 set out an ambitious goal to get 10 trillion dollars divested from fossil fuels. Momentum is getting stronger. What began with the handful of universities, faith groups, and foundations has become over 1,100 institutions playing a key role in shifting trillions of dollars away from fossil fuels and into climate solutions. We Catholics are divesting from fossil fuels as part of a big movement that includes universities and pension funds and banks and many more institutions. We're divesting because it's the right thing to do. We're divesting because fossil fuels, like coal, oil and gas are toxic to our planet and everyone who shares this coin home. By divesting from fossil fuels and reinvesting in renewable energy, we can build a scale of climate change solutions, particularly to serve poorer energy communities. While simultaneously eroding the social license the fossil fuel companies have to continue to operate. Join this movement to finance a just energy future. Good afternoon, everyone. One more time. Good afternoon, everyone. Yes, we are in Cape Town. We wanna make sure that you're with us and because we are at an incredible moment in time. We are here, gathered together, foundations, pension funds, faith organizations, campaigning organizations, human rights groups to say that this is a historic moment. Collectively, a year ago, we said we would aim for divestment at a level of 10 trillion by 2020. 10 trillion by 2020. I'm sure you all know the calendar, right? Well before 2020, we are at a historic figure 11 trillion dollars in assets under management divested from fossil fuel companies. Hello! And we have to say, you know, it's hats off to many people in this room, the visionaries that made this all possible and many of them will be able to share their story with all of you today. But please, let me, before we introduce our panelists we have also a difficult historic context that we're in. Here in South Africa today as Liberian, someone who's a ped-Africanist came out through the anti-apartheid movement. It's really painful, quite frankly, to be in South Africa at a time when there is such historic xenophobic violence as well as violence against women. So we ask you, as we begin this press conference, to please join with us in taking a moment of silence. Perhaps we can stand for just a moment, if that's okay? We honor their memories. We stand in solidarity to build a more just future. Thank you for that. Like we need to do a collective breath. Many of our colleagues chose to join us for this conference. We have 300 people joining us for the coming days for this Financing the Future conference and we are truly, truly honored to have a representative body gathered here today to share with you their stories, their successes, their victories as we begin to engage on these critical issues. So please allow me to introduce them. Let me start with myself, if that's okay? So I am Amira Woods. I am honored to be working with the Shine Campaign. We at Shine are building a community of practice of foundations, investors, philanthropists that are looking to focus on investing, raising resources, climate finance for the last mile, investing in solar, wind, and renewable energy for the last mile. That's us at Shine. We're truly, truly honored to be part of the convening of this conference. We have Ahmed first. Ahmed Makobu is the Africa Regional Divestment Campaigner with 350.org. He has a range of issues and expertise around equity and justice. He was a student volunteer at Amnesty. So he comes from a long line of activism. He was at the University of Wittes and his honors degree was in economic anthropology. He moved to the UK and was with the International Development Consultancies pursuing his master's at the University of Sussex. So we're truly, truly honored. You saw him featured in the film. He's not only articulate and an incredible researcher, but he looks quite good on the film as well. Next, we have the incredible Clara Vondrich. She is the director of Divest Invest, which is a campaign calling on investors to accelerate to a clean energy transition by moving their money from dirty energy. She sits on the board of director of two degrees investing a think tank working to align the financial system with climate goals. She's an attorney by training and she also serves as council to the President's Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon. Served. Served. Focusing on ecological restoration and environmental justice. Great to have you here. We have, I think many in this room probably know him well. The incredible activist and campaigner, Kumi Naidu, long time son of South Africa, but many of us claim him as an internationalist in his fight for social justice and environmental justice. He started activism at the age of 15. And organized. I want to fight. I want to fight. Was active in the anti-partite struggle. Lived in exile for quite some time. Returned in 1990 to work with the ANC. He then held multiple leadership roles. I think I remember the global call for action against poverty. Certainly we saw his leadership at Greenpeace International. Now, and of course at Civicus. I'm now with Amnesty International as their secretary general for the last year. Really truly honored to have you here, Kumi. Next we have Reverend Fletcher Harper. Fletcher is with Green Faith. He, Green Faith represents an incredible assortion of faith-based organizations across faith traditions. Muslim, Hindu, Sikh, as well as Christian and Jewish traditions across faith that are really focused on working together to move not only their programmatic resources but also their investment and their facilities towards a clean energy future. So we're truly honored to have Fletcher Harper joining us today. Next we have Mark McVeigh. Mark is a 24-year-old ecologist from Australia. He took on the $20 billion superannuation company, REST. $40 billion, $40 billion superannuation company, REST, he took them to court, right? He represents young people across this planet saying, enough is enough. And taking legal action to stop the harm that's being done to the planet. This is the first case in the world and it will have far-reaching effect and we're sure it's not going to be the last. So we're truly, truly honored to have Mark here with us today. Each of these panelists will speak very briefly and then we will have an opportunity for Q&A. We're gonna ask some in our audience to join that Q&A. We especially know the Wallace Global Fund and I'm honored to also serve as trustee is here in the room and we hope to invite them in to join in the Q&A session as well as others in the room as well, yeah? So without any further ado, why are we here? We are spotlighting the urgent need for energy access across the global cells. This is the first Global Divest Invest Summit to be held in the global cells. So we are here in Cape Town and we're truly, truly honored to be in this sacred space, this beautiful space to say that collectively we are standing against the fossil fuel industries and the harm they are doing to the planet. Collectively, we are visioning and working together for a just transition for a clean energy future. We can no longer ignore what's happening around us and so we are truly, truly excited to be here. So first, celebrating the pace at which all has been achieved. We've far exceeded, far exceeded our expectations. So maybe we can turn first to Amit as a researcher to tell the story of how we got here. Tell us, how is it that we could celebrate today this figure of 11 trillion? Great, thanks so much Amira and good afternoon everyone. So as Amira said and as the video showed is that one year ago we set out the goal to reach 10 trillion dollars by 2020 and here we are today celebrating an even bigger achievement. And I'll start off by saying that the fossil fuel divestment campaign has played a crucial role in giving the struggle for climate justice and climate action a voice in the financial services sector but also mainstreaming that fight. This movement has been instrumental in dismantling the social license of the fossil fuel industry in addition to the investor and political