Divestment Movement

The divestment movement began as a decentralized network of people who used their membership or support of universities, churches, and organizations to push for divestment on a local level. As a result of this pressure, more than 1,100 institutions have made divestment commitments, bringing the amount of divested funds above $14 trillion.

Now, a new arm of the divestment movement has emerged that’s bigger in scope and involves a coalition that has come together under the name Stop the Money Pipeline. Elana Sulakshana, an energy finance campaigner at Rainforest Action Network (RAN, ), says this movement primarily targets financial institutions, the biggest backers of the fossil-fuel industry. RAN’s 2020 fossil fuel finance report, “Banking on Climate Change,” shows that 35 banks have invested a total of $2.7 trillion into fossil fuels since 2016, the year after the Paris Agreement was adopted, and that bank financing for fossil fuels is on the rise at a time when climate science is calling for rapid global decarbonization. Of