Nickel mine exploitation threats to Sulawesi’s natural environment
14 November, 2024
Monday 30 march 2020
Header photo: Linda Broekhuizen of Dutch Development Bank FMO © IUCN NL
Home to a wide variety of species such as the anteater, tapir and river otter, the Chaco region in Paraguay covers over 100 million hectares of dry, tropical forest. But the habitat is under threat. One of the most sparsely inhabited areas in South America, approximately 250,000 hectares of forest are cut down per year, mainly for cattle rearing.
A major part of this deforestation is conducted outside of the law by cattle and agricultural farmers. Government regulation is problematic because not always having the means to monitor who and who doesn’t have permission. In 2012, FMO decided to finance a number of local banks in Paraguay who among others are active in agroforestry.
Linda Broekhuizen, Chief Investment Officer of FMO, states: “We believe it is important that our customers, the local banks, are committed to stop illegal deforestation by their customers. With four banks, we started setting up guidelines for environmental and social management. If their customers do not adhere to these guidelines, then in time the financing can be stopped. These banks have voluntarily joined forces with fourteen of the seventeen regulated banks in Paraguay in a roundtable: the Mesa de Finanzas Sostenible. For them, the fact that almost all banks joined was essential in order to reduce the risk of customers moving to another bank for fear of the guidelines. This way, we have created a level playing field.” From the offset of this initiative, WWF Paraguay and FMO have worked in union to develop guidelines for the banks.
This is good news for the Chaco region, because the more banks joining the Mesa, the better. But FMO and the other banks didn’t act alone. When it came to accessing data to investigate who is cutting down trees illegally, civil society organisations were able to make invaluable contributions with their knowledge and satellite data.
Linda: ‘From the start, we have proposed to work with civil society organisations that have relevant data. This enables the banks to better monitor and analyse the activities of their customers.’
Such collaboration was not without challenges however, especially for FMO. In Paraguay, banks and civil society organisations are often suspicious of each other. Banks usually see civil society organisations as too activist like, anti-corporate or being against progress. On the other hand, civil society organisations find it difficult to believe bankers who claim they want to conserve nature. In short, bringing these parties together is not easy. So how exactly do you set up a partnership?
Linda: “In this case we asked for the help of WWF Paraguay and IUCN NL, because they could involve two smaller, local civil society organisations: Guyra Paraguay and IDEA. Although the banks found this difficult initially, we were able to convince them of the added value of the knowledge the organisations would bring to the table. It helped that WWF, as a well-known international brand, supported these civil society organisations.”
Linda firmly believes in a multi-stakeholder approach: ‘Public, private and civil society organisations all speak a different language, but they often have a shared goal. In this case; reducing (illegal) deforestation. How complicated this is varies from country to country and from sector to sector. In Paraguay, it wasn’t easy to set up a cooperation between parties that don’t naturally trust each other, but we have learned that you should always keep the common goal in mind. If you disagree on how to achieve that, then acknowledge these disagreements and keep communicating about them. By working together, you can create a lot more impact.’
What was the impact of work in the Chaco region? Linda: ‘We have already developed sector guidelines for cattle, agriculture and the agri-industry sector – in order to provide sustainable financing for companies in these sectors. Now we are developing a benchmark tool together with quality control of WWF NL, WWF Paraguay, VBDO and IUCN NL, to evaluate the banking sector itself.’
Mobilising the whole banking sector in the battle for nature conservation is something that a small civil society organisation cannot achieve by itself.
In a nutshell, the lessons from this journey:
This article is part of the series Lessons on business engagement for nature conservation. This article has also been published on the website of WWF Netherlands.
We are also interested in hearing your experiences of how companies, civil society organisations and governments can work towards joint solutions.
How did the collaboration between companies and civil society organisations work for you? Do you recognise the cultural differences? Did you struggle with them, and how did you deal with it? Have you also joined a large organisation? What was the result? Companies and civil society organisations, share your experiences!