On the evening of Friday 10 April 2026, ORCA activists staged a noisy demonstration outside a pre-graduation dinner at Jesus College. The protest called attention to the college’s £10 million deal with Suzano, a paper and wood pulp multinational based in Brazil. Although the company claims to be working toward biodiversity, activists in Brazil and around the world have claimed Suzano is greenwashing land-grabs, violence and ecologically harmful monoculture farming.

The Jesus College deal, announced in 2024, promised to fund “education and research into areas including the conservation of biodiversity, enhancing business sustainability and the restoration of natural habitats“. However, activists suggest this is an attempt to launder Suzano’s reputation in the Global North following increasing resistance in the Amazon. Movimento Sem Terra (the Landless Workers Movement) has been organising for decades to resist the rise of agribusiness in the Amazon and across Brazil. For MST, Suzano represents illegal displacements of Indigenous and local people, the use of dangerous pesticides and harm to the land.

An activist from ORCA said “the green reputation of Suzano shows the lie of the whole corporate ESG system. Companies greenwash themselves with educational and social initiatives, but continue to hoard land and harm people. Jesus College – and the university as a whole – must stop participating in these hollow charades. Suzano represent a system it is not worth sustaining.”

This protest aligns with ORCA’s wider strategy of targeting what they call “Bad Environmentalisms“: apparently green companies and initiatives that are engaged in broader systemic harm. In 2025 the activist group launched a campaign against the Cambridge Institute for Sustainability Leadership, and they have called for environmentalist solidarity across causes and movements.

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Read more about the partnership between Suzano and Jesus College.