Greenpeace is calling for Standard Chartered to end its relationship with any company involved in exploiting the coal reserves of Australia’s Galilee Basin, one of the world’s largest untapped coal reserves. The campaigners say that this would contribute significantly to climate change and risks destroying the Great Barrier Reef, a World heritage Area and home to clown fish, turtles and humpback whales.
At the AGM, Greenpeace asked the company to confirm whether the Asia focused bank has already lent money to the coal company that is planning to develop the proposed Carmichael mine in Australia’s Galilee Basin.
Greenpeace also questioned whether the financial and reputational risks of lending to or advising to the Carmichael project have been discussed at board level. 11 of the world’s biggest coal financiers, including HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Deutsche Bank, have already refused to invest any money for coal expansion in the Galilee Basin. And mainstream investors have said that “[coal] prices would need to jump more than 40 percent for the [Galilee] projects to be viable” and that new supply “is not needed by the market in the next 10 years.”
In response to Greenpeace’s questions, Chairman Sir John Peace delivered a prepared statement confirming that the bank is looking into the issue and will not go any further until the risks have been ascertained. However, after repeated questions neither was a timeline for a decision given nor did the bank explain what their exact relationship with the mine’s developer is.
Sebastian Bock, Greenpeace campaigner said:
“The bank’s acknowledgement of the problem is a first step in the right direction but they dodged the questions and the answers should have been very clear. Standard Chartered should not provide financial assistance for any mining companies that are planning to exploit the coal from the Galilee Basin. Scientists tell us very clearly that we can have either coal from the Galilee Basin or a healthy Great Barrier Reef. We can’t have both.
“Digging up millions of tons of coal from one of the world’s largest coal reserves and shipping it through the heart of the Great Barrier Reef at a time when the global coal market is in terminal decline would not just wreak havoc with the reef, home to turtles, clown fish and humpback whales, our climate but also with the portfolios of Standard Chartered’s investors. Standard Chartered must live up to its own sustainability policies and follow other global banks that are distancing themselves from this destructive mega coal mine.
“Besides the obvious environmental problems arising from the proposed mine, the financial advisory role that Standard Chartered is playing for the project carries massive economic and reputational risks for the bank and its shareholders. This issue ought to be on top of Mr Bill Winters agenda as he gets ready to take the top job at Standard Chartered later this month.”
This morning, twenty Greenpeace Hong Kong activists took action at Standard Chartered’s Hong Kong headquarters today, activists displayed a stair banner showing a clown fish being strangled by the bank’s logo in front of the building.
