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Coal-backing Japanese bank bids for Green Climate Fund partnership
(Climate Home News, 15 Mar 2021) This week’s Green Climate Fund (GCF) board meeting is set for a showdown over whether to partner with a coal-backing Japanese bank.
Campaigners said accrediting the Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation (SMBC) to the UN’s official climate finance body would send the wrong message, as the bank continues to fund coal-fired power stations.
Lidy Nacpil, co-ordinator from the Asian Peoples’ Movement on Debt and Development (APMDD), said: “The best way that SMBC can help address climate change is for it to simply stop financing fossil fuels.”
In August 2020, when SMBC last applied for accreditation, over 200 civil society organisations signed a petition against the proposal, before the bank deferred its bid.
SMBC has sponsored coal power projects in Indonesia, Australia and Vietnam. In July 2020, it set out plans to keep funding high-efficiency coal power stations until 2040.
SMBC is involved in oil and gas pipelines in the US, Canada, Uganda, Mozambique and the Balkans.
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Climate Home News, 15 Mar 2021: Coal-backing Japanese bank bids for Green Climate Fund partnership