support that the industry has had influence over two centuries. As pointed out, the movement campaigns for removing coal, oil and gas investments and like historically significant divestment campaigns including the international sanctions against South Africa during the apartheid years, the divestment campaign has been instrumental in questioning the moral dimensions of fossil fuel companies. And basically the argument has been that if it's wrong to wreck the planet then it's wrong to profit from that wreckage. So as one of the fastest growing social movements in history, the divestment campaign was spearheaded by young people at universities across the US in 2011, 2012. And over the course of the last seven, six, eight, seven, six years, seven years, it has been mainstreamed. It's spread through to mission-based organizations, the faith-based institutions, NGOs, medical institutions and is now mainstreaming and we're seeing pension funds and even insurers committing to divest from fossil fuels. Assets committed to divestments is $11 trillion and that's a 22,000% rise from where the movement was in 2014 when assets were at $52 billion. And it goes without saying that this result is as a result of the unwavering commitment that local people have been pushing their local institutions to divest and without that people power, without people resisting and really pushing on their institutions to divest, we wouldn't be where we are today. The most important thing about the divestment movement and something that campaigners across the world have been pressing on is that it hasn't been about shifting financial assets, but it's been about delegitimizing the existence of the fossil fuel industry given the climate crisis. Brilliant, thank you so much for that overview, Ahmed. Really well done. Next, Clara, could you share with us how effective has this strategy been? Well, I'll actually be sharing about the ineffectiveness of shareholder engagement. First, I'd like to introduce and recognize one of the matriarchs of this movement, Ellen Dorsey, the executive director of the Wallace Global Fund, who was one of the first strategists and funders of this movement back in 2010, 2011, and she's further the founder of Divest Invest Philanthropy, which now counts over 180 foundations worldwide that have committed not only to divest from fossil fuels, but to invest in climate solutions like clean energy, clean energy access to the developing world, energy efficiency, and more. Ellen, can you please stand? We'd like to give you a round of applause. And in addition, she's one of the matriarchs, right? The founders of Shine. You're taken. Well, then we'll go back to you in the Q&A for sure. Thank you for that, Clara. You cannot reason with the tiger when your head is in its mouth. Faced with the destruction of the British homeland, Winston Churchill made a decision that changed the course of history. They would fight, not appease, a remorseless foe. Investors today face a similar choice. Do they engage with the fossil fuel industry that has spent years lying and deceiving us about the state of climate science, continuing to lobby us past tipping points of no return and investing billions of dollars in new capital for exploration, for new reserves that we know we cannot burn? Or is there an alternative to engagement and do these investors choose to join the right side of history and divest? Today, more than 1,000 institutional investors with assets of more than 11 trillion dollars have chosen to join the right side of history and divest. Meanwhile, a $34 trillion shareholder coalition known as the Climate Action 100 Plus continues to try to negotiate with the fossil fuel industry, including oil majors like Exxon, Shell and BP. The stated aim of this engagement is to convince these companies to align their business models with the Paris Agreement in order to avoid the worst consequences of climate change while there's still time. Shareholder engagement is certainly an effective tool when you're trying to change the ancillary piece of a company's business. For example, trying to reform the sweatshop conditions at Nike. But it is the wrong tool when you're trying to shift the entire business model of an entire industry, especially one as deceitful and recalcitrant as the fossil fuel industry. Any engagement today short of a demand for rapid phase out of coal, oil and gas production is just fiddling while our planet burns. Stopping investment in new development is fundamental. We know that we already cannot burn most of the fossil fuels that we know about. So why are these companies still searching for more? Greed has blinded the fossil fuel industry to an essential truth. When you're in a hole, you must stop digging. That is why today, a coalition of NGOs is challenging members of the Climate Action 100 Plus to adopt an engagement strategy, commensurate with our climate emergency. Or they must divest now. Specifically, we call on the Climate Action 100 Plus to urgently demand that every coal, oil and gas company that they engage with immediately halt expansion of the fossil fuel business and further tender plans for a rapid phase out of existing operations. Anything less is inconsistent with the goals of the Paris Agreement and the coalition's own stated objectives. Institutional investors hold enormous power, enormous power to accelerate the clean energy transition and to stave off the worst consequences of climate change, not least of which is abrupt capital destruction and financial collapse. Every year, the impacts come faster, harder and with a higher price tag than was expected. The clock has run out on open-ended shareholder engagement with the fossil fuel industry. Current efforts are simply out of touch with the transformational changes needed now. Worse, engagement provides cover and credibility to an industry notorious for its deceit and delay. But we know there's an alternative to engagement. Divest from fossil fuels and invest in the clean energy future, a future that is both inevitable and accelerating. Divest invest is the fastest growing social movement of all time, not because it's the clear ethical choice, not only because it's the clear ethical choice, but because it's financially smart and consistent with fiduciary duty. It is also one of three key trends that will ultimately put the fossil fuel industry out of business. Today, banks are increasingly stopping loans to new fossil fuel projects. Insurance companies are also stopping underwriting the risks of same and investors are pulling out their cash. Without loans, insurance, and investment, the industry hits a wall. The time to reason with the Exxon Tiger has passed. Thank you. Well said, the time has passed to reason that it's not possible. And we recognize that that Exxon Tiger has had some detrimental impact on communities around the world. So Kumi, we would love to hear from you some of the human rights implications of dirty energy and what that means from your lens as the Secretary General of Amnesty International. Thank you, Miran. Thank you, everybody, for being here. When Africa called on the international community during the apartheid period to support us in standing solidarity, one of the tactics that was used was divestment. So it's appropriate that this first global divestment on fossil fuels conferences happening in South Africa. It's also appropriate to note that it was not just South Africa that called for that action. We were backed by the entire peoples of the African continent, and therefore as a South African today, I just want to express my deep, deep sadness at the events that we have actually seen in South Africa with this xenophobic violence as well as the ongoing violence against women that we see especially in the city but also throughout the country. The reality is that the hand of climate is written over virtually every area of human rights today. Whether you're talking about the right to food, the right to water, the right to land, indigenous peoples' rights, the right of migrants, the right of refugees, the presence of climate change is very, very visible there as a driver of some