The World Bank announced it will end all financing of oil extraction after 2019

We can hardly believe we’re even writing this, but today marks one of the biggest wins in Oil Change International’s history: The World Bank announced it will end all financing of oil and gas extraction after 2019.

Some of us at Oil Change International have been campaigning against the Bank for multiple decades, and this has been a core demand for all of those years. Today, we won.

While we celebrate this massive win, we know our fight to Stop Funding Fossils doesn’t end with this announcement. Will you chip in to help us leverage this win into even more victories?

For years, we’ve been leading the charge to #StopFundingFossils around the globe. Two years ago, ahead of the Paris climate summit, we held a massive #StopFundingFossils day of action, engaging thousands and pressuring governments who still spend billions propping up the fossil fuel industry. That summit resulted in the Paris Agreement, which was heralded by news reports as the “end of the fossil fuel era.”

Today, thanks to our pressure, the World Bank took an important step towards making that end a reality. Because they already have a restriction on financing coal mines, this new commitment means that the World Bank has promised to get out of the fossil fuel extraction business entirely. And it wouldn’t have happened without all of us making it so.

Just this week, we helped release a major report outlining the ways the World Bank and other institutions finance fossil fuels. We’re delivering a letter signed by over 200 organizations from 60 countries demanding the World Bank, other big development banks, and the world’s major governments phase out all fossil fuel subsidies and public finance for fossil fuels by 2020.¹

In the wake of today’s announcement, we’ll be hounding the World Bank to ensure it lives up to this commitment. We’ll be watching every loan, every project, and every decision to ensure the Bank doesn’t backtrack. We’ll also be pushing the world’s other public finance institutions to follow the World Bank’s lead and commit to #StopFundingFossils.

With your support, we can build on this win and Stop Funding Fossils once and for all.

Today’s a big day for all of us in our fight to solve the climate crisis. But that fight is nowhere near over and our push for more action continues. The time is now to end ALL fossil fuel finance, and this win today shows that we’re not too far from making that demand a reality too.

Today, we’re celebrating. Tomorrow it’s back to the fight. Join us.

And, of course, thank you for all you do.

-Alex, Steve, Elizabeth, Collin, Allison, David and the rest of the Oil Change International team

MORE INFORMATION: 

[1] “Sign-On: G20 Nations & Multilateral Development Banks Must Stop Funding Fossils,” December 2017