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Lucie Pinson is the founder and executive director of Paris-based NGO Reclaim Finance.
The abrupt exit of the six biggest US banks from the UN’s Net Zero Banking Alliance (NZBA) is a disturbing sign of the shallowness of these institutions’ professed commitment to acting on climate. It is also a sign of their willingness to preemptively show subservience to the incoming Trump administration.
The question now is whether other banks will follow the example of their US counterparts – especially given the rise of right-wing politicians in Europe and Canada who seek to halt action on climate – or if the remaining banks in the NZBA will now push for more ambition from the alliance, and strengthen their own climate commitments.
Some European bank officials have privately complained in the past that they would like the NZBA guidelines to be stronger but that US members were blocking progress. The European and other banks in the NZBA can now show that they were not just hiding behind the US banks’ obstructionist skirts, and act to increase the NZBA’s ambition.
The recent exodus of the Wall Street banks is hardly a surprise. At least some of them reportedly threatened to leave the NZBA two years ago when red-state officials threatened them with antitrust lawsuits. The banks stayed in then because the NZBA and the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ), an associated alliance for all types of financial institutions, both clarified that none of their recommendations were compulsory.
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The suspension of activities by another net-zero alliance representing big money managers is one more sign of financial firms’ fear of retribution from the Trump administration and emboldened right-wing politicians at the state level.
The Net Zero Asset Manager (NZAM) initiative’s requirements of its members were so weak as to be to mainly symbolic – and it shows how much fossil fuel companies are concerned about their continued access to capital that the politicians they fund will attack even the most milquetoast climate initiative from the finance sector.
Action with or without voluntary body
Regardless of their NZBA membership, the big US banks have never exhibited any real interest in restricting fossil fuel finance. JPMorgan Chase provided US$41 billion in finance for oil and gas and coal companies in 2023, billions more than any other bank. Citi, Bank of America and Wells Fargo were all in the top five global bankers of fossil fuels between 2016 and 2023.
In contrast, some of the largest European banks have shown that another path is possible.
While still falling short of the action required by science to stop fuelling climate change, particularly on LNG (liquefied natural gas), French giants BNP Paribas and Crédit Agricole have both committed to end the facilitation of bond issuances for oil and gas companies. Société Générale has a target to cut its credit exposure to oil and gas producers by 80% by 2030. These three banks have each more than halved their volumes of fossil fuel finance between 2020 and 2023. Additionally, Dutch bank ING will stop funding LNG projects after next year.
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Yet none of these robust measures and targets were due to the banks’ membership of the NZBA.
The NZBA does not require its members to restrict financing for oil, gas or coal – not even for those companies that are doing the most to expand fossil fuel production. Members are required to set targets for high-emitting sectors, but although the targets are recommended to be 1.5°C-aligned, the NZBA does nothing to ensure this.
No clear target-setting requirements
A lack of clear requirements on target-setting from the NZBA means that its members have a bewildering array of target types, many of which are deeply flawed and unlikely to lead to real-world emission reductions. The most problematic targets are those based on “financed emissions”.
This methodology attributes the emissions from corporations to their banks using a formula that divides lending exposure by corporate value. The resulting number changes as the market value of the companies in a bank’s sectoral portfolio rises, so the bank’s financed emissions for that sector will fall even if real emissions stay the same.
French bank BPCE, like most other major European banks such as HSBC, Deutsche Bank or UBS, has set only a financed emissions target for the oil and gas sector - in sharp contrast to the banks mentioned above that have set targets to reduce their lending to oil and gas companies.
Provided oil and gas company share prices rise sufficiently, BPCE could meet its target without reducing its finance to these companies, and without these companies cutting their emissions – as Barclays did in 2023, seven years ahead of the target year.
European banks must push NZBA for more ambition
Given their mixed track record so far, it is also possible that European banks could use the US exodus as an excuse to backtrack on their climate commitments, and even for pushing back on recently adopted related regulations. BPCE’s “Vision 2030”, published in June last year, is one example of an important European bank moving backwards on climate.
