BNP Paribas has been given formal notice by three NGOs to stop financing new oil and gas projects. A first step before possible unprecedented legal action to force the banking group to increase its climate commitments.
Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and Notre Affaire Tous accuse BNP Paribas of being the 1st European funder and 5th in the world for the development of fossil fuelswith 55 billion dollars in financing granted between 2016 and 2021 for new extraction projects.
For these three NGOs, BNP Paribas has its finger on the detonator of these climate bombs and its financing constitutes a punishable breach of its duty of vigilance. Since 2017, the French law on the duty of vigilance requires large companies to take effective measures to prevent human rights and environmental abuses throughout their chain of activity.
A possible lawsuit
The three NGOs plan to sue a bank for the first time on this basis. By law, companies formal notices have a period of three months to comply and possibly dialogue with the NGOs, before the latter can launch a possible summons before the Paris court.
For NGOs, BNP Paribas’ support for the expansion of the use of hydrocarbons is in total contradiction with the objectives of reducing carbon emissions necessary to comply with the 2015 Paris agreement and limit global warming to well below 2C, even 1.5C, since the pre-industrial era.
However, many developing countries rely on oil and gas in the medium term to break their dependence on coal, which emits twice as many greenhouse gases. And they are relying on the big oil majors to achieve this, an ambition that would be impossible without the capital provided by the world of finance.
BNP Paribas aim for a reduction of its exposure to oil and gas production by 12% by 2025, compared to 2020, and 25% for oil production alone. The bank has also undertaken to no longer finance companies with more than 10% of their activity linked to the oil sands or shale oil and gas. On the other hand, it has no exclusion policy concerning new conventional hydrocarbon projects.
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This new campaign is in line with other NGO actions based on the duty of vigilance. The first, initiated in 2019 and still ongoing in Paris, targets TotalEnergies’ Tilenga and EACOP mega-oil projects in Africa.
In 2021 in the Netherlands, a court condemned for the first time the oil giant Shell to accelerate its plan to reduce carbon emissions, in a procedure initiated by NGOs, including Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth. Shell appealed.
In France, green finance players are expected to hold their annual summit, Climate Finance Day, on Thursday in Parisinterrupted last year by Friends of the Earth who denounced a greenwashing meeting.
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