If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it is wrong to profit from that wreckage FOSSIL FREE ACTION GUIDe Divestment global divestment day divestment global 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS WHY FOSSIL FUELS? INTROduction STEP 5 3 negotiate and escalate 20 Why fossil fuels? Inside track Why universities? Outside track Why divestment? Divestment in the Pandemic STEP 6 University Win! 22 Divestment and Solidarity Stories of Success Not quite there? CAMPAIGN AIMS 11 You’ve won! What now? STEP 1 STEP 7 Build your group 12 Follow Through 23 Build a team Campaign Handover Hold a social Be ready to take action the fossil fuel industry is driving us Hold your first meeting towards global climate crisis STEP 2 TACTIC STAR 24 Research and plan 13 media 25 Climate change is already having we should support their struggle. massive impacts on some of the Research If the fossil fuel industry had put ONline actions ideas 26 most vulnerable people on the Campaign plan people before profits, millions of social media 27 planet. No one wants to flee their Power mapping & timeline people would not be losing their home because of famine or conflict Loughborough P&P Case Study Divest/Reinvest 28 livelihoods or becoming refugees in caused by extreme weather. Divest banks! 29 their own countries and beyond. STEP 3 Yet since 2008, climate-related jargon buster 30 build support 16 disasters displaced 22 million people And worse is still to come. Fossil resources 31 yearly across the world. fuel companies hold five times more Petition/Open Letter carbon in their fossil fuel reserves Communities on the frontlines Get social than we can safely afford to burn to of fossil fuel extraction are also Host a film screening or talk stop runaway climate change seeing their land and ways of living Take action... online - and are still spending destroyed. Indigenous communities billions searching STEP 4 across the globe are resisting the for more. Practice solidarity 18 expansion of extractive projects and 2 3 WHY UNIVERSITIES? WHY DIVESTMENT? If it is wrong to wreck the climate, then it The fossil fuel industry breaches is wrong to profit from that wreckage indigenous rights & causes climate crisis UK universities and colleges are universities are both financially From Canada’s dirty tar sands to deeply entangled in the fossil fuel supporting the fossil fuel industry as Arctic drilling and fracking for Divest! industry. They support it through well as providing the industry with shale gas, the fossil fuel industry is 200 publicly traded companies their investments, their research, valuable credibility: a ‘social licence’. scraping the bottom of the barrel, hold the vast majority of the world’s and their partnerships with some of By engaging with fossil fuel whilst destroying homes and proven coal, oil and gas reserves. the biggest fossil fuel companies in companies in these ways, communities across the world. Those are the companies we are the world like BP and Shell. universities are damaging their Communities on the frontlines of asking our institutions to break credibility and leadership role in fossil fuel extraction are already their links with.Those companies INVESTMENTS shaping a fossil free future, and seeing their land and ways of living are displacing entire villages to failing in their responsibilities to destroyed. Indigenous communities make way for extraction projects UK universities currently invest up tackle climate change. across the globe are resisting the that poison the communities’ land to £5.2 billion in the industry. That's expansion of extractive projects. and water. Together they hold five an investment in fossil fuels of Universities are meant to be a Their struggle is our struggle. times more carbon in their fossil fuel £1,804 for every student in the UK. bastion of forward-thinking and life- reserves than we can safely afford Investments in fossil fuel company changing research in our society. Indigenous and frontline to burn to stop runaway climate share are held in univerities’ To invest in and maintain such links communities have made their change. investment portfolios. with the fossil fuel industry goes demands clear for decades: keep it completely against this, in every way. in the ground. Through their investments, Divestment: The act of removing money from a particular fund or asset. We call for divestment from fossil fuel companies. 