Climate change represents an existential threat to humanity and is a driver of human rights violations around the world.
While Bank of America’s 2024 Sustainability Framework and Corporation Human Rights Statement are steps in the right direction; they are still too weak and vague. And Bank of America must enforce them better. Even as the 2024 Human Rights Statement acknowledges “the significant risks that climate change poses not just to our business and our clients, but also to the human rights of individuals and communities affected by climate change,” your bank continues to provide financing for fossil fuel expansion, the very thing driving the climate crisis we are facing. Companies deepening the climate crisis are, by definition, complicit in those rights violations, including Bank of America.
Institutions that take their sustainability and human rights responsibilities seriously must take immediate action to stop the expansion of fossil fuels and aggressively phase out fossil fuel financing in line with credible 1.5˚ C pathways. Anything less is an unacceptable abdication of leadership and puts financial institutions and their leaders squarely on the wrong side of history. It is simply not enough for Bank of America to increase its funding for clean energy and sustainability without commensurate reductions in financing for high-emitting activities.
Since 2016, Bank of America has financed over $168 billion to the world’s top fossil fuel expanding companies. All financial institutions that continue financing fossil fuels are contributing to irreversible climate change-driven suffering and loss. As a leader among global banks, Bank of America’s actions threaten human rights of people around the world today and in the future.
As the 3rd worst funder of fossil fuel expansion in the world, we have a clear pathway for you to align with a world in which climate change is limited to 1.5°C and human rights are fully respected:
1. Adopt a policy to immediately end expansion financing
2. Adopt absolute emissions reduction targets for 2030
3. Publish a detailed and credible transition plan (that removes offset reliance for meeting 2030 goals and minimizes reliance for meeting net zero goals)
4. Restore policy exclusions in the bank’s Environment and Social Risk Policy Framework on financing for arctic drilling and new coal fire plants and infrastructure
5. Consistently implement a comprehensive human rights due diligence mechanism that integrates climate policies, and report out on the decisions and how they were reached through the mechanism
6. Designate the fossil fuel sector to trigger enhanced due diligence
7. Rejoin the Equator Principles or implement equivalent protections for frontline groups and Indigenous rights and sovereignty policies
8. Aggressively phase out fossil finance, especially risky, dirty financing to both pure-play coal companies and companies lacking a sufficient diversification plan away from coal, and increase financing for a just transition
According to the IPCC, we have less than seven years to half global fossil fuel emissions if we have any chance of keeping our climate from overheating past the 1.5°C danger zone. Bank of America can no longer hide behind greenwashing and empty policies. The climate emergency has arrived, and its risks cannot be ignored, least of all by those profiting from it.
Bank of America must meet the urgency of this moment and truly commit to making transformational and just changes for people and planet before it’s too late.
All eyes are on you.