A COALITION of Christian organisations has written an open letter to the UK’s high street banks, calling on them to stop financing recent fossil fuels or risk losing their business.
The letter, published on Tuesday, is signed by the previous Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, the Methodist Church in Britain, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Quakers, and a number of other Roman Catholic religious orders. It opposes the $556 billion that Barclays, HSBC, Santander, NatWest, and Lloyds have reportedly provided to the fossil-fuel industry because the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015.
Lord Williams said: “Banks are very understandably seen as institutions we’d like to have the opportunity to trust. What we’re asking is that the principal high street banks should show themselves to be fully worthy of that trust by playing their part in making a future we will trust, a future through which our lethal dependence on fossil fuels will finally be put behind us.”
Seventy Christian organisations have signed the letter, including the Iona Community, Student Christian Movement, and Operation Noah.
Tony Burdon, chief executive of the charity Make My Money Matter, said: “This, the biggest motion by Christian organisations on our polluting banks — Barclays, HSBC, Santander, NatWest and Lloyds — ought to be one other wake-up call for them to stop financing the businesses behind recent oil and gas and cashing in on the destruction of our planet. From the recent catastrophe in Valencia to wildfires in Canada, the climate crisis is occurring around us and it’s driven by fossil fuels, paid for by these banks.”
Last yr, Christian Aid, Sheffield Cathedral, and Greenbelt announced plans to stop banking with Barclays (News, 28 July 2023), which has been the biggest investor in fossil fuels in Europe since 2016. Other charities, universities, and health institutions have also since severed ties.
The letter was published because the COP29 climate talks proceed in Baku, Azerbaijan, with nations negotiating a recent agreement on climate finance to support countries coping with the results of the climate crisis.
Elsa Barron, co-director of the Christian Climate Observers Program, said: “Given that the COP29 president [Mukhtar Babayev, Azerbaijan’s Minister for Ecology and Natural Resources] has been framing this meeting as a ‘finance COP’, it’s crucial that the following few days achieve a New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, otherwise I fear that COP29 shall be deemed a failure.
“As an activist motivated by my faith, that is about greater than simply achieving progress on the conference’s agenda. The call for well-resourced countries which have contributed most to the climate crisis to supply finance to the countries impacted by climate change is an ethical imperative and a climate justice issue. The finance provided must align with the needs of probably the most vulnerable, not the political agenda of rich nations.”
The talks are scheduled to conclude on Friday evening, but may run into the early hours of Saturday morning.
Joe Ware is Senior Climate Journalist at Christian Aid.
