With the departure under a cloud of the bank’s CEO, Barclays may have hoped its involvement in COP26 would have a favourable effect on its reputation – but events around the climate conference served to throw its environmentally-disastrous activities into sharp relief.
While political leaders gathered to try to stop “our addiction to fossil fuels”, Barclays was shown to have funnelled more money into extracting them in the year to date than any other bank in Europe, and the details of how the bank ‘won’ this Race to Disaster make ignominious reading: $194m to Enbridge, whose Dakota Access Pipeline carries oil with emissions equivalent to 30 coal plants every year; $200m to MEG Energy who extract dirty tar sands oil, and so on. Not the victory that might be expected from a bank that claimed to take a Paris-alignment path early in 2020, but one widely reported following Market Forces’ mock award outside Barclays’ Glasgow branch, a stone’s throw from COP26.
Less visibly, but significantly, the run-up to COP26 saw the release of a Statement of Shared Climate Responsibilities from the International Corporate Governance Network, which led by investors responsible for $59 trillion of assets. It recommends that governments “Mandate regulations and collaborate internationally to criminalise ecocide”. As Monica Schüldt from the Ecocide Law Alliance remarks, “It is a hugely important step that the ICGN, which represents more than half of the world’s total capital under management, clearly recognizes that there is a need for hard law to regulate investments.”
For banks like Barclays, more pressure to use the law to stop ecocide – particularly coming from a major voice in the world of finance – is less welcome. Immediately before COP26, as part of a global day of protest against financing fossil fuel industries that included Greta Thunberg’s presence in the City of London, the bank’s ecocidal activities were highlighted in actions like the one outside the Bristol branch pictured above (from @RichardCBaxter), and others staged during the conference itself (selected pictures below).
Even discounting fossil fuel finance, as one of the foremost banks funding direct ecosystem destruction and the plastic waste scourge, Barclays has every reason to be concerned about increasing calls for ecocide legislation. Will the replacement CEO be less short-sighted regarding this risk than the disgraced predecessor?
Leeds (@CClimateAction)
Rochdale (@XR_Rochdale)
Ely (@XRebellionEly)
Bristol (@RichardCBaxter, banner design Rhonda Anaconda)
Lincoln (@clumphllmatria1)