Some EU business groups have successfully lobbied to reopen key Green Deal legislation. And while we do not yet know how far the changes will go, some banks may join their push to go beyond mere clarifications and simplifications, and dismantle new reporting and due diligence obligations.
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The last of the US banks to announce they were quitting the NZBA was JPMorgan Chase. Their announcement was made on January 7 — the very same day that the catastrophic fires broke out in Los Angeles.
Wall Street may escape the wrath of Trump by appearing not to care about climate change, but financial institutions will not escape the wrath of climate change unless they show the courage to stop financing the expansion of fossil fuels.
The post Wall Street’s faltering on climate action opens up opportunity for European banks appeared first on Climate Home News.
Wall Street’s faltering on climate action opens up opportunity for European banks
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Stientje van Veldhoven is Minister of Climate and Green Growth for the Netherlands.
When we co-hosted the first-ever conference on transitioning away from fossil fuels (TAFF) this April, the world was reeling from the volatility in oil and gas prices due to the Hormuz blockade. Fossil fuels moved to the centre of the debate as country leaders scrambled to secure supplies for their people.
We saw the very opposite in Santa Marta. Nearly 60 nations came together with 2,600-plus participants from civil society and community organisations, businesses and scientists to discuss concrete solutions on how governments can shift away from fossil fuels. Together, we defined the ‘Santa Marta process’ to serve as an extra engine for the broader process of the UNFCCC.
The Santa Marta process will see expert groups and committed countries develop national roadmaps, chart pathways to overcome financial constraints, and drive economic transformation. We made a multi-year commitment to take this process forward. With Tuvalu and Ireland taking over as co-chairs for 2027, transitioning away from fossil fuels is now moving from words to action.
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Work gets underway
At the opening of the Santa Marta conference, my co-chair Colombia’s then energy minister Irene Veléz Torres and I repeatedly stressed one thing: that the forum was not a space for negotiations, but a forum for countries and other partners to discuss practical steps to move away from fossil fuels.
Since then, we have seen three roadmaps already submitted: by France, Germany and our own. Pacific Island ministers also recently announced their intention to develop a regional roadmap to transition away from fossil fuels. And I called on the European Commission to do the same for the European Union.
On top of this, numerous countries are already working on parts of the transition, such as phasing out coal or ending fossil fuel subsidies. More countries are expected to follow soon.
Workstreams were launched in early August, followed by sign-ups from countries willing to take a larger role and lead on organising different activities. Each workstream has an assigned lead organisation (or madrina). Each has its own working structure.
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Workstream 1 focuses on supporting countries in developing and implementing flexible, country-owned national roadmaps. It operates as an open, collaborative hub that coordinates partner institutions to provide tailored technical, financial and policy support directly aligned with each country’s specific needs and existing frameworks. The consortium, which functions as a hub, currently consists of the NDC Partnership, the Powering Past Coal Alliance, the World Resources Institute and the newly established Science Panel on the Global Energy Transition.
Workstream 2 focuses on mobilising collective coalition power to tackle national and international financial constraints, debt-related barriers and macroeconomic dependencies that hinder the transition away from fossil fuels. Starting with a scoping phase, it will deliver transparent, actionable recommendations and reform solutions to support countries’ structural fiscal needs at global fora. Its madrinas are the International Institute for Sustainable Development and Transforma, a Latin American think-and-do-tank.
Workstream 3 focuses on driving economic transformation by mapping green partnership potential, decarbonising trade balances and building competitive, mutually beneficial clean markets. It aims to help countries, especially producers, diversify their economies, scale domestic value creation, and unlock collective trade opportunities. The madrina is the Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development working together with the South Centre.
Incorporating Santa Marta into COP
What was abundantly clear in Santa Marta is that our coalition’s efforts are a strong support to, rather than a replacement for, the COP process. Over the past decade or so, the focus at COPs was on setting goals. Now we must focus on implementation. The COP31 presidencies have previously indicated their willingness to incorporate elements of the Santa Marta process into COP31 outcomes. We look forward to seeing how we can achieve this together.
