ECAs are taxpayer-funded agencies that provide government-backed loans, guarantees and insurance to corporations from their home country that seek to do business overseas in developing countries and emerging markets. The United States has two ECAs - the Export-Import Bank of the United States (Ex-Im) and the Overseas Private Investment Corporation (OPIC).



Ex-Im is intended to help create U.S. jobs by supporting American corporations that export goods and services abroad.  Ex-Im protects U.S. companies against risk by providing them governmentally backed guarantees.

Most export credit agencies lack environmental and social standards.  When one that does have environmental guidelines turns down a project for environmental reasons, another often jumps in.  This can create a competitive “race to the bottom” that encourages the absence or lowering of standards.

Friends of the Earth’s is working to improve the environmental policies of export credit agencies worldwide.  

OPIC is meant to promote development in emerging markets by providing financing and political risk insurance to U.S. companies operating in developing countries. 

Once referred to as “an automatic teller machine for the Fortune 500,” OPIC has come under increased public scrutiny for its lack of transparency and its support for projects with negative environmental and social impacts.

Friends of the Earth is working to make OPIC more transparent and to ensure the agency adheres to its own environmental policies and statutory requirements as mandated by Congress.

Friends of the Earth, Greenpeace, and the City of Boulder, Colorado filed a lawsuit in the U.S. District Court in San Francisco on behalf of their members and citizens who are victims of global warming.

This legal action – the first of its kind – alleges that OPIC and Ex-Im illegally provided over $32 billion in financing and insurance for oil fields, pipelines and coal-fired power plants over the past ten years without assessing their contribution to global warming and their impact on the U.S. environment as required under key provisions of the National Environmental Policy Act.

Find out more at: www.climatelawsuit.org