Campaigners
hail 'major victory' as council representing half a billion Christians says it
will stop investing in fossil fuels
theguardian.com,
Adam Vaughan, Friday 11 July 2014
The World Council of Churches has revised its ethical investment criteria to exclude fossil fuel companies Photograph: Hilke Maunder/Alamy |
An umbrella
group of churches, which represents over half a billion Christians worldwide,
has decided to pull its investments out of fossil fuel companies.
The move by
the World Council of Churches, which has 345 member churches including the
Church of England but not the Catholic church, was welcomed as a "major
victory" by climate campaigners who have been calling on companies and
institutions such as pension funds, universities and local governments to
divest from coal, oil and gas.
In an article for the Guardian in April, Archbishop Desmond Tutu said that
"people of conscience need to break their ties with corporations financing
the injustice of climate change" and events sponsored by fossil fuel
companies could even be boycotted.
Bill
McKibben, the founder of climate campaign group 350.org, said in a statement:
"The World Council of Churches reminds us that morality demands thinking
as much about the future as about ourselves – and that there's no threat to the
future greater than the unchecked burning of fossil fuels. This is a remarkable
moment for the 590 million Christians in its member denominations: a huge
percentage of humanity says today 'this far and no further'."
The report of the council's financy policy committee, published on Thursday on the final
day of the council's central committee meeting in Geneva, says that: "The
committee discussed the ethical investment criteria, and considered that the
list of sectors in which the WCC does not invest should be extended to include
fossil fuels."
350.org's
European divestment coordinator, Tim Ratcliffe, said: “The World Council of
Churches may be the most important commitment we’ve received yet."
It is not
clear yet whether Thursday's decision will apply only to the council itself,
which has a comparatively small investment fund, or its members as well, which
have much larger investments.
The Church
of England said it could not yet comment on what the decision meant for its own
investments. The CoE has not moved yet to divest from fossil fuel companies but
has set up a subgroup to take advice on climate change and investment.
In May, the
UN's climate chief, Christiana Figueres, gave a speech to faith leaders at St Paul's cathedral in London, calling on them to show leadership on climate
change. She also said religious groups should drop their investments in fossil
fuels, and encourage their members to do the same.
Christiana
Figueres speech at St Paul's cathedral
Studies
have suggested the fossil fuel divestment campaign, which began in the US, has been faster than than any previous divestment movement such as tobacco and apartheid.
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