Fray Bentos provides an unexpected setting for an international controversy over the future of sustainable banking. Once famous for its meat products, the sleepy Uruguayan town has been in steady decline ever since its eponymous meat factory closed its doors nearly three decades ago.

That all changed when two European paper companies announced their intentions to build a pair of huge pulp mills on the town’s outskirts. The two projects, collectively worth $1.8bn, represent the largest ever private investment in Uruguay’s history.