<Your Name>
<Your Address, Zip Code, Phone Number, E-mail>

<Date>
Sandy Weill
Chief Executive Officer
Citigroup Center
153 East 53rd Street
New York, NY 10043

Dear Mr. Weill,
	
	I am writing to express my deepest disappointment regarding Citigroup’s destruction of vital ecosystems in Latin America for unquestionable profit.  In Latin America, Citigroup is the number one in financier of large-scale projects responsible for destroying tropical rainforests (Rainforest Action Network, 2001)
For example:	
•	In Chile, Citigroup has acquired the Sante Fe pulp mill and forestry operation in conjunction with Royal Dutch/Shell Group and Scott Paper Company. Sante Fe turns intact temperate rainforests into wood chips and then replants the forest with fast growing eucalyptus, turning critical ecosystems into paper and plywood for foreign markets  (Rainforest Action Network, 2001).

•	In the mangrove forests of the Orinoco River Delta in Venezuela, Citigroup sponsored the financing of a $2 billion oil drilling and pipeline project for DuPont's Conoco and Venezuela's Petróleos de Venezuela. The project has already caused irreversible pollution of the sensitive mangrove ecosystem, threatening the lives and culture of local inhabitants, including the traditional Warao people  (Rainforest Action Network, 2001).

Lands that Citigroup is destroying are ecologically important to the world’s organisms, including human beings.  Tropical plants found in rainforests are responsible for over 25% of the world’s pharmaceutical products (Myers, 1991).  If deforestation continues at the current rapid pace, medications for diseases such as AIDS or cancer may be destroyed with the forests forever. 

Rainforest deforestation happens at a rate of 149 acres per minute, 214,560 acres per day, and 78 million acres per year, at a global rate.  These high rates of deforestation are estimated to cause extinction of 137 species of life forms daily or 50,000 annually (Myers, 1991).

In efforts to gain even more money, Citigroup is destroying valuable rainforest land.  Once the forests are gone, they are gone forever!  Rather than destroying the land, it is Citigroup’s responsibility to restore the previously destroyed lands and vow to no longer make such unwise investments that hurt the environment.  I eagerly await a response, describing what Citigroup will do to protect further lands from being destroyed, as well as restoring lands previously destroyed.  Will Citigroup take responsibility for its actions? 

Sincerely,

<Your Signature>

<Your Name Typed>

Norman Myers, Deforestation Rates in Tropical Forests and Their Climatic Implications, pp. 26-28.
Rainforest Action Network, 2001. http://www.ran.org/ran/info_center/aa/aa152_citi.html#background.