2023-05-11 12:33:40
Less than a week before its annual general meeting, on Tuesday May 16 at the Carrousel du Louvre in Paris, BNP Paribas presented, on Thursday May 11, new energy transition objectives that meet one of the demands that organizations environmental defense non-governmental organizations intend to defend on this occasion.
The first French bank thus definitively stops, and with immediate effect, all financing allocated to the development of new oil or gas fields.
However, it was among other things to obtain this judgment that three NGOs (Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and Notre affaires à tous) had given formal notice to the group led by Jean-Laurent Bonnafé in November 2022, then had taken him to court. in February for non-compliance with its duty of vigilance, by demanding an immediate end to all financial support for companies developing new fossil fuel projects.
Prod role
If he refuses to comment on the outcome of the legal proceedings against the bank, Antoine Sire, his director of corporate engagement, half-acknowledges that the pressure exerted on the group played a role of sting. “It is certain that the action of NGOs is one of the ways in which the opinion of civil society manifests itself”he said.
“There is an extremely lively debate on the financing of the oil and gas sector by banks, which resulted in France in the famous formal notice, but the debate is also very lively in the Netherlands and in England, in each time affecting banks already engaged in a reduction trajectory”he adds.
However, Thursday’s announcements are not enough to silence the critics: if the NGOs at the initiative of the formal notice recognize “a small step”, they consider the new measures too weak.
“On the first step of a long staircase”
“BNP is pretending to tackle the pressing issue of oil and gas expansion, but it is only setting foot on the first step of a long staircase”, reacts Lorette Philippot, campaign manager for Friends of the Earth. For its part, Reclaim Finance salutes the “details” provided by the bank but judges that the latter must “to follow through with the process undertaken by requiring its clients to stop developing projects that it no longer intends to finance directly”.
According to the annual report “Banking on Climate Chaos” published in April by a group of NGOs, BNP Paribas has financed the expansion of the fossil fuel sector to the tune of 5.5 billion dollars in 2022 (5 billion euros) , an amount disputed by the bank.
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