ING’s €3.5B Risk Transfer Fuels Fossil Fuel Expansion While Masking Systemic Debt Risks in Global Project Finance

Indigenous communities in regions like the Amazon, Niger Delta, and Arctic face systemic displacement from oil/gas projects financed by ING’s risk transfers, violating Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) as enshrined in UNDRIP. Financial instruments like SRTs are colonial tools that externalize costs onto Indigenous lands while privatizing profits, mirroring historical patterns of resource extraction. The lack of Indigenous representation in ING’s risk models reflects a broader epistemic violence where financial systems prioritize abstract risk metrics over lived ecological knowledge.

Project finance emerged in the 1970s as a mechanism to fund infrastructure in post-colonial states, often tied to resource extraction and debt traps, as seen in the IMF/World Bank’s structural adjustment programs. The 1980s Latin American debt crisis demonstrated how risk-transfer instruments (e.g., Brady bonds) privatized profits while socializing losses, a precedent ING’s SRTs echo. The 2008 financial crisis revealed how financial engineering masked systemic risks—parallels to today’s SRTs, which similarly obscure fossil fuel exposure under the guise of 'sustainability.'

In China, state-led project finance has prioritized energy security over climate goals, but also enabled rapid renewable deployment when aligned with national priorities—highlighting how financial tools can be repurposed for systemic change. African cooperative banking models (e.g., SACCOs) demonstrate how community-owned finance can resist extractive project finance, yet these are sidelined in Western financial discourse. The contrast between ING’s risk-transfer logic and Indigenous stewardship principles (e.g., Māori *kaitiakitanga*) underscores a fundamental incompatibility between financialized risk and ecological reciprocity.

Scientific consensus links fossil fuel expansion to >1.5°C warming, with project finance acting as a key lever for lock-in; ING’s SRTs may accelerate this by reducing perceived risk for lenders. Studies show that financial innovations like SRTs often increase systemic risk by concentrating exposure in opaque instruments, as seen in the 2023 banking crises. The IPCC’s 2023 report emphasizes the need to redirect finance from fossil fuels to renewables, a goal undermined by ING’s continued oil/gas financing under 'sustainable' labels.

Artists like Ursula Biemann’s *Deep Weather* visualize the extractive violence behind financialized landscapes, revealing how project finance disrupts sacred ecologies. Spiritual traditions from Hinduism (*ahimsa*) to Buddhism (*dukkha*) frame fossil fuel finance as a violation of interbeing, yet these ethical frameworks are absent from ING’s risk models. The commodification of risk in SRTs mirrors the Western obsession with control over nature, contrasting with Indigenous cosmologies that view risk as relational and shared.

Scenario modeling by the IEA and Carbon Tracker shows that ING’s €3.5B risk transfer could strand €1.2B in fossil fuel assets by 2030 if climate policies tighten, exposing taxpayers to losses. Alternative models like green bonds or sovereign wealth funds could redirect capital toward just transitions, but require regulatory intervention to prevent greenwashing. The long-term risk is a 'zombie finance' scenario where banks like ING remain exposed to stranded assets while profiting from short-term deals.

Frontline communities in Nigeria’s Niger Delta, where Shell and ING-funded projects have caused decades of pollution, are systematically excluded from ING’s risk assessments. Women-led cooperatives in Bangladesh, who bear the brunt of climate disasters, are invisible in financial narratives that frame oil/gas as 'development.' The lack of reparative finance mechanisms in ING’s SRTs reflects a broader erasure of Global South perspectives in European banking governance.