On the occasion of UniCredit’s 2021 Shareholders' Meeting, Re:Common reports important regressive developments in climate commitments taken by the Italian bank. Despite its positioning on coal, a first-class commitment acknowledged at global level, UniCredit failed to meet the commitments on coal exclusion provided by its policy. Two weeks ago, together with other international banks, the Italian group was involved in a loan arrangement to the Czech energy group EPH, for a total amount of €1 billion. EPH is widely known for its bad habit of buying obsolete and polluting coal assets in order to prolong their operation. The Czech group is the owner of the Fiume Santo coal power plant (Sardinia), one of the main sources of pollution in the northern part of the island. Since EPH is expanding its business with the acquisition of the Schkopau plant, owned by Uniper, this loan may configure as a breach of UniCredit's policy, which provides for the end of financial relations with all those companies that are expanding the their coal business. In addition to this, in 2020 alone, a remarkably difficult year because of the Covid-19 pandemic, UniCredit decided to provide loans and underwriting services to oil&gas companies, for a total amount of  €5.8 billion. Furthermore, in the same year, UniCredit has experienced five-fold growth (from 60 to 340 € million) in financing in those companies that are expanding their fossil fuel business with projects promoting the exploration, production and transport…

For the second time in 12 months, Deutsche Bank is about to violate its own Environmental and Social Policy Framework. By mid-2021, the bank is expected to transfer the second tranche of a USD 25 million loan to Singapore-based rubber giant Halcyon Agri, knowingly overlooking its record of human rights violations, non-transparency, and some of the most devastating deforestation in Africa’s recent history. In July 2020, Deutsche Bank announced “an innovative new loan” of USD 25m to Halcyon Agri, through its subsidiary Corrie MacColl, to finance investments for its plantations in Cameroon and Malaysia, promising “a new standard for the rubber industry.” The same month, the bank pledged not to “knowingly finance… activities within or in close proximity to a World Heritage Site,” yet satellite imagery shows that between 2011 and 2018 Halcyon’s subsidiary Sud-Cameroun Hévéa (Sudcam) cleared more than 10,000 hectares of rainforest – an area the size of Paris – less than one kilometer from the Dja Faunal Reserve, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The clear-cutting caused the displacement of Baka Indigenous People. “Deutsche Bank must cancel its toxic loan immediately,” said Christoph Thies, Greenpeace Germany forests and climate campaigner. “If the bank’s ambitious target of spending EUR 200 billion on sustainability by 2025 means sponsoring human rights abuses and forest-trashing, Germany…

Today, in the run-up to President Biden’s Leaders Summit on Climate, and the AGM season, the Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN) is releasing a 100-page report highlighting the intersections of gender, race, the fossil fuel industry and complicit financial institutions. The report, Gendered and Racial Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Industry in North America and Complicit Financial Institutions: A Call to Action for the Health of our Communities and Nature in the Climate Crisis addresses the disproportionate gender and race-specific health and safety impacts as well as human and Indigenous rights issues of fossil fuel extraction and infrastructure in the United States and selected parts of Canada; interlocking issues that have been sorely neglected in the discourse regarding fossil fuel extraction. The report spotlights Vanguard, BlackRock, Capital Group, JPMorgan Chase, Royal Bank of Canada, Bank of America, and Liberty Mutual, as complicit financial institutions that are preserving and perpetuating negative gender and racial impacts due to financing, insuring, and investing in fossil fuel companies.  Based on the analysis of first-hand women’s accounts, peer-reviewed scientific articles, and other published papers, this report identifies a myriad of links between the fossil fuel activity that particular financial institutions support and threats to the health and safety of African American/Black/African Diaspora, Indigenous, Latina/Chicana, and low-income women. The report covers…