of these. And when we look at the violence that we've seen in South Africa, let me just say a reality check. If we think that levels of conflict globally at the moment are high, then let me just say that what we are facing right now looks like a Sunday morning picnic and I might shock a few of you when I say what I'm about to say is that I strongly support the CIA and the Pentagon when in 2002 they said that the biggest threat to peace stability and so on will not come from conventional threats or terrorism but will come from the impacts of climate change and we have been seeing that consistently. The reality is that we are running out of time. I believe that there are very few constituencies of citizens who are showing the level of urgency that the situation calls for and I think it's very important that we honor at an event like this the activism of our children in high schools that have been pushing us to act. In fact, it's ironical that it seems that the children are behaving like adults and too much of our adult political and business leadership are behaving like children. And particularly with regard to the fossil fuel companies they have to account and we need to hold them to account for falsifying the public debates, holding back progress, buying of governments and so on and they need to hear from this conference loud and clear. The people are mobilizing. If you thought you had a free pass all these decades that's about to end and resistance is gonna mount from our children in the high schools to a range of civil disobedience activities that are being planned and will be executed in the coming months. I want to just end with one cautionary point. I just came from Oslo where the electric motor vehicle penetration is the highest in the city of Oslo and a few months ago I had to be there at the Electric Vehicle Global Conference to go and say, yes we want people to drive clean energy cars but as we think about the transition away from fossil fuels we need to ensure two things. One is that that transition is a just transition that does not punish workers who have worked in these industries. The second thing is we wanna make sure that that transition does not come with human rights violations. So for example people in Europe for example or in North America can feel very good about driving down in clean cars on the one hand but then when we look at the batteries that run those cars that are coming from exploitation of children from the minds, artisanal minds in DRC. So moving forward we know there are other cases as well in Oaxaca, Mexico where concentrated wind. So what we are saying is a human rights movement. Our governments have failed us up to now. Corporations have been complicit and have bought off and influenced too many of our governments. We need to get as much money out of fossil fuels and into renewable energies but we are saying additionally we must do that in a way that fully respects human rights and that we don't make any shortcuts in order to get forward on renewable energy that we violate particularly by the way indigenous peoples rights which we see happening in certain places around the world. Thank you very much. Taking Kumi's lead we will go please to Fletcher Harper from Green Faith to share with us the faith communities role also in pushing back on human rights violations, pushing back on fossil fuel industry across the globe. Yes to all and to follow on what Kumi said I think you see in faith communities globally a growing consensus around the absolutely urgent need for a transition that is socially just that protects human rights, that protects particularly the rights of women, of children, of workers as well as those communities that are on the front lines which are we should point out always the communities that have done the least to contribute to the problem in the first place. So I'm actually here today representing brother Dawood's wink of the thick council of North America which is the Islamic scholars council of North America. Brother Dawood is in customs but isn't here yet his flight was delayed. I wanted to acknowledge in the room Reverend Henryk Grape from the church of Sweden and the world council of churches the church of Sweden was the first religious body in the world to divest from fossil fuels and to invest in climate solutions. The world council of churches followed soon afterwards and will be joined tomorrow by Tomas Sinsua and representatives of the global Catholic climate network who have done outstanding work getting and generating fossil fuel investment commitments from Catholic institutions globally and in the back Reverend Avi Mohop who's the leader of Fossil Free PCUSA which is relentlessly pushing the Presbyterian church in the United States to divest from fossil fuels so the movement is alive and well in faith communities and the reason we wanted to feature brother's wink this morning or today is that the thick council of North America the council of Islamic scholars is the council in North America which is responsible for issuing authoritative religious rulings which are also known as fatwa and while they are not legally enforceable in a court of law they carry great cultural and moral weight and significance to the point where it's perhaps analogous to say that Pope Francis is encyclical opened the floodgates for divestment within the Catholic community statements such as the ones that I'm about to share we expect to do the same in the Islamic community as well taking into account the very clear cultural challenge within much of the Islamic world because as is widely known Petro-Dollars underwrite an enormous amount of Islamic charitable and religious work globally so there was a real genuine risk for Islamic religious leaders to come and say what they're about to say so brother's winks remarks were today I'm here to share two important rulings and statements from the Islamic community first I would like to announce that the FICC Council of North America the Council of Islamic Religious Scholars responsible for issuing authoritative religious rulings also known as fatwa has issued a ruling on climate change and fossil fuel divestment that the council believes to have great significance in its ruling the council has affirmed the 2016 fossil fuel divestment commitment made by the Islamic Society of North America this is the first time that a FICC council anywhere in the world has taken such a position and the council's ruling is based on scholarly work regarding the issues of Islam and the environment found in existing Islamic statements declarations and religious rulings on this manner furthermore the FICC Council calls upon Islamic investment houses and other investment managers and administrators to immediately develop immediately develop fossil fuel free investment vehicles and portfolios that include investments in renewable and clean energy companies furthermore the FICC Council of North America stands ready to engage its fellow scholarly councils around the world in relation to this ruling so parenthetically I'll say that this again is a statement of courage on behalf of the FICC Council not only for the statement itself but for the open statement that they now intend to engage with FICC councils in the Middle East in North Africa and in other parts of the world and we want to honor brother Dawood and many of his colleagues will be here at the summit the next two days Imam Safit Kadovic who's been a really the primary driver behind this work furthermore returning to brother Dawood's words I would like to announce that the mosques and the Imams National Advisory Board of the United Kingdom along with UK Islamic partners the Bahoo Trust and the Islamic Foundation for Environment and Ecological Sciences have released a joint statement urging the Muslim community to divest from fossil fuel holdings and to invest in renewable energy particularly to ensure energy access ensure access to clean energy for all people their statement reads in part loving Allah is loving Allah's creation and investing in fossil fuels is having a catastrophic impact on that creation the need to align our finances with