Author: Affaire4Etoiles

The day after the publication of the annual Banking On Climate Chaos report, in which we learn that BNP continues to finance the expansion of fossil fuels, we were present at the bank’s Annual General Meeting to hold it to account.

Despite its claims, BNP has not closed the door on the expansion of fossil fuels

This General Meeting was held the day after the publication of the annual Banking On Climate Chaos report, the world’s most complete and detailed analysis of fossil fuel financing. The report is published by 8 organizations, including Reclaim Finance, and supported by 589 organizations, including Friends of the Earth France.
In this new edition, we learn that between 2021 and 2023, BNP Paribas was the leading French bank to have financially supported the expansion of fossil fuels, with a total of $23.9 billion. BNP continues to maintain dangerous ties with Total, as evidenced by major financial transactions – between 2021 and 2023, BNP was Total’s leading global financier – and by BNP Chairman Jean Lemierre’s seat on the multinational’s Board of Directors. BNP’s toxic financing extends beyond national borders. It is one of the main financiers of Saudi Aramco, the world’s leading oil and gas producer. But the Saudi oil behemoth is not BNP’s only partner in crime. Italian oil and gas major Eni, implicated in no fewer than 11 climate bombs, also benefited, in December 2023, from a $3 billion loan in which BNP participated. With a total of $10.3 billion granted between 2021 and 2023, BNP Paribas has become the world’s 3rd largest financier of oil and gas majors and large state-owned companies.
BNP Paribas continues to support the development of fossil fuels primarily through loans and bond issues. Although the bank has pledged to stop supporting oil and gas projects, it continues to lead us straight towards a +4°C world, through its financing of companies involved in fossil fuel production and transport projects.

Scientists and students at the AGM of the bank of a burning world

Following their letter published at the end of 2023, the 1,240 or so students who declared at the time that they would refuse to work for BNP Paribas for as long as the bank financed the development of fossil fuels, had received no response to their concerns. To make their voices heard, some fifty students submitted public questions to BNP management ahead of the AGM. Émilie and Hermès, students at Centrale-Supélec, were even forced to become shareholders and attended the AGM on May 14, 2024.

The scientific community – with the Scientifiques en Rébellion collective – also joined in the “party”, having repeatedly called BNP to account. 600 scientists and members of the IPCC had already called on the Board of Directors of BNP Paribas to put an end to its support for the expansion of fossil fuels, in a letter and public questions. The simple reminder by the scientists present at the AGM of the clear conclusions of the IPCC and the International Energy Agency, according to which no new fossil fuel projects should be financed if we are to have any chance of limiting global warming to well below 2°C, was greeted with boos from shareholders.

Insufficient response to our questions

BNP’s response to questions from students, scientists and NGOs was the same.
On the one hand, the bank seems to agree with the scientific consensus, stating that “our objective is that our financing should under no circumstances contribute to new oil and gas capacity”. The bank thus recognizes the need to put an end to the indirect financing of fossil fuel development, via non-earmarked or general financing to the companies responsible for this development. Better still, in response to our written questions, the bank states that it “refrains from participating in conventional bond issues in the oil and gas sector”. However, it does not make this statement as a firm commitment in a sector policy or in its due diligence plan. It thus leaves open the possibility of issuing future bonds to companies developing new fossil fuel projects. Where are the guarantees that its financing will not increase in the future? What’s more, it would mean making such a commitment on all its financial services, including loans, which accounted for 54% of BNP Paribas’ financing to fossil expansion between 2021 and 2023.

BNP has certainly reduced its financing to the oil and gas industry in 2023 and, thanks to public pressure, finally seems to recognize the need to move away from fossil fuels. But it needs to go even further, by firmly and definitively ending all forms of support for developers of fossil fuel projects. BNP would thus be taking the lead and encouraging all players in the financial sector to make the necessary shift towards sustainable finance. So, with the aim of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050, as committed to by joining the Glasgow Financial Alliance For Net Zero (GFANZ) in 2021, and given that progress has been made and the bank seems to be heading in the right direction, why stick to a case-by-case logic of choice and not translate this promising trend into a firm commitment to end all support for fossil fuel expansion?

The head of BNP Paribas, Jean-Laurent Bonnafé, declared under oath to the French Senate in early May that his bank “no longer finances the expansion of hydrocarbons”. The figures clearly show that this is not the case, and BNP must now make it a reality.

