Last November, the NGO Amazon Watch and activist platform CREDO accused several global financial institutions of having strong links to reported human rights violations and environmental degradation in the Amazonian region of Ecuador and Peru. Last week, the organizations announced they had delivered over 120,000 signatures on petitions that are urging BlackRock, Inc. and JPMorgan Chase to stop the financing of what activists say are destructive oil exploration activities in the Amazon.

The push to drill for fossil fuels in remote regions of the Amazon comes at a cost to local indigenous populations. Many of these communities, according to several reports, are usually not consulted before such exploration occurs on lands where they have lived for generations. NGOs also complain that the quest to find petroleum in this region also threatens the Amazon rainforest’s rich biodiversity.

And none of this would be happening in the first place, says Amazon Watch, if the likes of BlackRock and JPMorgan did not have a leading role of financing these oil exploration projects in the first place.

From Amazon Watch’s point of view, these financial institutions’ public expressions of supporting climate change efforts is mere window dressing when juxtaposed with the actions of the companies in which they are investing. The NGO is urging investors and customers to pressure the banks to divest from these projects; and if JPMorgan and BlackRock do not reverse their lending practices, then citizens should stop conducting business with these financial giants.

Read the full article about funding oil exploration in the Amazon by Leon Kaye at Triple Pundit.