A COALITION of Christian organisations has written an open letter to high-street banks in the UK, calling on them to stop financing new fossil-fuel extraction or risk losing their business.
The letter, published on Tuesday, is signed by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Williams, the Methodist Church in Britain, the Scottish Episcopal Church, the Quakers, and several Roman Catholic religious orders. It opposes the $556 billion that Barclays, HSBC, Santander, NatWest, and Lloyds have reportedly provided to the fossil-fuel industry since the Paris Climate Agreement was signed in 2015.
Lord Williams said: “Banks are very understandably seen as institutions we need to be able to trust. What we are asking is that the main high street banks should show themselves to be fully worthy of that trust by playing their part in creating a future we can trust, a future in which our lethal dependence on fossil fuels will at last 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 largest action by Christian organisations on our polluting banks — Barclays, HSBC, Santander, NatWest and Lloyds — should be another wake-up call for them to stop financing the companies behind new oil and gas and profiting from the destruction of our planet. From the recent catastrophe in Valencia to wildfires in Canada, the climate crisis is happening around us and it is driven by fossil fuels, paid for by these banks.”
Last year, Christian Aid, Sheffield Cathedral, and Greenbelt announced plans to cease banking with Barclays (News, 28 July 2023), which has been the largest investor in fossil fuels in Europe since 2016. Other charities, universities, and health institutions have also since severed ties.
The letter was published as the COP29 climate talks continue in Baku, Azerbaijan, with nations negotiating a new agreement on climate finance to support countries dealing with the effects 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 is crucial that the next few days achieve a New Collective Quantified Goal on climate finance, otherwise I fear that COP29 will be deemed a failure.
“As an activist motivated by my faith, this is about more than simply achieving progress on the conference’s agenda. The call for well-resourced countries that have contributed most to the climate crisis to provide finance to the countries impacted by climate change is a moral imperative and a climate justice issue. The finance provided must align with the needs of the most vulnerable, not the political agenda of wealthy 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.