Australia's big four banks are likely to be drastically underreporting the emissions from the deforestation they finance, as they all fail to track, manage or disclose the extent of deforestation occurring in their loan portfolios.
New analysis by the Australian Conservation Foundation estimates emissions from land clearing events on 77 agricultural properties financed by ANZ (including Suncorp), NAB, Commbank and Westpac over the four years to 2024.
The analysis found this deforestation, which destroyed wildlife habitat, released more than 7.5 million tonnes of carbon that had been stored naturally in the landscape.
These emissions were produced from 19,286 hectares of deforestation - a small sample of the hundreds of thousands of hectares cleared every year in Australia.
Emissions from deforestation are generally not included in the big four banks' climate reporting, with only ANZ including emissions from deforestation in its estimate of Australia's agriculture sector emissions.
ANZ's estimate for the emissions it financed for the entire agricultural sector over the last three reporting periods is only slightly higher than the emissions we linked to the bank from deforestation on just 17 properties over the four-year period.
"Australian banks have been slow to acknowledge and respond to the problem of financed deforestation," said report author and ACF's Policy Analyst - Corporate Responsibility Max Hamra.
"Our analysis reveals millions of tonnes of climate pollution from land clearing that is facilitated by finance from the big four banks, yet these emissions are largely absent from the banks' reporting.
"These banks don't have a credible climate transition plan if they're not looking at the whole picture."
The analysis comes as NAB and ANZ shareholders raise Australia's first bank shareholder resolutions on deforestation at their banks' annual meetings this month.
Financed emissions from deforestation: The Big Four's emissions blind spot