Islam's ethical values and Sharia or holy law by investing in climate friendly investments has never been more urgent so even though he's not here I would like to invite us to offer a round of applause for the Fit Council of North America powerful thank you so much for presenting that for us Clutcher well done we turn down to Mark because as we so well said it's about this courageous generation that is saying we are not gonna stand for it not on our watch so Mark please share with us your personal story and also the courageous acts you have taken to lead to this legal case thanks Amira hi everyone my name's Mark I'm from Brisbane on the east coast of Australia and yeah I'll tell you a little bit about how I sued a 40 billion dollar superannuation fund in my spare time so yeah as an ecologist I've always been really interested in the physical parts of climate change mostly in the natural world but I'm really interested in what the world's gonna look like in 20, 30, 50 years and I guess you know we're all here still today because things aren't looking too good for the environment or for economies in the future and when it comes to something like superannuation most people my age not really thinking about it too much right it largely goes ignored but when you start to consider the economic impacts of climate change it begins to raise a lot of questions about what kind of effect and what kind of risk is this posing to our retirement savings and I really wanted to know well what's gonna happen to my retirement savings as climate change continues and is my retirement savings contributing to these very risks themselves so basically by 2055 I'm gonna be 60 years old I'll finally be able to access my retirement savings also by 2055 we've got about a two degree climate change scenario or worse and for me back home this means severe ongoing droughts means regular intense forest fires means tropical cyclones it means the complete ecological collapse of the Great Barrier Reef now that's not just very dear to me but it's a huge part of our local economy on the East Coast and I suppose I really wanted to find out from my subrenuation you know what are they doing about these risks so I really wanted to see something from them along the lines of the TCFD recommendations or open transparent information about the risks, the impacts whether they're doing some kind of analysis of my retirement money and to know that it was being protected and people like me and as you can probably guess they didn't have anything so I went to them again I contacted them and basically they couldn't give me anything they gave me a blanket statement and they said we take environmental, sustainability and government issues into account for their investments which is useless to me I was not content with that answer so last year I took REST as it's called $40 billion subrenuation fund to the court in Australia and claimed that they bailed their fiduciary duties in failing to adequately consider I mean the case is still ongoing but it's the first of its kind as we said where climate change risk is being tested under these fiduciary duties and the best part is the impacts so we're basically looking at a massive effect on the subrenuation funds in Australia and that is $2.7 trillion for about a quarter of the Australian stock exchange and on that it's possibly pulling billions of dollars out of fossil fuels and other industries like them and having a huge carbon reduction effect and that's just Australia so what we're hoping is that this will have a bigger impact on the rest of the world this case is used as an example and people at the summit as well will go to their fund managers their pensions, their superannuations and basically we go to them and we ask what are you doing about climate change risk and we're working with our retirement money and yeah I guess that's it it can always seem a little bit helpless when it comes to climate change but I think we can have a really powerful effect when we go to them we ask simple questions and we just demand answers when we don't get them thank you we should be saying thank you for leading the way you and I'm telling you young people around the world we have a number of people in the audience and we know we want to also take Q&A from the audience especially the working journalists that are here with us I'm wondering if you would allow me to just pass the mic first to Ellen as we keep saying the matriarch to give her a moment to speak explicitly about the institutions foundations and the role that they have played both in the divestment movement as well as in investing in the renewable energy future just to give a bit of a sense of that work please I really didn't want to speak and I really don't want to be called a matriarch but I am 57 so I guess I have to embrace this alright listen I have a couple can you hear me without it can you hear me without it the matriarch has to get into the shot alright this is just getting more uncomfortable than I can tell you okay I have a couple of comments I just want to punctuate how powerful it is that we're having this summit here in Cape Town it's a historic moment in a historic place and Kumi already mentioned this that the fossil fuel divestment movement took a play from the anti-apartheid playbook and when the companies refused to move it was the activists that said we can make the move because we have access to capital we can move investment funds and pressure companies to act and we have to continue to do that and 11 trillion is an enormous accomplishment but it's not enough and for the fossil fuel companies we are still coming for you until you commit to wind down stop the capital expenditures right now stop the expansion and tender plans that keep you compliant with the Paris Agreement we're going to keep on coming and 11 trillion will double and be 22 trillion in the very near future second investment we have to also equally focus on investment every investor every single institutional investor has to invest at least 5% of their portfolio in climate solutions and renewable energy or we will not be able to scale in time and we as activists are going to make sure that there are human rights and environmental standards for that sector we have an opportunity to shape a new industrial sector to be good global citizens and we must do that so plus one on the human rights and environmental standards we also have to prioritize reaching the billion plus that don't have access to electricity today and we have a unique opportunity to leap frog fossil fuel development and communities can be powered by distributed locally controlled locally owned renewable energy and it's not inevitable that that will happen we could have an energy transition that gets us to 100% renewables and still leave a billion plus behind so the shine campaign the work of the church of sweden and others is so critical to scaling solutions but again communities must lead communities must be our partners and then the philanthropy my sector it is unconscionable that you invest in industries with the lion's share of your assets that you ask grantees to clean up the mess from with a tiny fraction of your grant dollars it is inconsistent with your mission and those that receive charitable tax status to serve the public good the responsibility to uphold the public good or they fail in their fiduciary duty mission number one for fiduciary duty get out of fossil fuels now and start moving the money into the solutions we need not for profit investors to prioritize the energy access and the last thing that I will say is thank you to the activists the youth activists today should inspire all of us to get not in front of them and support these strikes because they are leading and this is the time to stand up and be counted we're all activists now well done thank you time is against us so I'm wondering if we can go to first the working journalists who have questions in the room and then we'll go to those who are joining us on telephone and via the internet to play opera and please just say your name in affiliation hello I'm Melanie Gosling I'm a freelance journalist could