4 5 divestment in the pandemic univeristy over the last six months, the world has aggravated the crisis of Higher education, turned upside down. the pandemic has but the signs were already there Universities aren’t isolated bubbles, fees. Under the Hostile Environment that don’t serve the interests of crisis, divestment on campus is they are connected to and shaped migrant students and staff continue corporations, but that of our society. fundamental. We need to fight for by the same systems that foster being monitored and surveilled This fight is now more important than universities that foster our collective global injustice, just as they are by their own universities, who are ever. creativity to respond to these crisis. shaped by workers’ and students’ acting as over-compliant border We need liberated institutions, that Universities that invest in fossil struggles to reclaim universities as guards to fulfil the Home Office’s allow us the space and freedom fuel companies, that invite them on spaces of learning and curiosity, and requirements. to imagine, and build, a more just campus, whose management has of knowledge creation that benefits society. All this, while we watch our close ties with that of BP or Shell, are society. To organise for climate and departments continue tying up universities who will always prioritise Divestment from fossil fuels is one social justice at our universities, we with fossil fuels, arms, and border profit and these corporations over piece of that puzzle. In solidarity have to understand the battleground industry corporations while our VCs students and staff. Through over with the struggles of staff, migrants, we are fighting on. go to dinner with their execs. Now 10 years of marketisation, our anti-arm, anti-racist and BDS Right now, our universities have more than ever, the chronic lack institutions have become well-oiled campaigners at universities, we been thrown into extreme financial of public funding in education and machines that graduate bankers, can together work towards truly deficit and crisis by this pandemic. universities’ reliance on international engineers or researchers that liberated, revolutionary futures. Just as in other spheres of society, students fees and and corporate move on to work for the industry the pandemic has shown whom money becomes apparent. responsible for the climate crisis. those with power are willing to And what’s even more worrying, is Adapted from our Digital Organising Deep dive into this de-prioritise and ignore. We have that people seem to have accepted Guide seen university staff on temporary it, that they cannot imagine how topic: and outsourced contracts being it could be different. Fossil fuel The Pandemic University as a made redundant and laid off during Why divestment now? companies and universities have Battleground - Power Shift 2020 a pandemic. We have also seen Our fight for #fossilfree universities stolen our collective capacity to panel discussion has never been only about students struggling to pay rent, imagine a better future. Publich Higher Education for migrant students with No Recourse investments. That is why, in the context of a the Public Good: Addressing to Public Funds struggling to buy Since the beginning of this pandemic, an impending economic the Covid-19 Crisis - Common food, while being further saddled campaign, students have been collapse and the looming climate Wealth report with lifelong debt to pay off their making the case for institutions 6 7 divestment and solidarity when we call for divestment, we stand watch: “Our identity is our land”, by 350.org in solidarity with all those on the frontlines of the climate crisis. but what does that mean? Whenever we campaign for well as the types of action we take. universities to divest from fossil fuel True solidarity is about locating companies, we should remember your own position(s) within an there are communities leading the exploitative global system, and use resistance against those companies it to challenge it. For example, using on its frontlines. our position as campaigners in the That means residents in Global North where many of these communities threatened with companies have their HQs. This fracking; indigenous peoples whose allows us to exploit out privilege(s) to land and water is being threatened challenge the system resposible for click here with a pipeline and oil fields; farmers capitalism-induced climate change; and rural communities being the consequences of which are displaced to make way for a new racist, classist, sexist and imperialist. coal mine; and people who live most This is the crux of Fossil Free. intimately with their environments Many grass-roots movements, whose livelihoods and lifestyles are if you are coming to help me, you are wasting governments and organisations in being disrupted first by dramatic the Global South have long vocalised changes to the climate. your time. but if you are coming because your their opposition to fossil fuel On the frontlines of fossil fuel companies. They have witnessed liberation is bound up with mine, then let us extractions, the fight of these the devastating human cost of their communities is often a matter of life activities first hand - and are aware work together. and death. We take our inspiration of the future consequences that Lila Watson, Indigenous Activist from them and they direct the tone await them. and messaging of our campaigns, as 8 9 Stories of success campaign aims hundreds of campaigns already won We're seeking to break the links between divestment and we can learn from them universities and the fossil fuel industry Loughborough People & Planet We want to ensure universities and On a hostile campus with little colleges are fulfilling their role in history of student organising and an society as a force for good.