in $6-bln initial pact with Emirati group”, 13 Dec 2022, https://www.farmlandgrab.org/31347.
[4] Ella Nilsen, “Wells are running dry in drought-weary Southwest as foreign-owned farms guzzle water to feed cattle overseas“, CNN, 27 Nov 2022, https://edition.cnn.com/2022/11/05/us/arizona-water-foreign-owned-farms-climate/index.html
[5] See SALIC website: https://salic.com/
[6] AeroFarms, “PIF and AeroFarms sign joint venture agreement to build indoor vertical farms in Saudi Arabia and the wider MENA region”, 1 Feb 2023, https://www.aerofarms.com/2023/02/01/pif-and-aerofarms-sign-joint-venture-agreement-to-build-indoor-vertical-farms-in-saudi-arabia-and-the-wider-mena-region/
[7] Public Investment Fund, “Public Investment Fund Green Finance Framework”, February 2022, https://www.pif.gov.sa/Investors%20Files%20EN/PIF%20Green%20Finance%20Framework.pdf
[8] See Hassad Food, “Hassad signs MoU with Baiterek to discuss investment projects that supports food security”, 12 Oct 2022, https://www.hassad.com/2022/10/12/hassad-signs-mou-with-baiterek-to-discuss-investment-projects-that-supports-food-security/ and Global Sovereign Wealth Fund, “Gulf funds drawn into soft power battle over Kazakhstan”, 25 Aug 2021, https://globalswf.com/news/gulf-funds-drawn-into-soft-power-battle-over-kazakhstan
[9] See Hassad Food, “Strategic local and international investments along with global partnerships to satisfy the market needs from grains and wheat”, 28 Mar 2022, https://www.hassad.com/2022/03/28/strategic-local-and-international-investments-along-with-global-partnerships-to-satisfy-the-market-needs-from-grains-and-wheat/
[10] Reuters, “Commodity group Louis Dreyfus completes stake sale to ADQ”, 10 Sep 2021, https://www.reuters.com/world/middle-east/commodity-group-louis-dreyfus-completes-stake-sale-adq-2021-09-10/.
[11] See Fabiano Maisonnave, “Norway oil fund omits meatpacker JBS from deforestation watch list “, Climate Fund News, 4 Apr 2018, https://www.climatechangenews.com/2018/04/04/norway-oil-fund-omits-meatpacker-jbs-deforestation-watch-list/, Earthsight, “World’s largest pension fund dumps shares in beef firm in wake of corruption scandal”, 24 July 2018, https://www.earthsight.org.uk/news/idm/worlds-largest-pension-fund-dumps-shares-beef-firm-wake-corruption-scandal and Paulina Pielichata, “Norway sovereign wealth fund divests Halcyon over environmental concerns”, Pensions & Investments, 27 Mar 2019, https://www.pionline.com/article/20190327/ONLINE/190329915/norway-sovereign-wealth-fund-divests-halcyon-over-environmental-concerns
[12] “L’Afrique sur le chemin de l’autosuffisance alimentaire”, Seneplus, 27 Feb 2023, https://www.seneplus.com/developpement/lafrique-sur-le-chemin-de-lautosuffisance-alimentaire
[13] Main sources for this box are each fund’s respective website, news clippings and Preqin Ltd.
[14] Arise, “Bpifrance and Arise IIP establish a partnership to foster agricultural materials processing and co-industrialisation projects on a pan-African scale”, 15 February 2023, https://www.ariseiip.com/bpifrance-and-arise-iip-establish-pan-african-partnership/ , and Benjamin König, “Arise IIP, la firme qui dépouille les paysans africains”, L’Humanité, 4 April 2023, https://www.humanite.fr/monde/tchad/arise-iip-la-firme-qui-depouille-les-paysans-africains-789407
Source: Grain
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