Greenwashing increases at the Nature Action Dialogues

We’ve noticed something interesting while looking at the speakers of this year’s Nature Action Dialogues. The number of ecocidal companies not just attending but speaking at the event, seems to be increasing.

Back in 2024 when the conference was first held, there were numerous ecocidal attendees, but the speakers were at least mostly climate related NGOs and the like ¹.

In 2025, more speakers started to appear from companies directly linked to extractive practices, environmental degradations and human rights violations, such as Aviva, Nestle, Anglo American, and Teck².

This year, in 2026, our investigation has found that, at a minimum, around 20% of the speakers represent companies with records of pollution, over-extraction, or violence against indigenous communities³.

Taking a look at speakers for this year, we constructed this table

Company	Industry	Number of speakers	Notable issues
RWE	Mining, Energy	2	Coal mining, Fossil fuel usage
Anglo American	Mining	2	Pollution, Indigenous rights violations
Lloyds	Banking	2	Fossil fuel financing
Lanzajet	Aviation	1	pushing Sustainable Aviation Fuel
Sibelco	Mining	1	Indigenous rights violations
Vattenfall	Energy	2	Fossil fuel use, Wood pellet biofuel use,
WWF	Conservation	2	Indigenous rights violations
WCS	Conservation	1	Indigenous rights violations
Teck	Mining	1	Pollution
Nestle	Food and Drink	1	Pollution, Indigenous rights violations, Child-slave labour, Overuse of water,
Rabobank	Banking	1	Fossil fuel financing, Financing of ecocidal companies
BCG	Consulting	1	Fossil fuel consulting, Arms consulting
Fortescue	Mining	1	Indigenous rights violations
Suzano	Paper	1	Indigenous rights violations, Pollution, Water and land overuse
Freeport-McMoRan	Mining	1	Indigenous rights violations, Pollution, Workers rights violations

So of a total of around one hundred speakers, twenty represent companies that are at best, pushing questionable climate change solutions, and at worst, are major polluters with horrific human rights records.

This looks bad, but its lacking the details that really drive home just how bad, and how little these speakers actually care about the proposed ideals of this event.

RWE continues to mine and burn Lignite, i.e. brown coal, one of the most polluting fossil fuels. They had to be forced by the German government to agree to phase out coal by 2030 in accordance with the Paris Agreement and actually tried to sue the Dutch government over their laws against coal. They are famous for their destruction of forests and villages to big up the coal beneath them. As part of their coal phase out they converted two of their coal plants to wood-pellet biofuel which experts state will not reduce but may actually increase emissions⁴.

Anglo American is a multinational mining giant with a horrific record of indigenous rights abuses in the territories they operate⁵.

Lloyds Bank is famously one of the largest funders of new oil and gas despite their policies against it. Their pledges are carefully worded to allow them to continue to profit of fossil fuels while appearing on the surface to be making progress towards sustainability⁶.

LanzaJet is a big pusher of Sustainable Aviation Fuel as a way to make flying “green”. While they might produce less emissions when they’re produced, we know they emit just as much when they’re used as fuel. Further, the sourcing of the ingredients for the various types of possible biofuel falling under SAF can be highly emitting, or environmentally damaging in themselves. Parading SAF as a way for airlines to continue expanding without increasing emission is dangerous and a clear case of greenwashing⁷.

Sibelco are another mining corporation, there sure are a lot of them speaking at this conference.

Vattenfall is a Swedish state energy company that has come under fire for its continued use of fossil fuels and its increasing use of biofuels. As with many biofuel projects these are far from green and continue to emit carbon into the air with some of the wood coming from old-growth forests that cannot be returned in our lifetime⁸.

WWF and the WCS are faces of wildlife conservation, and both have been involved in forced displacements of indigenous communities. The fortress conservation model used across the global south has resulted in mass displacements, and the enforcement of these new borders has lead to increased militarisation of park rangers, and the extra-judicial killings of those who simply want to return to their traditional way of life. But don’t worry, if you’re willing to pay enough, the WWF can take you on a safari in the land that used to belong to the Maasai⁹.

Teck is another multinational mining company who’s so heavily polluted the waters of Elk Valley British Columbia with Selenium that local Ktunaxa Nation people can no longer eat the fish from the rivers due to the bio-accumulation of the harmful element. In some places the selenium levels are hundreds of times higher than the safe level, and despite Teck’s cleaning operations the levels in areas across the region are in the 50-60µg/L range, 3000% of the 2µg/L alert level. Teck operated all the mines in the area from 2008 to 2024 till they sold them to Glencore, the problem still continues, but Teck won’t have to bother cleaning up; they just pass the responsibility down the chain¹⁰.

Nestle is well known for the amount of harm it causes. Its the subject of numerous boycotts, a major plastic polluter, it uses palm oil sourced from occupied West Papua in operations that decimate the environment, it uses cacao in its chocolate sourced from child-slave labour farms, and drains tens of millions of gallons of water a year from communities near its bottling plants¹¹.

Rabobank is a funder of fossil fuel expansion, as well as ecocidal companies like Suzano¹².

BCG are a consultancy firm that their “wealth of hands-on industry experience” to consult on how fossil fuel companies can maintain their profits amid regulation and the push to decarbonise¹³. In 2025, BCG were involved in a controversy with the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation whose distribution points killed hundreds of people¹⁴.

Fortescue are another international mining company. They may appear to be ahead of the competition on decarbonisation, but they’re still terrible about indigenous rights. They have been in a legal battle with the Yindjibarndi people. They’ve made $80 billion in profits while destroying Yindjibarndi cultural sites and artifacts without paying them any compensation. In Wintawari Guruma lands they have cleared sacred sites without following their agreement with the Wintawari Guruma to allow them time to collect cultural relics and perform customary rituals¹⁵.

Suzano are a recent partner of Jesus College and a paper-pulp agrobusiness. They operate across massive tracts of Brazilian land originally acquired from the forced displacement of indigenous people. Indigenous groups and landless works have resisted for decades their excessive consumption of water, overuse of pesticides, intimidation and physical violence¹⁶.

Freeport-McMoRan, another mining giant who run a major gold mine in occupied West Papua, and copper mines in Peru. They acquired their rights to mine in West Papua by paying the military dictator Suharto, and ever since have been polluting the surrounding environment and committing violence against the local people. Their mines from Papua to Peru are known for their dangerous conditions, violations of workers rights and horrific environmental impact. They have been committing direct physical and environmental violence against people for over fifty years and continue to do so today¹⁷.

These are all companies that will be speaking on their sustainability credentials at NAD this year, giving each other a big pat on the back and posing for photos so they can continue to lie about their sustainability initiatives and “good work”. Don’t let them keep up the facade, we need to call out these companies for their actions, and ignore their words. They’ve lied for decades, they’re not about to start telling the truth now.

Greenwashing increases at the Nature Action Dialogues

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Greenwashing increases at the Nature Action Dialogues

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