The 2020 World Economic Forum is focused on sustainability, but according to Greenpeace it is undermined by a contradiction: the banks in attendance still finance coal and oil.
"Stakeholders for a cohesive and sustainable world": this is the title of the fiftieth edition of the World Economic Forum in Davos, which brings the world's most powerful figures to Switzerland from Tuesday 21 to Friday 24 January. In the organisers' hopes, the meeting will make a concrete contribution to the path set out by the Paris Agreement and the UN Sustainable Development Goals. This explains the prominence given to the presence of Greta Thunberg, listed among the guests of honour alongside United States president Donald Trump and newly appointed European Central Bank president Christine Lagarde.
So much for the intentions. But Greenpeace warns: among those gathering to debate the planet's sustainable future will be institutions that continue to pour billions into coal and oil. We are talking about banks, insurance companies and pension funds — in short, those who have the economic power to genuinely change things, but prefer to remain anchored to an anachronistic and damaging model of development.
The environmental organisation sets out the figures clearly in the pages of the report "It's the finance sector, stupid", published to coincide with the opening of proceedings. And they are figures that give pause for thought. As the Banking on climate change study reveals, the 24 banks expected at Davos have provided more than €1,260 billion in financing to the fossil fuel industry. All of this in just three years, from the signing of the Paris Agreement to the end of 2018. That is equivalent to the wealth that the poorest half of the global population had to share between them in 2018.
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The top ten institutions on the list alone account for more than €900 billion: a sum that would be enough to secure 640 GW of solar energy, more than double the current installed capacity worldwide. To use a different point of comparison, €900 billion is the monetary value of the risks that the world's 215 largest companies are preparing to face over the next five years — risks linked exclusively to the devastating impact of climate change.
But Davos is not only attended by banks. Pension funds also play a crucial role in the financial sector, and they are proving decidedly timid on the climate front. The Asset Owners Disclosure Project examined the world's one hundred largest public funds, finding that 87 per cent of their assets had not undergone a formal assessment of climate risks. As if that were not enough, by October 2018 only around fifteen of them had excluded coal from their investments. The three that were present at Davos last year held at least €23 billion in shares in oil giants, or in the banks that finance them.
Finally, the insurance companies. Five are expected at Davos; the same ones that Greenpeace, drawing on a ranking by UnfriendCoal, describes as "the worst" for their choice to insure coal. Within this group, only one has pledged to divest from fossil fuels, while continuing to provide insurance cover to several active coal-fired power plants.
The statements from Jennifer Morgan, executive director of Greenpeace International, were scathing: "The banks, insurers and pension funds here at Davos are guilty of the climate emergency. Despite all the environmental and economic warnings, they are fuelling another global financial crisis with their support for the fossil fuel industry. These business people at Davos are nothing but hypocrites: in words they say they want to save the planet, but in deeds they are killing it for their short-term profits."
