Registrations are now open for the workshop “Profit, companies and financial instruments: why and how to investigate them”

A workshop for journalists, journalism students, and NGO members to discuss connections between agribusiness corporations, financial markets, and socio-environmental impacts

Financial technologies have become deeply integrated into people’s lives in recent years. You can send money to the other side of the world through your cell phone app, take out loans without physically going to the bank, and make the little savings money grow in a variety of other investments besides savings accounts.

These financial market technologies have connected with other very popular market niches in the 21st century, such as the “green economy.” GPS already gives you “less polluting” route alternatives when choosing a path. And companies have created numerous ways to convince consumers that their activities are environmentally correct: you can feel at ease buying or investing in them.

At Joio, we investigate financial instruments that, accessible to people and companies, gather extraordinary sums of money destined for “sustainable operations.” Among them are green bonds sold on the stockbroker app that finance commodity farming on Indigenous lands; carbon projects that favor the oil industry instead of reducing emissions; investment banks that finance projects contrary to the energy transition; corn ethanol sold as a solution, not as a new problem.

With the challenge of exposing the green lie and envisioning structural changes in the regulation of these instruments, we want to discuss: which public bodies and private entities deserve specialized coverage on financial instruments and corporate profits? How does the financial market impact food systems and land management in Brazil? Who profits — and how — from the financialization of the (green) economy? How can all this become a transnational investigation?

Two journalists specialized in this coverage—Olivier Christe, reporter at WAV Recherchekollektiv and Bruna Bronoski, reporter at O Joio e O Trigo—will address these questions and explore concrete paths for journalistic coverage on the topic. The moderation will be done by the freelance journalist Naira Hofmeister.