At a time when the impact of climate change is becoming ever more acute and dramatic, we call on BNP Paribas to continue its progress and to go further, by making a firm and official commitment to cease all forms of support for the expansion of the oil and gas industry.

After issuing a formal notice to BNP Paribas in October 2022 (1), our associations Les Amis de la Terre France, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France took the bank to court in February 2023 (2) for failure to comply with its duty of vigilance with regard to climate change. This is the first time a bank has been called to court for its contribution to climate change.

Just over a year after our appeal, we’ve made some progress! BNP Paribas has updated its climate policy, but is this enough to claim victory? 

In order for the bank to comply with the law on duty of vigilance, we are asking it to urgently cease granting new direct or indirect financial support to the development of oil and gas projects. 

The target: companies that develop new fossil fuel projects, such as Saudi Aramco, Total and Shell, among the most aggressive. We call them “developers”. According to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), as well as the International Energy Agency (IEA) and the United Nations, these groups are working dangerously against limiting global warming to 1.5°C and even 2°C, and achieving carbon neutrality by 2050 – objectives which are written in black and white in BNP Paribas’ policies, and which appear so dear to the bank in its communications.

A bank can provide 3 main types of financial support for the development of fossil fuels. This can be directly via project financing. But it can also be via financing to a developer, which the latter can use freely – the financing not being dedicated to a specific project. General financing can take the form of a bond or share issue, or a loan.

Is BNP Paribas halting financing for new oil and gas projects? Yes… and no.

In May 2023, BNP Paribas has undertaken to stop all financing of projects “for the development of new oil and gas fields” (3).

We decrypt:

This is a step that should be put into perspective, as such direct financial support represents only 3.6% of BNP’s financing to the fossil fuel sector – in 2022 (4). BNP can therefore continue to support the companies behind these new oil and gas projects. Although this corporate financing is described as indirect, it is by far the main lever for supporting expansion.

Furthermore, BNP Paribas has so far only excluded oil & gas exploration and production projects from its direct financing, but has not committed to the rest of the industry’s value chain. In particular, it can still provide dedicated financing for new liquefied natural gas (LNG) terminals, gas pipelines or oil pipelines linked to “conventional” (5) reserves. Yet these projects play a key role in the sector’s expansion: this is particularly true of new LNG projects, which have no place in the IEA’s 2050 carbon-neutral scenario. 

Is BNP stopping new bond or share issues to developers? Still not

BNP Paribas has stated that it has “not participated in any new bond issues to the oil and gas sector since mid-February 2023” (6). In early February 2023, in fact, the bank had participated in the issue of major bonds for the giants Saudi Aramco and BP – for a total of $4.5 billion and $2.5 billion respectively. 

We decrypt:

This is good news! Because bond issues represent an important source of financing leverage, particularly for the major oil and gas majors. And because BNP Paribas makes a major contribution to these transactions: between 2016 and 2022, 37% of the bank’s financing to the fossil fuel industry was linked to bond issues (7).

Unfortunately, by explaining that it has recently stopped participating in a bond issue to the sector, BNP seems to recognize the problem posed by these financial services… but does not commit to renouncing this harmful practice in the future. It is therefore imperative that this very recent observation be translated into a firm and official measure, within a sector-wide policy. This is all the more urgent as this type of financing often involves large sums of money, and can run for years or even decades, engaging BNP Paribas’ accountability in the medium and long term. Furthermore, BNP Paribas has made no announcement about the end of new share issues – even though these represent a much less significant proportion of the bank’s financing to developers.

Is BNP stopping new loans to developers? Not at all.

The question is simple: has BNP stopped granting new loans to companies like Total that are planning new oil and gas projects? This is where BNP Paribas’ communication becomes even more complicated. Where there’s confusion, there’s a wolf. The bank communicates on several elements relating to its lending activities: some relating to its flow of new loans – i.e., new loans issued in a given year – and others to its stock of existing loans – i.e., loans already in progress, but which may date back several years (8).

a. With regard to its credit flow – i.e. the main thing to look at when looking at the bank’s new support for developers – BNP Paribas states that:

“To reduce the “fossil” part of its portfolio, BNP Paribas has significantly reduced its production of new loans to the oil and gas sector in 2023.  For example, at the end of 2023, the ratio between financing flows granted by BNP Paribas to players specializing in oil and gas extraction and production and financing flows linked to renewable energy projects stands at 1 in 11.”

