Report: MacArthur Foundation, Harvard… 1,485 institutions have committed to fossil fuel divestment

A total of 1,485 institutions have committed to divesting from the fossil fuel sector within the past 10 years.

This is according to a report published on Tuesday by Divest-Invest, a global network of individuals and organisations seeking to influence investors to divest from fossil fuel.

The report stated that “the total amount of assets under management committed to some form of fossil fuel divestment has leaped from a mere $52 billion across 181 institutions in 2014, when the movement first tallied all total commitments, to now more than $39.2 trillion across 1,485 institutions”.

It also noted that divestment pledges have increased in recent years, with the most recent being 485 new commitments made in the last three years. 

“Ten years in, the divestment movement has grown to become a major global influence on energy policy,” the report read.

“There are now 1,485 institutions publicly committed to at least some form of fossil fuel divestment, representing an enormous $39.2 trillion of assets under management. 

“Since the movement’s first summary report in 2014, the amount of total assets publicly committed to divestment has grown by over 75,000 percent. 

“The number of institutional commitments to divestment has grown by 720 percent in that time, including a 49 percent increase in just the three years since the movement’s most recent report.”

The report further noted that more funds are being rechanneled from fossil fuels because not all divestment pledges are made public. 

According to Divest-Invest, between 2020 and 2021, major commitments have been recorded from “iconic” institutions like The Rockefeller Foundation, Ford and MacArthur Foundations, Harvard University, Dutch and Canadian pension fund giants PME and CDPQ, and the city of Baltimore, USA.  

“These numbers reflect only known, public commitments to divestment. More institutions, to say nothing of individual investors, are almost certainly divesting in numbers beyond this, as the fossil fuel sector’s dominance of the stock market has shrunk considerably,” the report added. 

“The true amount of money being pulled out from fossil fuels is almost certainly larger since not all divestment commitments are made public.”