somebody say what percentage of global investment 11 trillion represents that's one question and then the other question what are the South African companies if any that have agreed to do this shall I ok my name is Keya Acharya I'm a journalist from India and I come from Bangalore you know listening to this I have to say that it's very difficult for all that you speak of to be actually actually happening in India we have coal companies and we have a government who is still till today opening more new mines looking for new mines especially in forest areas etc and professedly ok no I will alright I won't be cynical we do have a climate change policy but the implementation of that is nowhere near the kind of speed that we have in our fossil fuel so to say that the global south is actually going to be benefited or is doing something for me from India that sounds far-fetched what is your comment on this thank you so one more it just arrived and it's my understanding I was supposed to make a presentation here I have some information to read and this is from Canada yes it's done good to have you here thank you so much thank you we're going to draw on the expertise of some of our audience members with whom we work very closely Tim Buckley will answer the question about the percentage of Yossi Khadan from 350.org will answer the first question about the percentage of assets that 11 trillion represents in the global economy so the simple answer is about 16 it's about 16% but it's very rough number that's the recent number that we know about and can you just draw attention to the report that was released yes and you can find the report there is a copy of the reports here on the desk and you can read all the information about how we get up to that and everything here in that report so thank you for that so there's a question about the South African firms can you answer that please I just wanted to know if you could name some of the South African companies if any who have decided to disinvest alright so we got a few faith organizations in South Africa that have committed to divest one of them being the Desmond and Leah Tutu foundation also the Anglican church of Southern Africa and in 2016 Clara started some conversations with the city of Cape Town and by June 2017 the city committed to divest its municipal funds and David LePage is in here from Fosnipi South Africa but he'll have an update on where those conversations have gone the other question on the Global South I think it's a fair question and it's a question that could be asked of any region of the world about the inadequacy of the response to the climate crisis to date we face an absolute emergency globally this movement has grown rapidly it's a way of demonstrating real resolve from real investors to shift their money out of one industry that is creating the problem we need this movement to double, triple and quadruple as fast as possible you're seated next to Pinaki Dasgupta who's in the early stages of organizing religious groups in India around these issues the Selco foundation in India has been working for 15 to 20 years doing outstanding world leading work on community owned energy access is it big enough and fast enough? No, but are we coming as hard as we can? Absolutely I'll just add also that one of the main objectives of the conference is to bring together activists from the Global South to learn and share their experiences with activists in the Global North it's all about cross pollinating and helping to root divest invest campaigning in parts of the world where it has yet to flourish and really take hold in the last two and a half days we'll have a real chance to bring people together give members of the activist community in the Global South a real seat at the table and an opportunity to learn bringing the conference to them recognizing how challenging it is for them to travel internationally due to the cost and time required and Tim has to somewhere to add So Tim from IEFA Vibhuti Garga and I have just traveled from Delhi where we presented last week at a conference the presentation and the whole conference was how does India integrate 523 gigawatts of renewable energy by 2030 which to me is an unbelievably ambitious strategy and I know that might sound coming from India yourself a little ambitious and there is certainly conflict in the policy within India because of the magnitude of the economic growth in front of India but certainly from everything that we do at IEFA India is trying to address the issue of a sustainable transformation of their energy system and I believe it is very much on track despite some policy headwinds that you're alluding to We are also honored to have in the room a coma I don't know she is a Goldman Prize winner and director of Africa I don't know if there is anything else you want to add in terms of the comments regarding the global south maybe we come back to you on that so let's do then a second round there were some hands up before we start here and then we go to the next slide my name is Busani Bafana I write for APS my question relates to the policies that look at climate change and the production of climate change many governments are logged into fossil fuels and how can we get the policies to swing in favour of actuality and investment given that many of these pension funds are controlled by governments and what is the starting step in Africa I'll do Leone Joubert Daily Mavericks are burning planet so I recently asked Sassoll what the commitments were with regards to trying to achieve the 45% reduction by 2030 and 0 by 2050 and got the usual expected pretty bland statements around the commitments and the voluntary working with governments around the carbon budget but nothing concrete about how they were going to actually achieve some of these targets so I guess the question is given that Sassoll needs to be one of the main targets for this kind of divestment where is South Africa in terms of moving money away from fossil fuels which of the pension funds are most likely to have impact should be making the biggest move particularly with regards to the government pension funds I don't know if the South Africans in the room can answer it Thank you I represent GreenPet in India thank you for inviting me and having me here I was in the UN CCT COP which is still going on in India my question though to all the panelists is when we talk about investment when we talk about green investment green bonds all the stuff are we also thinking of integrating these and raising the voice to like the UN conventions to adopt this as a resolution in major events or is it like it's our own world we are working on thank you the question is just on the policy end what is our message to the policy makers our advocacy our voice to the UN agencies or to the government in more kind of concrete way rather than just sitting here and we spread the word around our among ourselves that was the question thank you that's why I was asking for a repeat of the actual three questions but now we've got third one just Busanis question what was it again sorry I should have written it down sorry my apologies I was saying that in Africa many governments are actually locked into fossil fuels and our economy is being powered we are getting not only more cars being imported into Africa great imports particularly if I can speak from my country what policies can be tweaked to ensure that governments can disinvest given that pension funds that they control are actually in the fossil industry and do those policies really exist well I wanted to just give a case study from the US it maybe doesn't go directly to your question but just an example of people power that helped to change a government policy that was pretty entrenched so in New York City a divestment campaign has been ongoing since 2013 and we exercised a range of tactics direct actions protest picketing and then more sophisticated engagement with the policy makers themselves and after seven years of hard work New York City's mayor Bill de Blasio announced that they were divesting their five pension funds from coal oil and gas and further investing in climate