New Zealand Friends to disinvest from fossil fuels
Friends in Aotearoa New Zealand agree to disinvest from fossil fuels
Quakers in Aotearoa New Zealand agreed at their recent Yearly Meeting to withdraw funds from the four main Australian-owned banks because of their investment in fossil fuels. Aotearoa New Zealand Yearly Meeting also agreed not to make future investments which profit from fossil fuels. Local Meetings, committees and trusts have been encouraged to follow suit, and urged to explain their actions to the banks involved.
‘Friends… recognise that this is only a small step in reducing our consumption of things which exacerbate climate change and environmental degradation,’ co-clerks Elizabeth Thompson and Elizabeth Duke said in a joint statement.
Funds for the Yearly Meeting remain unaffected, the Friends said, as they are held in state-owned Kiwibank, cooperative Oikocredit and social finance company Prometheus.
The statement stressed that Quakers had always encouraged the choice of life over death and were asking investors and institutions to do the same.
There are around 1,400 people associated with Quakerism in New Zealand, and a Quaker settlement at Whanganui, on the North Island.
(See ‘Standing in this place’ for a report on the Yearly Meeting.)