We decrypt:

Like the new bond issues, BNP seems to recognize the problem of lending to developers, but does not commit to abandoning this harmful practice in the future. Even though the bank is announcing a reduction in its lending in 2023, it continues to leave the door open to new loans to companies opening up new oil and gas fields. Yet this is a red line if the bank wants to meet the objectives of the Paris Climate Agreement and achieve carbon neutrality by 2050: every new euro granted to a developer is one euro too many.

In December 2023, BNP Paribas contributed to a $3 billion loan for Italian oil and gas major Eni (9). Although this loan, a sustainability linked loan (SLL), is supposed to be linked to the achievement of climate objectives, in particular the development of renewable energies, there is no guarantee that it will be directed towards one of Eni’s renewable energy projects. What’s more, these are cosmetic for Eni: the company invests less than 7 cents in renewables for every euro spent on fossil fuels.

BNP’s current policy stipulates that it will no longer grant loans – once again bypassing bond activities in particular – to private companies exclusively active in oil exploration and production, known as “oil independents” (10). The problem lies in this deliberately limited definition: BNP has set aside a restricted part of the industry, leaving itself the possibility of still supporting many players, described by the bank as “diversified”. These players include the largest oil and gas majors and state-owned enterprises, spearheading the expansion of hydrocarbons and major customers of the bank. Between 2016 and 2022 (11), BNP Paribas ranks as the world’s leading financier of the 9 European and American majors (12).

Finally, the “1 in 11” ratio sounds impressive, but it erases an important part of BNP’s harmful activities: once again, the company only talks about “specialized players”. In other words, it doesn’t apply to all developers, and especially not to oil and gas majors like Total and Eni, or state-owned companies like Saudi Aramco. Yet, as explained above, these companies are among the most problematic in terms of their planned investments in fossil fuels, and in particular in new oil and gas exploration and production projects.

b. With regard to its credit stock – or exposure – BNP Paribas states that: 

“Between the end of September 2022 and the end of September 2023, BNP Paribas reduced its stock of fossil fuel credits by 6.4 billion euros, from 23.7 to 17.3 billion euros. The Group aims for its stock of credit exposures to low-carbon energy production to represent 90% of the stock of credit exposures to its energy production, and 10% to fossil fuels by 2030.”

We decrypt: 

With this target for reducing its stock of loans to fossil fuels, BNP Paribas seems to recognize the need to move away from oil and gas. But it’s still not enough. 

While this commitment is likely to restrict BNP Paribas’ ability to increase new lending to the sector, BNP Paribas is at the same time maintaining new support for companies developing new fossil fuel projects – as evidenced by its December 2023 loan to Eni. The bank could thus decide to favor certain of its clients, despite their expansion plans in the oil and gas sector. This poses serious climate risks: a loan granted today and contributing to the development of a new fossil fuel project will not necessarily be included in the bank’s outstandings in 2030, even if this infrastructure will continue to pollute well beyond 2030. 

Finally, let’s point out that the ratio between the stock of credits for low-carbon energy production and the stock of credits for fossil fuels put forward by BNP Paribas is biased and not very usable. Firstly, because the perimeters associated with low-carbon on the one hand, and fossil fuels on the other, make this comparison incoherent. The bank includes in the “low-carbon” category – i.e. in the “green” sectors to be expanded – sectors with questionable ecological impacts, such as nuclear power and biofuels. On the other hand, it excludes entire sectors of industry from “fossil energies”, in particular transport, export (including LNG) and electricity generation (gas and oil-fired power stations). 

Finally, let’s not forget that we’re talking here only about loans. By focusing on certain financial services and not others in the calculation of this ratio, BNP deliberately omits bond or share issues, when these modes of financing are preponderant in the fossil fuel sector.

BNP Paribas appears to be changing its practices and policies on fossil fuels. However, this progress remains insufficient and uncertain, both in terms of pace and scope, in the light of its duty of climate vigilance, since it does not guarantee the cessation of all new financial services to companies that develop oil and gas, and thus bet against limiting global warming to 1.5°C. Continuing to support such companies is a negative-sum game, for which BNP Paribas is responsible. This is why Friends of the Earth France, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France are pursuing their legal action against BNP Paribas.

(1) Les Amis de la Terre France, 2022. French climate NGOs take unprecedented legal action against BNP Paribas, number one European financier of fossil fuel expansion.

(2) The BNP Paribas Case, 2023. The BNP Paribas Case is back: we are officially taking BNP to court!

(3) The BNP Paribas Case, 2023. BNP’s new climate commitments: a lot of noise for very little effect.