change solutions this was a watershed moment the New York City pension fund is not insignificant it's over just under $200 billion and what was even more exciting was that New York City and London subsequently came together to form the divest invest city's forum which is sponsored by C40 which will work with cities around the world in order to get them to embrace divest invest policies that will grow their local economies and contribute to a jobs transition for many local workers so it's really a win-win for these city officials they both get to improve the returns of their portfolios divesting from fossil fuels and create local opportunities at home thank you on the question of our governments being complicit in the pension fund decisions and the absence of policy let's be very clear that we are spending a lot of time trying to fight to get good policies and sometimes we succeed sometimes we don't but the bottom line is even when we succeed the implementation of those policies have been found to be substantially lacking so right now I think going back to Clara's early response about how we cross-pollinate learning which I think is critical we need to recognize that how this challenge going to your question earlier as well how it actually plays itself out on the ground is slightly different and we just need to make sure that we are adapting to it so for example whereas in developed countries you can talk about universities being big investors in the sector you can talk about foundations and trusts being quite significant in the global south we don't have that many foundations and trust we don't have many universities that however we have pension funds and workers in most countries on our continent do have a stake the difficulty is that people don't know they have power just like all of us sitting here who are all invested in fossil fuels just by virtue of having a bank account I'm not using the power that we actually have I think it is about trying to also educate people that we are not just on the receiving end that we actually by aggregating and uniting with each other and there are examples already that have been successful in Australia with regard to the Queensland Adani, Carmichael, Colmine right but that's the delay in it that would have been already spewed out gigatons of carbon and we now fighting another phase to stop its expansion but I can tell you that it was delayed because the activist coalitions that came together made sure that the five banks sorry the four banks in Australia will all say they would not and you know how that happened people went to their local branches on Saturday mornings right and said to the bank manager where is my money and of course the local bank manager usually doesn't have a clue right and he says I don't have a clue and then said okay we're coming back next week until you get a clue and you tell us where our money is because we want to know we don't want it to be invested in our children's death and so on so that's the kind of thing that we need to be and also I think somehow this world of finance is a very technical jargonistic world so for us in this movement we also have a challenge to try to be able to not be simplistic but to be accessible in our language so that we can invite more people into the conversation the one thing I just want to say about Sassel the question about Sassel I think it's really important to just recognize that there are certain parts of the global economy that by very nature the fossil fuel companies of which Sassel is a fossil fuel company there is no room for compromise anymore right the bottom line is that their product is a poison their product is a killer their output is a destroyer right so therefore we're not going to sit and negotiate about whether the product of Sassel can be made you know cleaner or greener because the product is the poison that's killing the planet right so with them it's a slightly different approach we need to be saying to the fossil fuel industry any new investment into new fossil fuel projects given what we know given what the science has said already must be understood is as an investment into the death of our children and their children they need to know that and then to be told loud and clear would know and the question is those that invest in fossil fuel companies like Sassel and yeah we need to be saying and I want to make a challenge to the South African comrades that are here I want to believe that the biggest investor in Sassel is the South African government and why can't we bring a constitutional court action against the South African government for investing in Sassel when Sassel's product is killing our future I think we need to be looking at using the litigation options that we have especially in countries where we might have much more progressive you know constitutional sorry judiciaries that might allow us the possibility of success sorry I just want to add really quick just to echo something that Ellen Dorsey always says and kind of puts a pithy spin on what Kumi just said is that if you own fossil fuels you own climate change in response both to Bassani's question Pinocchies so one story that you'll hear over the course of the next two days and the conference is the story of what happened in Ireland that was followed quite soon after by a governmental commitment it was the first national government that had committed to divest its holdings from the fossil fuel sector and so I think the impact on policy is that when influential actors within any given culture make a substantial public commitment with their own money that sends a very powerful political signal that gives politicians who want to do the right thing the cover to do so and increases pressure on those who don't want to do it so that's just one example and you'll hear more about that in the next couple of days just a quick response to Leonie's question around the movement in South Africa and you know the movement is steadily growing in the country we've got organizations like Just Share and Fossil Free South Africa that are targeting asset managers across the country to really calling them to create fossil free indices so that it gives people an opportunity to invest in more fossil free options at the moment that's not available in the country and so people's pension funds are exposed to the likes of Sassel because those those options aren't available but there are organizations working towards creating that Just a bit of correction to Kaya's question as well about Adani the Kamako mine itself still hasn't got finance and they're struggling to find insurers and they're losing contractors all the time as well from the action that we've been talking about people going and sitting outside of offices so they might say they've started works they're still a long way from getting that mine exporting coal I just wanted to quickly respond to part of Basani's question so one of the most important thing as Kumi said is to help empower pensioners to organize and labor unions are extremely important in that fight and in the US we see a schism between unions in the service industry who are generally pro divestment and then unions obviously in the metal workers and other extractive industries that are having a hard time getting behind it and that's why it's so vital to talk about a just transition for workers that really helps to equip them for the transitions ahead and I know that Martin Norman from Greenpeace Nordic has had some good success in talking with labor unions and oil and gas specifically and I would love for you to comment if possible. So my name is Martin Norman I work for Greenpeace based in Norway and it's a bit interesting to hear I'll be sitting here in the back hello Kumi, hello again and because of course for those of you that don't know but Norway is a filter-rich country in the north of Europe made of most of our wealth from oil exploration instead of spending it on the party of the century we have saved it in what is the world's largest sovereign wealth fund so we have a trillion dollar US dollar fund that is investing all over the world and we have divested from coal