BankTrack today launched its 2014 Annual Report, presenting its campaigning work over 2014 in a brief and accessible 20-page summary.

The new annual report covers BankTrack's three major campaigns of 2014, on forests, human rights and finance for the coal industry, as well as showcasing victories and successes, Dodgy Deal campaigns and the work of BankTrack's members and partners.Highlights of 2014 covered in the report include:

• Banks withdrawing from environmentally damaging projects, companies and sectors after civil society pressure, including Australian coal projects Abbot Point and Alpha Coal, the Indonesian palm oil producer Bumitama, and the devastating practice ofmountaintop removal for coal extraction;
• The launch of BankTrack's coalbanks.org websiteas part of the "Banks: Quit Coal!" campaign, presenting the 20 biggest bankers of coal mining and coal power, as well as the largest ever dataset on the financial links between banks and the coal industry;
• The "Banking with Principles?" report, which benchmarked the progress of 32 large global banks against the UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights, showing that three and a half years after the Principles' adoption, major gaps remain in banks' policies, reporting and provision of channels for remedy;
• Teaming up with the Environmental Paper Network for a new campaign on bank finance for the pulp and paper sector, which showed significant progress in early 2015 when both Santander and ABN Amro committed to withdraw from financing APRIL, the Indonesian paper company named by Greenpeace as "Indonesia's biggest forest destroyer".

The report also details the transformation of BankTrack in 2015 from a network of civil society organisations to an independent campaigning body, a change described by BankTrack director Johan Frijns as "the most substantial transformation in BankTrack's 13 year history".

BankTrack's Director Johan Frijns commented: "The new BankTrack will be a tracking, campaigning and support organisation, able to work more fluidly to support civil society organisations, but also able to pursue our own campaigns determinedly, as we have done in the past," 

Michelle Chan of Friends of the Earth US, BankTrack Chair, commented: "Across each of these three fronts - coal, forests and human rights -we are succeeding in making it harder for banks to get away with financing environmentally and socially destructive projects, and in raising the pressure for higher lending standards. None of these wins is BankTrack's alone, but part of a wider global movement for change. As we look to transform our organisational structure in 2015, we expect to play an even more valuable role in this movement."

The transformation of BankTrack from a network into an independent organisation will see gradual changes over the coming months, culminating in the launch of a brand new website during the summer.

Download the new BankTrack Annual Report here.