A version of this article was previously published on the 16th June, 2022 in the South China Morning Post.  On 1 June, the government of China issued Green Finance Guidelines that expand and detail requirements for better implementation of green finance policies by Chinese financial institutions. Notably, Chinese banks and insurers are asked, for the first time, to establish grievance mechanisms as a tool for managing environmental, social and governance (ESG) risk of their clients. This comes amid a global backlash against ESG investors, who are under fire for making hollow commitments amid increased regulatory and public pressure. Increasingly, investors are adopting grievance mechanisms to help them understand the impact and prevent harm, as a response to the pressure to show ESG integrity, and because certain industry standards now require them. These new Chinese Green Finance Guidelines, promulgated by the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission (CBIRC), are the latest to require grievance mechanisms that offer a channel through which communities can be heard on the one hand, and investors can address risks of their investments effectively and efficiently on the other.   Most international development finance institutions have these grievance mechanisms; 113 financial institutions receiving money from the Green Climate Fund are required to have them, and multiple impact management and measurement standards herald the importance of such mechanisms. Most recently, ANZ became the first commercial…

On 1st June, the Jackdaw gas field was approved for development by the UK government. Two days later, BankTrack, together with 350.org, Uplift and Bank on our Future, sent a letter to 25 commercial banks with a financial or advisory relationship with Shell, Jackdaw's owner. The letter called on the 25 banks to urgently act by refusing to finance the newly approved Jackdaw gas field project, to engage with Shell urging it to stop the project and to end all finance for Shell if the company decides to proceed with the Jackdaw project. In total, 11 out of 25 banks responded substantially to our letter, while others promised to return to it. Jackdaw gas field Jackdaw is one of the ten biggest remaining gas fields in the North Sea. It is estimated to contain 58 million barrels of oil equivalent (boe).(1) It is a high-pressure, high temperature (HPHT) gas condensate field with high CO2 content, making it an especially polluting area to develop.  After the UK regulator rejected Shell's initial proposal, the company proposed to build a carbon capture and storage (CCS) plant at St. Fergus in Aberdeenshire to capture the emissions from the project. However, the CCS project's future is very unclear, with the government having put the project on the back burner. CCS is widely viewed by civil society groups, including BankTrack, as a "false solution" - an unproven and costly life-support that distracts from the task of phasing out fossil fuels and stopping new developments. In addition, Shell's plans do not…

Despite the climate and biodiversity plans of financial institutions and companies, the role of plastics is consistently neglected in their policies and practices. Understanding the financing of the plastics boom is key to turning the tide in what can be considered one of the earth’s biggest threats. This is a Profundo Expert View by Manon Stravens, republished from the original here. The visible impacts of plastics and plastic waste - entangled turtles and seabirds in pieces of plastic, floating islands of plastic waste in the oceans - are only the tip of the iceberg, as plastics are a silent killer already from the very beginning of their lifecycle. This starts with the exploration of oil and gas in remote and vulnerable areas, as over 99% of plastics are made from fossil fuels. The highly energy-intensive refining process is harmful to the populations living close to petrochemical plants. Not to mention the relatively underreported but alarmingly rising levels of greenhouse gas emissions from all stages of the plastic lifecycle. Less than 10% of plastic waste is recycled. Most of the plastics thrown away - more than 130 million tons in 2019 - are single-use plastics, ending up in our oceans, on smoky waste mountains, and in our bodies, as recent studies have detected microscopic microplastics in babies and human blood. Expanding plastics industry Despite these widely reported visible and invisible plastic pieces permeating our planet, economy, and daily lives, we haven’t yet noted any policy or practice that…