more or less all together and it's starting to divest from fossil fuel and I think that if we can have that discussion in Norway which is so dependent on the oil industry there is absolutely no reason why that discussion should not be happening also everywhere else and as Clara mentioned part of this discussion is of course happening together with the labor union the labor union is very strong in Norway and that's why we have managed to develop the industry as we have and even though the labor unions industry is not directly supporting the demand for a shift they do know it's coming that's why we are now deliberately moving money from fossil fuel to unlisted renewable energy we are opening up for offshore wind projects and the government incentives to retrain these workers, oil workers to work in renewable energy and it works very well so there is no reason whatsoever for others so thank you so much for that and for all the work that you do we see a couple hands the time is short could we just see how many questions still remain if this can be a very short okay let me go first to Kumbh Kumbh Ture who is the board chair of trust Africa as well as the co-coordinator of Africans Rising for Justice peace and community so glad to be here maybe some of the things I would say might not be very popular here but first of all being a co-coordinator from Africans Rising working with a lot of people who do not even think of investing you know let alone you know divesting or anything because that's really where not where they stand but I'm sitting here thinking about two questions when we are divesting are we also thinking of making it very hard for those who want to invest again in this field will it be expensive because if you move out and then you have people who are like oh okay they're divesting let's get in and we'll make the money that they are not making is that you know part of the strategy and the work that we can think of how do we make it very expensive for anyone who's going to be investing for a reason that it wouldn't be interesting to do it that's the first one the second one is just thinking about like the gentleman just said before if you know a country like Finland made so much money already and now can divest from Poland and so on you take a country like Senegal where right now we're going through a hole with the corruption and everything found a lot of trouble of course ahead of us but the issue is here that the conversation for them is like oh once they're done making money out of fossil fuel now they want us not to invest in it and so that we will not be able to make it to their level so there is also this issue of just like what does it mean for a country like Senegal where now the president think that making money out of oil will solve all of his problem of paying the salaries of people and everything and we come to them as activists and fighting them and saying no you can't do you can't do that but at the same time this is just things that I'm thinking I know we have few days to talk about them not to have just the responses now thank you respond to the first one that you asked so the idea that other investors will simply swoop in and invest in those divested assets is one of the longest running arguments against divestment what material impact will it really have if someone else just buys these stocks but today what's happened is that the moral case for divestment is now equally as powerful as the financial case for fossil fuel divestment oil and gas which used to be the backbone of the global economy is now one of the worst performing sectors of the S&P finishing dead last in 2018 the industry is absolutely volatile and speculative it's perhaps appropriate if you're a day trader but not for a long-term investor like a pension fund it's absolutely bananas and then we've also done some analyses how would a pension fund perform how would it have performed had it divested a decade ago and the one case study I'll mention is that for New York State again a massive US pension fund 200 billion plus and had they divested 10 years ago they would have been 22 billion dollars richer which is about 17,000 dollars per pensioner that's real money for real people so I wanted to pick up on Kumar's issue that we are not able to talk about as cogently and clearly as we should be able to right and that is our leaders in the global south are correct to say that countries in the global north today we call developed countries built the economies on the exploitation of fossil fuels right we know that to be a fact it's clear the second issue then is does that mean that our governments now have a right to say well even though now that the science is clear that continuing to burn these fuels is actually going to impact our citizens our citizens future just because others did it therefore let us burn as well so we make the problem worse for our citizens because the bottom line is that even though Africa as a continent for example has contributed least to the problem right as a continent we are paying amongst the first and most brutal price in terms of climate impacts right so by the way I just want to say South Africa is an exception South Africa is the 14th largest emitter in the world just to be clear well Africa carries very limited response but South Africa does carry distinctive responsibility so that is why in the climate negotiations we pushed really really hard to get the green climate fund in place so that countries in the global south could benefit you were telling rich nations in that fight we are not asking for charity we are asking you to pay your climate debt right that when you put money into that fund it's both to recognize that you built your economy in a way that damaged ours and that secondly that you cannot punish people twice essentially so but I just want to conclude though right with a lie that many leaders on our continent say and many leaders in the global south including in India say they talk about how committed they are about energy access right this is about getting energy access to the poor people that was the same argument that President Zuma and a corrupt component of the ANC media when they were pushing nuclear down our throat and thank God for Makoma Liz and others that led the fights and stopped it right but where they really committed to energy for the poor where would those nuclear plants have been built they were built along the coastline because of you know the cost of cooling not not a iota of that that energy generator would have gone to the poor right and so if we are serious whether in India or whether in Africa to get energy access to people quickly accessibly and sustainably we should not be looking at all energy solutions which is always about big energy infrastructure if we are going to take rural people in India and Africa out of energy poverty we should be thinking about really small scale micro solar grids that can be community owned there are examples of this but there is a problem our government cannot think in terms of decentralized small scale solutions that you can do on math scale meaning you can have lots of people engaged in it even in terms of democratizing the economy so for example why in any African country certainly in urban areas I want to ask any government here on our continent why is it impossible to turn the roof of every home every school every religious institution every factory into two things and energy into basically an energy generator because basically on the one hand like say for schools for example where across this continent even where there is electricity schools struggle to pay the electricity bill if they can generate the electricity so that one they meet their needs so they are not paid and what access they generate they can feed it into the grid so we can turn every roof of every home if you are smart if you have a more development oriented a genuinely development oriented approach that can go even beyond energy that we can turn every roof into both an electricity generator as well as an income generator for families over time if we are serious about doing that big infrastructure solutions