The Brazilian COP30 Presidency delivered its global roadmap on the transition away from fossil fuels – a voluntary toolkit for countries that want to move ahead – just before the COP started in Antalya on Monday. During the coming two weeks, it’s critical that we see more concrete, actionable roadmaps for the fossil fuel phase-out. These documents can be crucial for a strong second Global Stocktake of national climate plans in two years’ time.
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At COP31, a variety of TAFF-related events will be hosted, focusing on next steps within the Santa Marta workstreams. We welcome any leader and expert from around the world to take part as they work to develop their roadmaps, identify the fossil fuel subsidies they need to phase out, or establish green/clean markets at home.
Only by reducing fossil fuel demand and replacing it with clean electricity to run our economies can we all become more economically resilient and sharply cut the pace of climate change.
The post COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels appeared first on Climate Home News.
COP31 outcome needs to prioritise transition away from fossil fuels
An older teaching about land acknowledgement
As I have come to understand the spirit and intention of land acknowledgement, I often return to fond memories of my grandmother and her words of wisdom. She taught that the health of the places we call home comes first, because the wellbeing of the people depends on it.
In her teaching, land acknowledgement began with the land. Long before it became a paragraph read at the start of a meeting, it was a way of recognizing a homeland: its waters, its species, its seasons, and the spirit that revealed whether the place was well.
Her teaching echoes a practice found across many Indigenous Nations. Haudenosaunee gatherings, for example, have long opened with the Ohén:ton Karihwatéhkwen, the Thanksgiving Address, often translated as “the words that come before all else.” The speaker greets and gives thanks to the people, the earth, the waters, the plants, the animals, the winds, the sun, the moon and the stars. Only after everything that sustains life has been acknowledged does the gathering turn to its own business.
That order changes what an acknowledgement is for. Its purpose was to share the story of a place with neighbours and to draw them into the work of tending it. People entered the story second, as the ones responsible for what had just been named.
Understood this way, an acknowledgement does more than open a meeting. It asks us to reconsider where we stand, and what we owe the ground beneath us.
Nations among nations
In her teaching, people are one nation among many. The salmon are a nation. So are the cedars, the bison, the medicine plants, and the pollinators. Each belongs to a place, carries its own responsibilities, and offers gifts no other nation can give.
This idea of kinship runs through many Indigenous philosophies. The phrase “all my relations,” heard in ceremonies and gatherings across Turtle Island, is a reminder that family extends beyond people to the animals, plants, waters and lands that make life possible. Some Indigenous languages carry the same understanding in their grammar, speaking of many plants, animals and natural forces as living beings rather than objects.
Sovereignty, understood through this relationship, is a kind of standing more than a form of control. Each nation belongs fully to its place and carries its share of that place’s life. No nation thrives alone, and none thrives by taking over the whole.
The land is also the source of instruction. Over generations, people watched how a river valley or a stretch of prairie kept itself well: who arrived when, who fed whom, and how much could be taken before the giving stopped. In my grandmother’s telling, those observations became instructions, and those instructions helped shape law and protocol. They guided when to harvest, where to camp, how to enter a neighbour’s territory, and what was owed in return.
Indigenous legal scholars today often describe this as law that comes from the land itself, learned by watching how living systems sustain one another. A plainer name for it is knowing how to live somewhere.
The host and the guest
One of the clearest teachings in this understanding of the world is the relationship between host and guest. My grandmother invited us to recognize that relationship in the lives of plants and animals.
A host prepares the place before anyone arrives. A beaver family dams a stream, and the pond becomes a home for fish, frogs, birds and plants. A fallen tree becomes a nurse log, feeding the next generation of seedlings as it returns to the soil.
A host offers first. A flowering plant sets out nectar. A berry bush ripens fruit. These provisions come in their own season, not whenever a visitor happens to want them.
