Also see the blog on Medium.com which accompanies this news release: "Financial Intermediary sub-project data exposed for the first time". A coalition of organisations has published a new database today revealing $38.2 billion worth of investment and financial relationships – including “high-risk” projects – that involve 318 financial intermediary clients of Dutch development bank FMO and the World Bank’s private lending arm, the IFC.  The organisations that crunched the database numbers are Oxfam, economic research agency Profundo, the International Accountability Project and the Early Warning System. The database is important in countering claims by big development institutions like FMO and IFC that such information is “commercially confidential” and that it is too difficult for them to meet the levels of transparency demanded by civil society and local communities who may be harmfully affected by these lending projects.  The database reveals the destination of investments from FMO and IFC-funded clients across at least 76 countries from 2017-20. In total, the database tracks the money flows from FMO and IFC down through the 318 financial intermediaries to 12,800 private actors. The IFC and FMO are both heavily…

Few days after the end of COP26, the Italian export credit agency SACE has confirmed the insurance coverage for the financing of the Arctic LNG-2 project by Intesa Sanpaolo and Cassa Depositi e Prestiti. Arctic LNG-2 is a natural gas liquefaction mega-project of the Russian company Novatek, under construction in the Gydan peninsula, one of the most endangered territories in the Russian Arctic. The news was reported last Thursday by Italian Ambassador to Russia Giorgio Starace and picked-up by the international news agency Reuters. In comments made to Russia’s Interfax news agency and confirmed by his office, Starace said that Italy would continue to be a major partner in the project, both commercially and in terms of credit and insurance. According to Reuters, Starace met with SACE executives, who told him that the agency was ready to provide insurance coverage, in the days when COP26 was taking place in Glasgow. In the frame of the climate summit Italy pledged to end direct public subsidies for international fossil fuel projects by the end of 2022. "The inconsistency of the Italian government is unacceptable", comments Simone Ogno of ReCommon. "If a good start bodes welll, we are now sure that by the end of 2022 there will be a rush to public financing of fossil fuel mega-projects such as Arctic LNG-2, which we consider yet another attack on climate justice." SACE can count on a very rich fossil fuel portfolio, and in the period 2016-2020 it has guaranteed € 8.6 billion for…

Huge pressure from civil society around COP26 pushed the financial sector net-zero alliances to acknowledge that they must tackle fossil fuels. This could spark a shift: the alliances have up to now been focused on gaining new members while underestimating the importance of developing strong guidelines and ensuring that these are followed by their members. Mark Carney was proud to announce during the first week of COP26 that the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) that he chairs now has more than 450 members controlling over US$ 130 trillion in assets who have committed to halving the emissions from the companies they finance by 2030, on their way to reaching net zero by 2050. However a close look at the guidelines and criteria of the GFANZ alliances of investors, banks and insurers shows that they are completely inadequate to reaching this goal over the next eight years. While a few financial institutions have taken the lead and announced ambitious measures, we are still miles away from seeing adequate ambition across the members of GFANZ. A (late) recognition of the importance of fossil fuels It was about time. In the first days of COP26, the financial sector’s net-zero initiatives grouped together under the GFANZ umbrella (1) finally acknowledged the elephant in the room: fossil fuels. After being widely criticized for their weak criteria, GFANZ and two of its key member alliances published new documents admitting the need to act on fossil fuels. On day 1 of COP, GFANZ and the UN’s Race to…

Today, in an open letter, civil society organisations coordinated by BankTrack, Friends of the Earth US and Women’s Earth and Climate Action Network (WECAN), call upon the Equator Principles Association to take immediate action on climate, biodiversity and human and Indigenous rights. The call comes during the Association’s annual general meeting this week. The letter includes a set of clear expectations for the Association and financial institutions that are signatories to the Principles. It first asks the Association to exclude finance under the Principles for any new fossil fuel exploration, extraction and expansion projects (1) as well as adopt a “No Go” policy for high biodiverse areas (2). Secondly, the organisations call upon the Equator Principles to reject false solutions, such as carbon and biodiversity offsets that are based on the “no net loss” concept (3) or current “net-zero” commitments that do not include concrete fossil-fuel phase out plans (4). In addition, EPFIs are called upon to  reject the vague, ineffective, “nature-based solutions” approach to solving the climate and biodiversity crisis (5). Finally, civil society is calling on the Association to ensure that the Principles no longer allow finance to be provided to projects that abuse human and Indigenous rights and to ensure the proper implementation of Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) process for all Indigenous Peoples and local communities as enshrined  in the Universal…