22jan04

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Environmentalists Get Citigroup Pledge.

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After several years of lobbying by the Rainforest Action Network, Citigroup plans to announce on Thursday that it will no longer accept financing deals involving certain projects and corporations criticized by the group on environmental grounds.

In future deals, Citigroup will not finance commercial logging in rain forests or projects that harm indigenous populations and will report the greenhouse gas emissions of the energy projects it does finance, the bank and the environmental group will announce. The changes will not apply to current Citigroup deals.

The announcement comes after a campaign by the Rainforest Action Network, which has labeled Citigroup the "most destructive bank in the world." The environmental group took out full-page advertisements in newspapers, showing barren landscapes with blackened tree trunks that it said were the likely results of some projects financed by Citigroup.

It enlisted actors including Susan Sarandon and Daryl Hannah to appear on television advertisements, asking Citigroup customers to cut up their credit cards. Members of the group also blockaded Citigroup branches and encouraged schoolchildren to send notes to Citigroup's chairman, Sanford I. Weill, asking him not to make animals extinct.

[Source: The New York Times, NY, Usa, 22Jan04]

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