(4) Le Monde, 2023. « Bombes carbone » : pourquoi les banques françaises peuvent financer les énergies fossiles malgré leurs engagements climat.

(5) BNP Paribas has adopted restrictions on the financing of certain projects related to non-conventional oil and gas – shale gas, tar sands, extra-heavy crude oil – and from Arctic and Amazonian regions.

(6) BNP Paribas, 2024. Financement de l’énergie : la transformation du business model de BNP Paribas s’accélère, confirmée par différents classements.

(7) The BNP Paribas Case, 2023. New figures: BNP, best friend of fossil fuels.

(8) For example, BNP may have made a 3-year loan to Total in 2022, which will still appear in its stock at the end of 2023.

(9) Reclaim Finance, 2024. Twitter post. 

(10) BNP Paribas, 2023. Oil and gas policy

(11) The BNP Paribas Case, 2023. New figures: BNP, best friend of fossil fuels.

(12) BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Eni, Exxon, Repsol, Shell and Total.

7 months after the launch of The BNP Paribas Case by Friends of the Earth France, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France, our NGOs showed up to BNP Paribas’ AGM, alongside scientists, to ask the bank to account for its contribution to climate change.

#AGM of @BNPParibas, 1st global financier of the 9 oil and gas majors. NGOs from #AffaireBNP & scientists @SciRebFr @ScientistRebel1, supported by 10 members of the @IPCC_CH, are on site to remind #ScienceIsClear: any kind of support for all fossil fuels must be stopped now. pic.twitter.com/Yls6wmRASm

— L'Affaire BNP (@AffaireBNP) May 16, 2023

The first General meeting of BNP Paribas since it was summoned for its climate change financing of fossil fuel development, this Tuesday, May 16th, has a special flavor for the associations behind The BNP Paribas Case. To support the demands of Friends of the Earth France, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France, representatives of the scientific community, members of the Scientifiques en Rébellion collective, took on the role of shareholders to call to account the board of the most polluting bank in France.

BNP, a major sponsor of climate change

The numbers are unequivocal: the French bank was the world’s No. 1 financier of Total in 2022, and has granted $165 billion to the coal, oil and gas industry since 2016.
Proof of BNP’s hypocrisy: this Annual General Meeting has just acted to reappoint Jean Lemierre as Chairman of the bank, who also sits on the board of Total, one of the most aggressive companies in oil and gas expansion. Clearly, the bank of a changing world is none other than the bank of a burning world… How long will BNP Paribas persist in denying science? The scientific community’s warnings are clear: experts from the IPCC and the International Energy Agency (IEA) say that in order to comply with the Paris Agreement and slow the rise in temperatures, we must stop developing new oil and gas fields.

Commitments that are far from sufficient

Prior to its Annual General Meeting, BNP announced on Thursday 11 May that it would stop financing the development of new oil and gas fields. While these announcements are a first step in the right direction, there is a snag, and not the least: the bank is ceasing to finance projects aimed at expanding fossil fuels, but it still refuses to commit to ending its financial support for the oil and gas majors. In other words, these new announcements are still far from the mark and allow BNP, in view of this annual meeting, to defuse the criticism of the Board of Directors of the bank with the green logo. BNP continues to shirk its responsibilities by stubbornly supporting its clients who develop oil and gas projects, and thus contributes massively to climate disruption. The Banking On Climate Chaos report, published in April 2023, states that BNP Paribas was the world’s leading financier of the 9 European and American oil majors between 2016 and 2022, having granted them $45.4 billion in financing. Only three months ago, BNP Paribas was still providing significant financing to the British major BP and the Saudi oil company Saudi Aramco, two of the most aggressive companies in the development of fossil fuel projects. Such financial support would still be possible today, after the too timid announcements of Thursday, May 11.

Members of the Scientists in Rebellion collective invite themselves to the party

Faced with this headlong rush by BNP Paribas, members of the Scientists in Rebellion collective invited themselves to the General Assembly to ask BNP’s board to answer for the bank’s climate-killer financing. By asking questions orally at the AGM, the scientists challenged the Board of Directors of BNP to face up to its responsibilities in terms of climate change.

In preparation for the AGM, members of the Scientists in Rebellion collective and co-authors of IPCC reports had also submitted a series of questions to BNP’s board. These questions were raised by the 600 scientists who signed the open letter of February 24, 2023, addressed to the board of BNP, urging it to cease its direct and indirect financial support for new oil and gas projects.

