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Embargo: 00:01 Saturday 16th March 2002
Photo Opportunity: Saturday,1000h, outside Barclays, High Street, Birmingham. Accompanied by a naked 6ft businessman, Birmingham Friends of the Earth will be demonstrating outside Barclays on Birmingham High Street.
Naked Businessman exposes Barclays rainforest scandal
A bowler hatted businessman will be exposed outside Barclays Bank on the High Street, Birmingham today in protest at Barclays Group's financing of rainforest destruction.
The "exposure" follows an investigation by Friends of the Earth which revealed that Barclays Bank Group used customers' money to finance Asia Pulp and Paper (APP), one of the most destructive pulp and paper companies in the world. APP is responsible for denuding a large area of Indonesian rainforest, home to tigers, elephants and orangutans. [1]
Research by Friends of the Earth shows that between 1990 and 1996 Barclays arranged and participated in loans of more than £400 million to APP, and that the bank now holds £8 million of APP shares on behalf of its clients.
APP has cleared over 280,000 hectares of rainforest during the last 10 years and is planning to clear-cut another 300,000 hectares over the next 5 years. This means that in total APP will have cleared an area of wildlife rich rainforest twenty times the size of Birmingham.
Friends of the Earth Birmingham is demanding that Barclays stops use customers' money to destroy more forests.
Jeremy Beacock of Birmingham Friends of the Earth said:
"We want people to know that Barclays is using their money to support the destruction of one of the most wildlife rich forests in the world. I bank with Barclays and I am very disappointed with the way they are using my money."
Friends of the Earth is calling on Barclays to use its financial muscle to stop APP from destroying more forests and to adopt a Forest policy to ensure none of its future investments are so damaging.
Editor's Notes
[1] More than 50 per cent of Indonesian rainforest has already been destroyed, and the remaining area is under threat. An area of two million hectares, the size of Belgium, is being lost each year, ranking along side Brazil as the highest rate of national deforestation in the world. An estimated 73% of all the logging in Indonesia is illegal. Indonesian rainforest is home to endangered species such as the orangutan, tiger, elephant and rhino.