it has its place concentrated solar, concentrated wind and so on I am not saying there is no space for that we are talking about base load and so on but I have to say that I have yet to meet any developing country at the UN negotiations and so on where on the one hand they say oh the rich they did blah blah blah and so on and then I don't see the commitment of taking people out of energy poverty and if we add a commitment of taking people out of energy poverty which is China's twin brief then I think we will come up with much more innovative solutions that don't have to be reliant on big infrastructure projects that take long to build that have lots of room then for corruption and by the way let me just say it quite clearly many governments want big infrastructure project because then there is option for them to steal and to be corrupt and we need to resist that as part of resisting where money flows as well thank you Hi I am the booty girl I work with Tim and Simon at IEFA my question is whether this we have been talking about diverse in West and largely on the public finance side of things so does your movement also include other form of finance which is like support by the government in the form of subsidies or the tax exemption so are you even trying they may not be as big as public finance to the fossil fuel industry but it's still quite substantial so whether the movement is targeting the governments and other support organizations who are supporting the fossil fuel industry in a different manner and secondly just taking back very recently a report came out which analyzed the trends of funds going to the fossil fuel industries versus renewable so clearly the trend showed that while the renewable industry has is picking up in a big way in India but largely the funds are coming from the private sector whereas the fossil fuel is still being largely financed by the public finance through the government owned banks or the central owned banks which is still not done away with so do you have any different kind of strategy or tactics to handle that kind of a situation and whether it's prevalent in other countries as well you both were heading to the microphone so maybe Clara and then Ahmed just to your first point you're absolutely right that fossil fuel subsidies remain one of the most grave threats to this whole process and our ability to accelerate the transition in time while we're not that's actually a new we're going to start developing campaigns around just that we haven't to date but campaigns that we're also beginning to focus on that are equally important those targeting central banks and we're already seeing some commitments that are very exciting like for example the European investment bank is has it voted yet no okay it's considering full fossil fuel divestment from coal oil and gas which would send a massive signal to other central banks around the world investment banks around the world that fossil fuels are out and clean energy is in I was asked and agreed to make very brief comments and that's obviously within the context of having missed some of what preceded our arrival however what I would like to underscore from the written statement was this religious ruling that we just brought from North America from the US and Canada this is the first time that we've had a Islamic religious ruling to our knowledge any place in the world and I well a couple of things first of all let me express our appreciation and respect to the work that Greenfaith is doing and I'm here on behalf of our point of command who has been working now for many years on the issue Brother Safed his name is Safed Jatavich for anybody that wants the correct Bosnian pronunciation however the biggest thing that I wanted to share a couple of things coming from Canada in looking at earth issues it's absolutely impossible to separate that from recognition of our first peoples of indigenous relationships and in our own growing understanding of this core obligation for all Muslims because it's embedded in the basic principles of Islam historic principles for some reason somehow seems to be missing from the understanding of Muslim scholars globally today but equally or even more importantly from those that have the responsibility for the well-being of Muslims and the neighbors of Muslims number one and number two is the lived reality of Islam we have a kind of schizophrenia between how we live and the spiritual values that inform every minute of every day of our lives so when we arrive at an existential moment for humanity like we're facing today for me personally as a Muslim the big question is how could this happen without the full engagement of Muslim scholars of Muslim governments of Muslim institutions in collaboration with other people of faith this for us is not theoretical it has to do with defining what it means to live as a human being we cannot separate living our values challenges of the time or the age that we live in so really the big question that I wanted to ask because for the Muslim world the Muslim population in South Africa is very important and historically in fact some of the very first Muslims that were brought to South Africa were the elite in countries were being colonized by European imperial powers so this is an extension of continuation but where is our awareness in the local communities and this is just a verbal question so don't put anything into it more than that but where is the presence and the participation of all Muslim leaders now I've said that just to raise the point because I think that's our responsibility and we are going to be doing our best to engage the local community we hope and we pray in the future that you will see a lot more engagement from Muslims, Muslim scholars Muslim organizations and Muslim academicians but may God bless each and every one of you please just keep in mind that this is an existential threat but it's also a spiritual obligation for all of us well there couldn't be a better call to action than that engaging us all we will be here throughout the coming days representing foundations faith institutions campaigners governments, policy makers practitioners including those that are working on mini-grids home solar systems we will be here so we encourage you to engage with us over the coming days to be inspired by all of this amazing work going on around the globe and to continue with us even beyond Cape Town some are going to New York for the UN meetings in a few weeks some are going we know to the UN climate meetings in December but this is a journey not a marathon right not a sprint and we encourage you to journey with us as we change not only the pension funds not only the governments but we change the practical day-to-day ways in which people are shut out of opportunities to have clean energy to have a clean energy future and so you know it's about celebrating where we've come from further and we're just so thrilled for all the organizations that have come to be a part of the Financing the Future conference to walk with all of you and to bring forward our power as we change the world so thank you so much for participating in this press conference we are having one-on-one opportunities for interviews should any of the journalists be interested both with the panelists and with many who are here in our audience as well so please do let us know that opportunity is there oh sorry, absolutely my name is Clara Wanderich I'm the director of Divest Invest my name's Mark and I've taken my Supranuation Fund quote Amid Mukhopo, campaigner from the 350.org the Secretary General of Feminist International and for those who are following online just a note that this has been also recorded so if you've missed some of it here again in detail what has been shared do please log on to 350.org's YouTube channel and you will be able to hear all of it in detail so that you can transcribe as you wish just one other note I wanted to add we have some refreshments in the room next door so those of you that are here present with us please do join us so that we may continue the conversations informally as well thank you thank you all so very much