Olivier Aumont, a researcher in oceanography and member of Scientists in Rebellion, said: “While scientists have been sounding the alarm for decades, BNP Paribas, which claims to be a green bank, has not even bothered to respond to our open letter signed by 600 scientists.”

Let’s remember: scientists should not have to become shareholders of a bank to make themselves heard on the urgency of stopping its financial support to the deadly fossil fuel industry, but BNP’s inaction on climate is such that members of Scientists in Rebellion were forced to buy shares to invest BNP’s GA.

The demands of our associations are rooted in a clear observation shared by the scientific community. It is urgent to act!

A shameful welcome by shareholders

BNP’s shareholders, great defenders of the old world and cynical profiteers of a +4°C planet, booed the scientists’ interventions. But it gets worse: during the interventions of representatives of Argentine and Filipino communities impacted by Shell or Total oil and gas projects, supported by BNP, the activists who came to expose the damage to their communities and territories were booed and insulted with racist slurs (“Go back home”) by the shareholders. A shameful behavior, symbol of a retrograde world that clings to its profits that are fatal to the environment and human rights.

A few days before its 2023 General Meeting, BNP Paribas announced its new climate plan. These new measures, which have been widely publicized in the press, may lead the general public to believe that a major step forward has been taken. In reality, however, these measures call for many reservations. BNP Paribas is still a long way from being able to respond to the climate emergency. The scientific consensus is unequivocal: we must immediately renounce all support, direct or indirect, for the expansion of all fossil fuels.

No real renunciation of support for fossil fuels

BNP Paribas plans to exclude “direct” and “dedicated” financing for new oil and gas projects, but not for the companies that carry these climate bombs. BNP Paribas will therefore be able to continue to use other financial instruments (loans, new bond issues) to support companies like Total that are still developing new fossil fuel fields.

In this way, key financial services such as bond issues are completely outside the scope of BNP Paribas’ policy. Between 2016 and 2022, 37% of the bank’s financing to the fossil fuel industry was tied to these bond issues. It is therefore a massive financing lever for the sector’s majors, BNP Paribas’ preferred clients.

In other words, with its new arrangements, BNP Paribas could still conclude the same multi-billion dollar financing deals that it granted to oil and gas giants BP and Saudi Aramco last February.

Furthermore, when BNP announced that it would be stopping “financing granted to non-diversified oil exploration and production companies”, not only did this exclusion not seem immediate, but it did not include a firm exclusion of oil and gas majors such as Total.

Finally, its policy largely spares gas: BNP Paribas is not reviewing its commitments regarding its support for companies active in the gas sector. As already emphasized in its January announcements, by creating a two-tier policy between oil and gas, and by making clear its willingness to support new gas transportation (LNG) and electricity production projects, BNP is not done with the development of this fossil fuel, whose climate impacts have been repeatedly pointed out by science.

Not enough to fool civil society and scientists

Recall that since 2016, BNP Paribas has been the 4th largest global financier of fossil fuel development and the 1st largest global financier of the 9 European and American majors in this field. The bank’s latest announcements are far from enough to bring it down from this sad podium.

More than ever, the legal action that our associations (Friends of the Earth, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France) launched last February against BNP seems indispensable so that the court of law can truly force BNP to align its commitments with the scientific consensus.

In the meantime, and for several months now, a number of scientists and activists have been echoing our action and questioning BNP Paribas about its climate policy. The next step is the BNP General Meeting on May 16 in Paris. Our organizations and scientists, including ten co-authors of IPCC reports, have already sent written questions to the Board of Directors. Alongside several scientists, our organizations will be present on the day to hear BNP Paribas’ executives answer for their responsibility on climate change. Support us on social networks and relay the petition for our legal action.

Every year, the Banking On Climate Chaos report analyzes bank financing to fossil fuels. Released today, the 14th edition reveals that since the Paris Agreement, European banks have poured $1.331 trillion into fossil fuels, despite their big talk on climate.

French banks at the service of the fossil fuel industry

The latest figures have just come out, and they are edifying. While the Paris Agreement, adopted in 2015, set the goal of containing global warming to +1.5°C, since then, French banks have supported fossil fuels (coal, oil and gas) to the tune of 406 billion dollars. Let’s not forget that fossil fuels are responsible for almost 80% of greenhouse gas emissions worldwide!

The Banking On Climate Chaos report, which has updated its figures with data for the year 2022, reveals that French banks are playing a key role in the climate crisis. In 2022, with their 15.7 billion dollars of financing, they were the first European supporters of fossil fuel development. If French banks are condemning the climate and our future, BNP is the leader in this headlong rush.

