GreenFaith has launched a major multi-faith climate finance campaign calling on banks and asset managers to stop financing the climate crisis. The campaign is supported by several Faith Plans partners, including World Council of Churches, Laudato Si' Movement and Operation Noah.
The campaign asks asset managers to stop investing funds in fossil fuels, deforestation, and industrial agriculture, which are deeply damaging to our climate. By doing this, they can become global climate leaders.
GreenFaith states that, 'As people of diverse faiths and spiritualities, we call on the world’s asset managers, banks, and insurers to stop financing the profoundly immoral destruction of our climate.'
‘The natural world is a sacred trust which we must cherish and protect. We know that money and material wealth must be used to promote the shared welfare of all’ – GreenFaith
The campaign says governments, financial institutions and fund managers have a potentially enormous role in protecting the climate. GreenFaith brings the perspective and the voices of many faiths into the discussion on how to do what is right for the climate. They believe that, together, we can make a real difference.
Faith-based approach
More than 80% of the population of our planet identifies as being part of a religion or faith. GreenFaith says faiths have a responsibility, and a duty of care for our planet and the people living on it. Since the advent of the concept of money, religions have brought their wisdom to bear on how it should be used for the moral good. However, since the industrial revolution in the 19th century, much investment has been directed towards the extraction of fossil fuels such as coal, oil and gas, and in companies involved in deforestation and the industrialisation of agriculture.
There has been some progress on the political front, with many governments, such as Ireland and New Zealand declaring a climate emergency, but this needs to be supported by practical action from those that have the ability to support climate solutions: asset managers and investment companies.
'How society’s financial institutions use money is a deeply moral question – and always has been' – GreenFaith
'How society’s financial institutions use money is a deeply moral question – and always has been. Should these banks and asset managers spend money on destroying the climate or creating a sustainable and just future?' asks GreenFaith.
'Right now, financial institutions are still directing the world’s wealth towards the fossil fuel and industrial agriculture/deforestation companies that are driving this climate crisis. Religious groups have a responsibility, as voices of morality, to call for this destructive madness to end.'
GreenFaith has been part of the movement calling for religious divestment from fossil fuels for many years now, and this new campaign moves beyond this to call for all investors, not just religious investors, to end their support for industries which result in climate degradation.
For this campaign, GreenFaith has developed a set of five climate finance moral standards for asset managers and is seeking signatories to these standards.
More information is available at the GreenFaith website, GreenFaith.org