French oil company, Total, has been accused of ignoring significant human rights violations and huge environmental and climate risks as it pushed ahead yesterday with the signing of an investment decision to build the world's longest heated crude oil pipeline through Uganda and Tanzania. Although the signing will likely see Total, the China National Offshore Oil Corporation and the Ugandan and Tanzanian national oil companies ramp up their efforts to secure financing and insurance, the project still has many hurdles to overcome and affected communities and civil society groups are calling on financial institutions to refuse to support the project. Instead of responding to the urgent needs of affected communities and repeated alerts from civil society, Total has focused its recent efforts on a greenwashing communication strategy.  A week after more than 260 African and international organisations sent an open letter to 25 banks urging them not to finance the construction of the EACOP, Total issued statements on its website describing its environmental and social risk assessment and mitigation strategies for the EACOP and Tilenga oil extraction project as “rigorous” and claiming to act “responsibly and transparently” on the social and environmental issues related to the projects.  The #StopEACOP Alliance has since examined the claims and the previously confidential reports, and is today issuing a detailed response. The statement clarifies several misleading figures Total offered on key aspects…

More than half of Europe’s bank directors have affiliations to highly carbon dependent companies and organisations, a new analysis has found1, raising concerns for the prospect of actually ending financing of fossil fuels.  DeSmog’s analysis revealed that 61% of directors in 15 boardrooms of major banks across the continent risk being climate-conflicted due to having held positions with polluting companies and organisations, with more than a third of those (34%) currently holding such roles.2 The fossil fuel industry is well represented on bank boards, with 17% of directors having held positions at polluting energy companies, including oil giants Shell, BP and Exxon. At five of the banks, at least 20% of the boardroom had links to companies identified by the Climate Action 100+ initiative as some of the worst global polluters.3,4 And at least one director with ties to companies involved in the extraction of coal, the most polluting fossil fuel, was found on the board of seven of the banks.5,6 Some directors had long histories of working with the fossil fuel industry, including Crédit Agricole director Caroline Catoire, who sits on the board of oil and gas exploration company Maurel & Prom. Catoire previously worked for 18 years at oil giant Total, including as the company’s Director of Corporate Finance, coinciding with Société Générale director Jerome Contamine, a current director at Total who previously worked in its exploration and production division. European…

Launched April 5th, campaign group Bank.Green’s inaugural Money Movement campaign sounds the alarm on the banking industry’s climate-destroying activities while offering ordinary people a way to investigate their banks. Since the Paris Agreement, the world’s 60 largest private-sector banks have poured USD 3.8 trillion into fossil fuel projects. The Money Movement campaign, running from April 5 until April 22, raises awareness of fossil fuel funding through digital messaging, online seminars, and community building in partnership with a coalition of movements and organizations, including BankTrack and Reclaim Finance. Keeping global temperature rise under 1.5ºC to avoid runaway climate chaos is incompatible with continued financing for fossil fuels, yet most customers may not be aware of their bank’s climate impact. For example, eight out of ten UK customers at Barclays and HSBC were unaware that their bank finances fossil fuels. [2] The Money Movement campaign encourages bank customers to see taking action against their banks as one of the easiest, most impactful personal acts to take in the face of the climate crisis. Bank.Green’s online bank-switching tool, bank.green, streamlines the process for customers to discover their bank’s fossil fuel record, explore sustainable alternatives, learn how to contact their banks, and switch accounts. “Past climate campaigners have waged important public awareness campaigns against banks that fund fossil fuels, and we are excited…

Banks in Belgium do too little to combat child labour and deforestation in the production of cocoa and chocolate. Yet they have the necessary means to do so. Between 2016 and 2020, banks active in Belgium invested more than EUR 26.5 billion in multinationals that dominate the cocoa and chocolate sector. According to FairFin, an organisation that argues for more ethical and ecological sustainability in the fnancial sector, these investments were barely subjected to any social and ecological requirements. When it comes to chocolate, Belgium is an undisputed giant on the world stage: Belgians are not only big chocolate consumers, the country is also the second largest exporter of chocolate in the world and one of the largest importers of cocoa beans. And during this Easter period, 10% of the annual chocolate revenue is collected. New fnancial research by FairFin shows that between 2016 and 2020, banks operating in Belgium invested more than EUR 26.5 billion in multinationals dominating the chocolate trade. The banks thus bear a heavy responsibility, because poverty, child labour and deforestation are known problems in the sector that have persisted for decades. The big players in the cocoa sector have been acknowledging these problems for twenty years. Yet they have not made any progress in removing them from their supply chains. At BNP Paribas, FairFin found EUR 10.6 billion in investments, of which EUR 1.4 billion at Mondelēz. This American multinational is headed by a Belgian CEO and owns Côte d'Or, Milka and Oreo,…