A host also makes its presence known. Birdsong, scent and the marks left along a trail tell newcomers that a place is already inhabited. The visitor does not arrive in an empty world.
The guest has responsibilities too. A guest attends to the season and to what the place can offer. A guest does not assume that everything within reach is theirs to take. A guest leaves something that helps sustain the relationship.
A bee takes nectar and carries pollen. Read through this teaching, that exchange offers an image of visiting well: receiving a gift while helping the host continue its life.
Many Indigenous harvesting protocols carry the same ethic into daily practice: ask before taking, take only what is needed, offer thanks, and leave enough for others and for the plant or animal to recover.
None of this suggests that every relationship in nature is peaceful or generous. These are ways of seeing responsibilities that people can learn to carry.
Everyone is both
No being is only a host or only a guest.
A tree makes room for other life while depending on soil, water, sunlight, fungi, and relationships beyond itself. People, too, may welcome others into their homes while remaining dependent on the larger homeland that sustains them.
The distinction between host and guest is therefore about roles, not ranks. Everyone receives. Everyone has something to give.
The question is whether the exchange sustains the place.
A visitor who takes without restraint leaves less for those who come next. A host who neglects the place has less to offer. Both have responsibilities, and neither can fulfil them alone.
This is the heart of reciprocity, a principle found across Indigenous philosophies: relationships stay healthy when gifts move in both directions. The Haudenosaunee teaching of the seventh generation extends that exchange across time, asking that decisions made today leave the place well for those not yet born.
Mutual benefit begins here, with the recognition that different beings carry different gifts and obligations.
What people carry forward
My grandmother’s teaching connects these relationships to the ways people meet their neighbours.
The host prepares a place, offers food and rest, and explains where the visitor has arrived. The guest makes themselves known, explains why they have come, listens to the terms of the visit, and brings something in return. The gift may be material. It may also be labour, knowledge, news, or a commitment to help.
Nations around the Great Lakes carried this ethic into treaty. The Dish with One Spoon, an agreement among the Haudenosaunee, Anishinaabe and allied Nations, describes shared hunting grounds as a single dish. Everyone eats from it with one spoon, takes only what they need, leaves enough for others, and keeps the dish clean. The Two Row Wampum, between the Haudenosaunee and European newcomers, shows two vessels travelling side by side on the same river, each keeping its own ways and neither steering the other.
In this understanding, acknowledgement is more than naming the people associated with a territory. It is learning enough about a homeland to behave responsibly within it.
Whose home is this? What sustains it? What laws and agreements guide our presence? What can we receive, and what must we return?
These questions make acknowledgement a relationship rather than a recital.
They also make it diplomatic. A guest who recognizes the host’s homeland recognizes that they have entered a place with its own relationships and responsibilities. A host who welcomes the guest makes room for an encounter governed by those relationships.
Neither arrives without standing. Neither arrives without obligations.
Beginning with place
I write from the shores of the Bay of Quinte. Here, the teaching asks me to begin with the water, the shoreline, and the life they sustain. Before I describe myself, I must attend to where I am.
That does not make people or history less important. It places them within the homeland that gives them meaning. The people, their laws, their agreements, and their responsibilities all belong to the place.
In a time of longer fire seasons, troubled waters, and uncertainty about what the next season will bring, this teaching asks something difficult and useful of us: pay attention before you speak.
An acknowledgement cannot tell the story of a place if the speaker has stopped noticing it.
The land came first. Beginning there again means learning to name what sustains us, and accepting that what sustains us also asks something of us.
By Rye Karonhiowanen Barberstock
Photo by Andrik Langfield on Unsplash
The post The Land Came First appeared first on Indigenous Climate Hub.
Carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions from fossil fuels and cement are projected to fall by around 0.4% in 2026 to 38.2bn tonnes of CO2 (GtCO2), according to new figures from the Global Carbon Project.
This guest post is by:
- Dr Zeke Hausfather, Carbon Brief’s climate science contributor