A coalition of international conservation and Indigenous rights groups delivered a mass petition to major Wall Street banks on Wednesday, April 22, Earth Day 2026, demanding they use their financial leverage to stop soy-driven destruction of the Amazon rainforest following the collapse of a landmark deforestation agreement.
The petition, signed by tens of thousands of people globally, was delivered to Citi, Bank of America (BoA), and JPMorgan Chase in New York. It calls on the banks to condition their financing of companies operating in Brazil’s soy sector on a clear commitment to uphold the Amazon Soy Moratorium (ASM), a nearly 20-year voluntary agreement that had dramatically curtailed deforestation across the Amazon biome.
The action was led by Rainforest Action Network (RAN), Amazon Watch, and Friends of the Earth, and included a dramatic visual component staged in Midtown Manhattan. In partnership with activist projection collective The Illuminator Project, the groups cast giant images of Indigenous-led protests and scenes of Amazon destruction onto prominent New York City buildings, bringing the crisis directly to the global financial capital.
The moratorium collapsed in January 2026 when the Brazilian Association of Vegetable Oil Industries (ABIOVE), the industry group representing major soy traders including Cargill, Bunge, and Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), formally withdrew from the agreement. The exit followed a Brazilian state law in Mato Grosso that stripped tax benefits from companies participating in voluntary environmental commitments that went beyond national law. Researchers at the Amazon Environmental Research Institute (IPAM) warn that if the moratorium fails completely, Amazon deforestation could surge by 30 percent by 2045, pushing the world’s largest rainforest toward an irreversible ecological tipping point.
The ASM had been widely recognised as one of the most effective large-scale conservation agreements ever created. Between 2009 and 2022, deforestation in monitored areas fell by 69 percent even as soy cultivation in the biome expanded by more than 340 percent, according to data from Forests and Finance. Since its inception in 2006, the moratorium helped protect an estimated 3.2 million hectares of Amazon forest. Banks and investors provided an estimated 75 billion US dollars in loans and underwriting to Brazil’s soy sector between 2020 and 2025, according to Forests and Finance data, with Citi, BoA, BNP Paribas, and Barclays among the largest creditors to the major traders whose Brazilian soy operations are now operating without moratorium constraints.
“Wall Street banks have enormous influence over the future of the Amazon,” said Stephanie Dowlen, Senior Campaigner at Rainforest Action Network. “If banks continue financing companies that abandon forest protections, they are complicit in the destruction of the Amazon and the violation of Indigenous rights.”
Alessandra, an Indigenous leader who participated in protests against a Cargill grain terminal on the Tapajós River in Santarém, Pará state, said the moratorium’s dismantling is part of a wider pattern of threats to Amazon communities. “We, Indigenous peoples, are at the frontlines protecting the Amazon. When the rules that protect the forest are dismantled, our territories and our futures are put at risk,” she said.
Jeff Conant, Senior International Forest Program Manager at Friends of the Earth U.S., pointed to the broader industry dynamics at play. “The rollback of the Amazon Soy Moratorium puts the entire Amazon at the mercy of soy companies like Cargill, Bunge and Archer Daniels Midland. With billions of dollars flowing annually from global finance into these companies and into Brazil’s soy sector, banks have both the responsibility and the power to ensure that economic activity does not come at the expense of forests and communities.”
The coalition is asking financial institutions to require soy traders and producers to maintain the moratorium’s core commitments, including a zero-deforestation standard dating from 2008, full farm-level traceability, and respect for Indigenous rights. More than 50 UK food companies representing roughly 60 percent of the country’s soy demand reaffirmed their commitment to ASM criteria as recently as July 2025, and major European retailers including Lidl, Aldi, and Tesco have publicly demanded that traders maintain the agreement’s standards.
