What does ANZ bank have to do with deforestation?

Australia is a global deforestation hotspot with the highest rate of forest clearing in the developed world. Despite this, all of Australia’s big banks, including ANZ, are continuing to loan to landholders who are actively bulldozing the bush.

Earlier this year ANZ was in the news after we linked the bank to the destruction of koala habitat in Queensland nearly 2 times the size of the MCG¹. And that's just one example of the financed deforestation from ANZ that we’ve found in our investigations, including several more cases that we'll be sharing in a report soon.

ANZ needs to do better by nature and put an end to its financing of deforestation.

What are we doing about it?

Last year, ACF, SIX and a group of passionate shareholders filed shareholder resolutions calling on the bank to come clean on how much money they are lending to customers at high-risk of engaging in deforestation, and to put in place a strong policy to stop funding deforestation.

These resolutions garnered a huge vote in favour, with support from shareholders representing $13.5 billion worth of shares. Shareholders are some of a company's most important stakeholders, and their demands matter.

But since then, they've shown no progress.

So, we’re once again taking the fight for nature straight to ANZ’s upcoming Annual General Meeting and calling on the bank to clean up its act.

How you can get involved

We need the support of at least 100 shareholders to help us file these resolutions before Friday the 25th of September.

If you’re an ANZ shareholder and want to join us as a resolution co-filer, all you need to do is sign the Agency Agreement Form hosted by our campaign partner SIX.

If you don’t currently have shares with ANZ bank you can purchase them and be part of this resolution through our campaign partner, SIX.

Beyond being a co-filer of our shareholder resolutions, there are plenty of other ways to support the campaign, including sending ANZ bank an email asking them to stop financing the destruction of nature. Fill in the expression of interest form to be kept in touch about the campaign.

¹https://www.afr.com/companies/financial-services/anz-loan-linked-to-destruction-of-koala-habitat-in-queensland-20260623-p6096v