“To achieve climate justice, we must break the influence that the fossil fuel companies, as well as their banks and investors have on the world,” said Fridays for Future. Protect the Forest was in Stockholm on Friday and supported Fridays for Future’s global climate strike “End Fossil Finance”, a march to all the big banks in the capital.
Fridays for Future states:
“Companies’ search for economic profit in natural resources and ecosystems, as well as the belief in endless economic growth which puts people (mainly in vulnerable groups and areas) at risk. Sweden and the rest of the global north finance this, and make people suffer. This includes people participating in local resistance in Huasteca Potosina in Mexico or Vaca Muerta in Argentina, resistance to the EACOP pipeline in Uganda and Tanzania; the fight against gas fields off the coast of Senegal or the resistance in Peru against deforestation and oil extraction in the Amazon”.
The fossil industry has been supported by major Swedish banks- with SEK 204 billion from SEB, SEK 185 billion from Nordea and SEK 60 billion from Swedbank between the years 2016 and 2022 alone, according to the Fair finance guide. And the banks continue, among other things, to invest in the devastation of the Amazon. The savings and loans that Swedes have at these banks thus contribute to worsening the possibilities of reducing the climate crisis.
Public and private banks pour hundreds of billions of euros each year into the fossil industry and the only way to stop them is through sustained public organising and people power.
Sources: Fridays for Future, Natursidan