As the Movement for Black Lives demands alternatives to racist systems in our country, communities of color around the world press on in their struggles for land and self-determination. Last fall, Afr...
As the Amazon rainforest continues to burn, members of Divest Harvard — a student group demanding the University divest from fossil fuels — are renewing their calls on Harvard to withdraw its holdings...
Another Harvard University farmland investment in Brazil may go awry.
The prosecutor’s office in the state of Bahia said it’s reviewing allegations that a company linked to Harvard’s endowment isn’...
Fourteen years ago, a Brazilian farmer named Ruthardo Grun says he was terrorized by armed thugs who shot at him, burned down his shack, and chased him from land he was preparing to farm. Little did h...
Four years ago, Harvard University bought an old cattle ranch in the foothills of the Sierra Madre Mountains. On an arid expanse north of Santa Barbara, California, the school’s endowment set out to...
Biggest endowment struggled to unload a troubled investment.
Colin Butterfield was frantic. The Harvard University endowment executive wanted to unload a disastrous $270 million investment in Brazili...
Activists and clients tell TIAA to stop investments linked to deforestation and displacement of local farmers
NEW YORK, NY – Today, a coalition of environmental, human rights and family farm organi...
The shameful story of how 1 million black families have been ripped from their farms
I. Wiped Out
“you ever chop before?” Willena Scott-White was testing me. I sat with her in the cab of a Chevy Sil...
A new report details how agribusiness—especially soy, sugar, palm oil, and beef production—was the second deadliest sector for people standing up for the environment and their lands.
BY GRETA MORANEN...
Pension fund giant TIAA is investing its clients’ funds in farmland and agribusinesses tied to environmental and human rights abuses in Latin America.
January 6, 2017
Indigenous com...
Wednesday, 20 July 2016
RIO DE JANEIRO, July 20 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - Campaigners in Brazil on Wednesday hailed a court decision to cancel a major land acquisition deal because investors ha...
Sir, Gregory Meyer’s article on pension funds investing in farmland (March 2) brings much needed attention to a critical issue. While we welcome the article’s mention of our report on TIAA’s farmland ...
Nov. 16, 2015
SÃO PAULO, Brazil — As an American investment giant that manages the retirement savings of millions of university administrators, public school teachers and others, TI...
19/11/15
Pension providers including Sweden’s AP2, Canada’s Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec and TIAA-CREF have been heavily criticised in a report claiming their Brazilian farmland investme...
17/11/15
US. educator pension fund TIAA-CREF has promulgated a reputation of upholding socially responsible values, and even goes as far as highlighting its role in drafting UN principles of transpar...
November 17, 2015
The U.S. investment company TIAA-CREF has amassed vast holdings of Brazilian farmland through a joint venture that has done business with one of the country's most notorious "land g...
An American investment giant that manages multi-billion-dollar pension funds in the United States, Canada, and Sweden faces allegations that it has circumvented Brazilian laws on foreign acquisition o...
Its long acronym, TIAA-CREF, stands for what sounds like a lofty purpose: Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association – College Retirement Equities Fund. Based in New York with origins dating back to t...
February 5, 2019
Arrest of company executives tops a long list of abuses
WASHINGTON, D.C. – The Dow Jones Sustainability Index has removed the world’s second largest palm oil company, Golden Agri-Re...
August 31, 2018
WASHINGTON – With growing concern over the impacts of climate change and related financial risks to U.S. investors, Sen. Brian Schatz (D-Hawaii), Friends of the Earth and Amazon Watch...
July 24, 2018
Years of allegations of deforestation, land grabbing and human rights violations catch up with palm oil company
WASHINGTON, D.C. – Golden Veroleum Liberia (GVL), a palm oil company ope...
July 12, 2018
Years-long campaign by Friends of the Earth pushes agency to prioritize human rights, environmental protection in its new investment policy
SAN FRANCISCO – The California Public Employ...
State court rules that Brazilian businessman who sold lands to US pension fund giant TIAA-CREF acquired lands illegally
A Brazilian businessman involved in the acquisition of farmland by US, Canadian...
The companies face the potential loss of farmland worth as much as $1 billion raising questions about their activity in other countries and their claims to social responsibility
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEAS...
May 19, 2020
To mark this year’s International Biodiversity Day, May 22, we call upon participants in investment funds, pension funds and retirement plans to demand an end to speculation with farml...
August 28, 2019
The cover story of this month’s The Atlantic magazine is a must-read article by Vann Newkirk titled “The Great Land Robbery: The shameful story of how 1 million black families have be...
August 6, 2019
Seventeen years ago, ActionAid selected the financial services company TIAA to manage our staff’s retirement funds because we believed them to be a responsible investor. However, we ha...
May 5, 2017
On Sunday, April 30, local ranchers in Maranhão, Brazil, attacked the indigenous Gamela community, leaving 13 wounded. Several people were taken to a hospital, some with severe machete an...
April 21, 2017
Imagine for a moment that you’re in New York City on a breezy afternoon. You’re hurrying down the street to grab lunch, when you suddenly come across a cardboard bulldozer, a group of ...
April 20, 2017
Right now, some of the world’s biggest financial firms are meeting to discuss how to turn farming into a financial product. Farmland, in particular, has been described as being like “g...
October 31, 2016
Biofuels have a new booster: your pension and retirement fund. Retirement funds are buying millions of acres of farmland in the United States, Brazil, Australia, and elsewhere, citin...
November 14, 2016
As a person whose work-life as a teacher and as a public policy analyst has been grounded in anthropology, I am very alarmed at the way in which my retirement funds are being used b...
March 22, 2018
The current World Bank’s land titling program in northeastern Brazil is a license for land grabbing.
(Washington D.C. March 21, 2018) The World Bank is financing a land titling progra...
April 21, 2017
NEW YORK, NY – On Thursday a coalition of environmental, human rights and family farm organizations delivered a letter with more than 100,000 signatures to pension fund management comp...
Champaign County is the home of the University of Illinois and some of the richest farmland in the world. It is also home to Westchester Farm Services, the TIAA subsidiary that manages most of their f...
With a client base surpassing 5 million people, TIAA is one of the largest retirement funds in the world. What most of us don’t realize is that TIAA is also the largest owner of farmland in the world ...
Grassroots International is supporting our partner The Social Network for Justice and Human Rights (Rede Social) and our allies like GRAIN in a global campaign to stop violent and illegal land grabs a...
Momentum continues to build in our work to demand that TIAA, the world’s largest private retirement system, implement an investment policy free of deforestation and land grabs! Over 100,000 people, in...
On May 10, Friends of the Earth published their report on TIAA’s links to deforestation and land grabbing in partnership with ActionAidUSA, Rede Social de Justiça e Direitos Humanos de Brasil (Brazili...
In September 2017 a delegation of 30 human rights, land, and food experts traveled around the Matopiba region of Brazil on a fact-finding mission supported by Grassroots International and ally organiz...
WASHINGTON D.C. – According to a report released today by leading environmental and social justice advocates, the investment management firm TIAA is leading a trend of speculating in land markets, whi...
Ask any family farmer and they will tell you that land is an increasingly valuable, scarce, and critical resource for their survival. Many people would also agree with our nation’s founders that wides...