BNP at the helm of climate change

BNP Paribas’ support for fossil fuels is soaring… Since COP21, the bank with the green logo has given $165 billion to coal, oil and gas. 165 billion dollars is four times the amount that would be needed to renovate all of France’s thermal colanders! BNP’s contribution to climate change is a trend that seems to be confirmed year after year, despite the bank’s commitment to achieving carbon neutrality by 2050.

Between 2021 and 2022, the French bank increased its financing to fossil fuels by 20%, making BNP the European bank that increased its financing to this industry the most last year.

BNP has also risen to become the world’s 4th largest financier of fossil fuel development, with a total of $64.2 billion granted since 2016.

BNP’s main accomplices in this toxic expansion of oil and gas? The big oil and gas majors. BNP is the world’s 1st financer of the 9 European and American majors (BP, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, Equinor, Eni, Exxon, Repsol, Shell and Total) and has granted them $45.4 billion since 2016. In fact, BNP is the number one financier of Total in 2022!

BNP’s grand speeches on climate issues should not be trusted. Between 2016 and 2022, 37% of the bank’s financing to the fossil fuel industry was related to bond issues, not loans. This “hidden” financing therefore evades the bank’s commitments announced last January, following our formal notice.

France’s most polluting bank also remains very aggressive in offshore oil and gas development, a sector that poses a high risk to the climate and biodiversity. This is evidenced by the $42 billion that BNP has granted since 2016, making the bank the world’s leading financier of this sector.

What can we do?

In the face of this alarming situation, civil society has the power to change things! The scientific community has taken the lead and made its voice heard. In a letter addressed to the directors of BNP Paribas, 600 scientists urged the members of BNP’s board of directors to resign if the bank continued to support new fossil fuel projects.

Last February, our associations Friends of the Earth, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France launched a legal action to force BNP to respect its duty of vigilance on climate. This is a first in the world! Indeed, this is the first time that a bank will have to go before a judge to answer for its contribution to global warming.

You too, join the movement! The more people join the BNP Affair, the more we will be able to reverse the balance of power against the most polluting bank in France. Indeed, for years, the figures in the Banking On Climate Chaos reports have shown that BNP is continuing its mad dash to finance climate bombs that are dooming our future on Earth. A binding court decision has the power to change things!

Today, Thursday, February 23, 2023, Friends of the Earth France, Notre Affaire à Tous and Oxfam France are taking BNP Paribas to court for failure to comply with its duty of vigilance regarding climate change. This lawsuit is unprecedented because it is the first time that a bank will have to go to court for its contribution to climate change.

After having been put on notice last October to stop supporting new fossil fuel projects, the French bank has still not complied with the law. Yet BNP Paribas’ record on climate issues stands out sadly: it is the most polluting bank in France, but also the leading European funder of fossil fuel development between 2016 and 2021. It is because of big banks like BNP Paribas that new climate bombs, such as the oil and gas projects developed by Total, Shell or ENI can be created. Without financial support, multinational fossil fuel companies would not be able to develop new fossil fuel projects and continue to fuel our dependence on coal, oil and gas.

Following our formal notice, BNP Paribas’ responses have remained largely insufficient. The bank continues to reject the urgent request of our three associations to stop supporting new oil and gas projects, a request that has though been made by the IPCC scientists and that was recently reiterated by António Guterres, the Secretary General of the United Nations. The bank also helped oil and gas giant BP issue a US$2.5 billion bond on February 9. As a reminder, the oil and gas projects that BP is planning in the short term would emit as much greenhouse gas as 6 new coal-fired power plants over their entire lifetime. It only took a few days for BNP to prove us that behind its “new climate announcements” at the end of January, the bank has no intention of getting on the right track.

Faced with BNP Paribas’ refusal to align its commitments with the need to limit global warming to 1.5°C, we have decided to go further by launching an unprecedented legal action! Our action is based on the duty of vigilance law, adopted in France in 2017, which obliges multinationals to take measures to identify and prevent the risks of serious violations of human rights, human health and safety, and the environment, caused by their own activities and those of their subsidiaries, as well as those of their main suppliers and subcontractors, both in France and abroad.

This historic trial opens a new page in the history of climate justice. We can only write this page together. Support the BNP Paribas case by signing the petition, sharing it with others, and relaying our messages to your friends and family. Let’s make as much noise as possible!