Your Union President, Clem Jones, gives us all the details as to why his pledge to 'Clean Up Your Campus' is important, and what actions have taken place to ensure this happens.
This article was originally published in the Orbital.
Being your VP Education last year was extremely rewarding. As someone who was a course rep for three years, I was extremely excited to represent your academic interests to the College, and I’m pleased that Jack has now picked up the reigns brilliantly.
However, another burning desire of mine last year was to ensure that, as an academic community, we were taking drastic measures to fight against what the famous United Nations’ Copenhagen Accord acknowledges as ‘one of the greatest challenges of our time’: climate change.
And so, I ran to be your President on a flagship manifesto point of pledging to ‘Clean Up Our Campus’ by lobbying the College to make sure it is investing its money in socially responsible industries.
The Problem
The Copenhagen Accords maintain “that climate change is one of the greatest challenges our time”. Every Head of State or Government, Ministers, and other heads of delegation present at the United Nations Climate Change Conference in 2009 emphasised their “strong political will to urgently combat climate change in accordance with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities and respective capabilities”. It is clear that climate change is a big issue and we must work together to tackle it.
Despite this, however, the College’s ethical investment policy does not preclude investment in fossil fuel companies; its policy only precludes the direct investment in FTSE All Share Index stocks in Military and Aerospace where military involvement amounts to greater than 33.3% in turnover.
The profligate burning of fossil fuels is undoubtedly the major worldwide contributor to global warming, which presents a very real risk to the longevity of the College (and indeed the human race). It is my view that a College commitment to fossil fuel divestment would carry significant symbolic weight in the fight for national acceptance of the scale of change needed to avoid disaster and achieve a more equitable society (and world).
What's Been Done So Far?
The College’s endowment investments are actively managed by third party fund managers in line with the above policy of ‘ethical investment’. However, the College recently updated me about their financial plans and informed me that they reviewing their investment management arrangements, which will include a review of best practice arrangements surrounding ethical investment management.
I have been engaged in the process and am meeting with the College during Clean Up Our Campus week to discuss options for improving their approach to Environmental, Social and Corporate Governance. There is no time to waste – if we want to avoid the earth’s temperature rising to an irreversibly dangerous level, we have to keep fossil fuels in the ground, and it is my belief that the College should play its part by moving any money invested in the fossil fuel industry into cleaner ones.
Clem Jones // President