A lawsuit has been filed against BNP Paribas by three climate-minded organizations that are arguing that its loans to oil and gas majors constitutes a breach to a legally binding duty to ensure its activities do not harm the environment.
The lawsuit filed by Oxfam, Friends of the Earth and Notre Affaire à Tous is aimed at making the French lender discontinue and exit the financing of fossil fuels, in what they called a world first against a commercial bank, according to a statement.
“BNP Paribas continues to write new blank cheques to the largest fossil fuel companies without setting any conditions for an oil-free, gas-free ecological transition,” said Alexandre Poidatz, advocacy officer at Oxfam France.
In response to the lawsuit filed against it, BNP said it regretted the advocacy groups chose litigation over dialogue and that it could not stop all fossil-fuel financing right away but assures that the ecological transition is the only viable path for the future of our economies.
“We are focused on our fossil-fuel exit path, accelerating financing for renewable energies and supporting our customers, without whom the transition cannot be made,” it said.
Legal activism is now gaining traction among campaigners in their quest to push companies to move faster in the shift to a low-carbon economy and to hold laggards to account.
The Paris Agreement on climate change with the goal to limit the global average temperature rise to 1.5 degrees Celsius now looks looks out of reach, the UN Environment Programme (UNEP) said last year.
The new case against BNP is part of a number of legal attacks taking place, targeting different laws and organizations and it is based on a French law adopted in 2017 that requires companies to draft so-called environmental damage vigilance plans. No court in France has yet forced a firm to change its ways on the basis of this law but a much-awaited ruling in a similar case against TotalEnergies that is one of BNP’s top client is expected early next week.
The three NGOs said their legal approach against BNP is modeled after a historic lawsuit in the Netherlands against Shell which was forced by a Dutch court to drastically reduce the greenhouse gas emissions of its global operations to be brought in line with science-based climate assessments in 2021.
The groups claim that while BNP does not directly finance such projects, its general extension of credit allows it to make climate-friendly claims, such as joining the Net Zero Banking Alliance, while continuing to support potentially damaging projects via its banking clients.
Story was adapted from Reuters.
