The Australian Conservation Foundation has reported “concerned NAB shareholders will today file Australia’s first bank shareholder resolution on deforestation”

The resolution calls on the bank, which is Australia’s biggest agribusiness lender, to:

• Disclose how much it lends to customers involved in deforestation, and set a strategy to stop financing deforestation, in line with global standards.

The shareholder resolution will go to the annual meeting on 12 December and has been led by the Australian Conservation Foundation and co-filed by SIX Invest, Australian Ethical, Melior Investment Management and more than 100 shareholders.

“Our investigations show NAB has the highest exposure to deforestation among Australian banks,” said ACF’s acting CEO Paul Sinclair.
“More than half of Australia’s agricultural land is already degraded, which comes at a $260bn annual cost to the economy, yet Australia remains a global deforestation front, with economy-wide risks banks can no longer ignore.”

ACF’s analysis of 100 land titles of properties where deforestation has occurred shows NAB financed twice as many of these properties as any other bank.