News Nitrogen
Greenpeace wants Rabo to pay billions for nitrogen
Greenpeace Today, Rabobank presents the account of the nitrogen crisis and wants the bank to 'start' with €3,1 billion in contributing to the nitrogen fund. The environmental organization also demands that the bank stop 'financing industrial agriculture that leads to nature destruction'.
According to Greenpeace, 'Rabobank had known for thirty years about the harmful effects of too much nitrogen', but it 'continued to encourage farmers to build even larger livestock factories'. Greenpeace has therefore commissioned Ethicalgrowth2020 to substantiate a claim for damages against Abobank 'as a driver and therefore co-responsible for the social damage caused, and is being caused by livestock farming in the Netherlands'.
According to the report, intensive livestock farming in the Netherlands costs more than this yield if the environmental costs are taken into account. According to the bureau, the social damage over the past fifteen years has totaled €100 billion. "The idea is to have other chain partners, in addition to Rabobank, also pay for the financial costs of the measures that will be necessary to solve the 'nature crisis'", according to the report. In addition to banks, this concerns 'other parties that have earned money and/or have benefited from the low prices (consumers) of the agricultural system in the Netherlands'.
Rabobank is now focusing on the Agricultural Agreement
The bank says in a written response to the claim: "Rabobank has knowledge taken from Greenpeace's apple. Rabobank supports the government's goals with regard to tackling the nitrogen problem. We are at the table at the Agricultural Agreement. We also do this with other banks in an NVB context. Rabobank and the NVB (Dutch Banking Association ed.) are members of the so-called Ketentafel. We believe it is important that the Agricultural Agreement is concluded in order to provide more clarity for the future of the agricultural sector. We are now fully focused on those conversations."
Parliamentary debate
Greenpeace's claim comes one day before the continuation of the parliamentary debate on the 'Temporary Transition Fund for Rural Areas and Nature Act', where a number of opposition parties discussed Rabobank several times on 19 April (before the May recess). For example, SP Member of Parliament Sandra Beckerman called for Rabobank (and other banks) to contribute and for the chain to take its responsibility. Laura Bromet of GroenLinks stated that she does not want to 'spend €24 billion on farmers who, combined with new loans from Rabobank, buy new innovative housing systems'. Esther Ouwehand of PvdD said: "The only ones who have an interest in these ridiculous numbers of animals in the Netherlands are the slaughterhouses, the feed companies, the stable builders and the Rabobank." According to Joris Thijssen, Member of Parliament for the PvdA (and Greenpeace director before that), 'of course it cannot be the case that we use €24,3 billion of our tax money to protect nature and reform agriculture, and that many billions of them would go to a bank that knowingly stepped into farmers' yards and pushed them further in the wrong direction, even when Rabobank already knew that the current agricultural system was past its sell-by date'.
Linda van Eekeres
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