Leaked Documents Show Watered-Down Environmental Studies Legitimise Dangerous Activities by Multinationals, including TotalEnergies
(Paris, 21 February 2025) – European environmental auditing firms help major multinationals water down assessments to conduct destructive projects in the Global South, Climate Whistleblowers (CW) said today. Documents reviewed by CW show companies pay biodiversity and ecosystem experts to produce so-called action plans and greenwash megaprojects that have catastrophic effects on people’s livelihoods and fragile ecosystems.
CW partnered with media outlets Mediapart, Africa Uncensored, and Mongabay to investigate each audit fully and bring these issues to light. The findings cover in detail how multinational companies paid hundreds of thousands of euros to legitimise industrial projects, particularly in the Global South, where weak regulations make it easier to bypass accountability and mislead the public globally.
“The GreenFakes investigation series reveals a pattern of complicit abuse by multinationals and auditing firms assessing the environmental impact of megaprojects,” said Gabriel Bourdon-Fattal, Co-Director at CW. “The auditors’ future depends on client satisfaction, so they cannot be impartial. They are not paid to protect nature and vulnerable populations as they advertise, but to help companies continue business as usual.“
The GreenFakes investigation series published this week exposes how environmental consultancies, like Biotope and The Biodiversity Consultancy, have helped prominent international corporations greenwash disastrous activities through incomplete biodiversity assessments and action plans with inefficient reduction and compensation measures. As a result, TotalEnergies drills for oil in Uganda’s elephant-filled parks, Rio Tinto flattens Guinea’s tropical forests for mines. Even when the audits are good, the clients can just plain ignore them, like Chanel did when making deals with shady manufacturers in China that do not respect human rights. Proposed mitigation measures were knowingly inadequate or absurd, such as paying for funerals of victims of lethal run-ins with impacted hippopotamuses.
Reporting by CW with Mediapart, Mongabay, and Africa Uncensored exposes how this malfeasance endangers ecosystems and vulnerable communities, weakening global efforts to fight climate change. Consultancy firms that market themselves as “nature positive” and “dedicated to the environment” must ensure that multinationals comply with the rules instead of being accomplices to their wrongdoings.
Documents produced for clients such as TotalEnergies, governments, and international organisations demonstrate negligence, if not collusion between consultancies and multinationals, on projects in at least seven countries, mainly in Africa. Even international financial institutions seem to turn a blind eye to unsatisfactory, poorly made compensation action plans. Comments in some of the assessments reviewed by CW and journalists reveal instructions from the companies to downplay the damaging effects of their activities.
“The game is rigged from the start. These environmental consultancies help multinationals to use weak legislation to their advantage and keep playing it green,” said Henri Thulliez, Co-Director at CW. “It is a cynical vicious circle: more profits for major companies, ecological and human disasters in the global south. “
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