Rabobank is a cooperative bank. Collaboration is in our DNA. We are convinced that we can have a sustainable impact on the world food system by actively participating in it. We therefore make concerted global efforts with customers, local partners and other stakeholders to enable more sustainable ways of living and working, now and in the future.
Policy to combat illegal deforestation
Rabobank supports local farmers and more sustainable production of food in Brazil. As a food & agri bank, we consciously choose to operate in this region. Also there we believe we can contribute to accelerate the transition towards a futureproof food system by actively participating in it with customers and other stakeholders, rather than simply ignoring or being passive bystanders. We know that the agricultural sector is vulnerable to parties that illegally deforest or have done so in the past. We want to combat illegal deforestation, that is what our policy is focused on, and we use different measuring tools for that. We don't want any parties as customers if they are proven to have deforested illegally after 2005. Step by step, we continue to improve and that involves trial and error. As a bank, unfortunately, we cannot offer a 100% guarantee against illegal deforestation. Rabobank has a customer-focused policy and standards and procedures derived from it, but there is also awareness that this does not eliminate all risks of involvement.
We therefore felt that the signals described by the Dutch daily Het Financieele Dagblad (FD) were cause for further research and reason to review our processes. We expressly thanked the newspaper for that, precisely because we know that we can still improve together. Screening for the embargoes mentioned in the FD article supports us as a bank in mitigating risks and is part of our continuous monitoring and Customer Due Diligence (CDD) processes. We are aware that there are customers on Ibama's embargoed list. However, Ibama's approach focuses not only on illegal deforestation, but on all environmental violations. When Ibama shares an embargo notification, we verify whether an embargo is material and related to illegal deforestation. In doing so, we work together with our customers. If customers are found to be involved in illegal deforestation, Rabobank uses its legal and/or contractual authority to end a loan or relationship where possible. Partly for privacy reasons and possible legal follow-up, we do not share these individual customer files and underlying data publicly.
You can find more about our policy here. Rabobank's approach is sound but is not a complete guarantee, we continue to work on this with local customers and partners. We are always open to concrete signals and will investigate them one by one.
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