WWF has released a toolkit that will help financial institutions spot and reduce their risk to environmental financial crime exposure. The new Environmental Crime Financial Toolkit (ECFT), which WWF co-developed with financial crime software company Themis, is an open-access platform designed to help financial institutions screen new clients and review existing ones, as well as identify risks related to land conversion, such as deforestation, that could be linked to financial crimes, WWF-UK drivers initiative lead John Dodsworth told Mongabay in an email. This, in turn, is meant to help the firms minimize their exposure to environment-related illegal activities. WWF notes on its website that environmental crime, which is worth hundreds of billions of dollars annually, is the third-largest illegal activity globally. These crimes continue to grow by 5-7% per year, according to Interpol. In a joint report published earlier this year, WWF and Themis noted that some 150 financial institutions had provided $6.1 trillion in funding to “350 companies with the greatest risk exposure to tropical deforestation” in 2023. Financial institutions can be exposed to potential illegal activities when they finance commodities linked to land conversion and deforestation, such as palm oil, cocoa, timber, coffee, minerals, oil and gas. In the same report, the results of a survey by WWF and Themis showed that of 644 financial services professionals interviewed from 17 countries, 60% said their company did not have a land conversion risk policy. Half of the firms surveyed also worked with high-risk sectors at some point, but only…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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