Campaigners Increasingly Targeting Financial Backers with Lawsuits Against Fossil Fuel Funders

(DeSmog, Seattle, 26 June 2024) Campaigners are increasingly taking out lawsuits against the funders of fossil fuels and other climate-harming activities, according to a new report. In its annual review of climate litigation, published June 26, the London School of Economics and Political Science’s (LSE) Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment identifies a modest but growing number of lawsuits challenging the flow of finance to projects that worsen climate change. In total, 33 cases that challenge the flow of funding have been recorded since academics began keeping track nine years ago. Six were filed in 2023. In one significant recent case, human rights and environmental NGO Jubilee Australia challenged Australia’s export credit agency Export Finance Australia and the $7 billion AUD Northern Australia Infrastructure Facility for giving taxpayer-subsidized finance to risky new fossil fuel projects and related ventures that would otherwise not go ahead. Jubilee Australia wants to force the public bodies involved to disclose impact assessments for these investments. French bank BNP Paribas also recently said it would stop funding new gas projects as the risk of litigation rises. Campaigners, including Oxfam France, had sued the bank for financing fossil fuels in the first-ever climate-related lawsuit against a commercial bank. However, activists noted that BNP cut out direct loans, and it still supports oil and gas through indirect loans to other involved companies and by underwriting bonds. A previous claim from 2020 against Australian banking group ANZ confirmed that climate change was relevant to responsible business practices under the OECD guidelines, but the organization did not require companies to divest from fossil fuels. The OECD guidelines are just one example of “soft law” – agreements that are influential but not legally binding – groups use to try to push corporations and their funders in a greener direction.