In October 2021, BankTrack released a new report “Equator Compliant Climate Destruction: How banks finance fossil fuels under the Equator Principles”, highlighting eight climate destructive fossil fuel projects that have been financed ‘under Equator’ since 2016, the first full year after the signing of the Paris Climate Agreement. Based on this report, Japanese NGOs including 350.org Japan, Fair Finance Guide Japan, FoE Japan, JACSES, Mekong Watch and Kiko network released a statement featuring Japanese major banks mentioned in the report. According to the statement, Japanese banks were involved in all eight of the case studies, and the three major Japanese banks (SMBC, MUFJ, and Mizuho) accounted for the top three of loans among the 200 cases surveyed.

Business & Human Rights Resource Centre asked SMBC, MUFJ, and Mizuho for their responses to the report. The responses are provided as below.