Fossil fuel divestment in US higher education: student-led organising for climate justice

Grady-Benson, Jessica; Sarathy, Brinda

doi:10.1080/13549839.2015.1009825

Cited by 90 publications

(61 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…1 shows the fossil fuel divestment commitments of HEIs in the United States. Hampshire College and Unity College are the two schools that divested during the first two years of the movement [13]. Following this, eight and nine schools divested in 2013 and 2014, respectively.…”

Section: The Movement -At a Glancementioning

confidence: 99%

Low-carbon transition through a duty to divest: Back to the future, ahead to the past

Filho

Beynaghi

Al‐Amin

et al. 2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

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Section: The Movement -At a Glancementioning

confidence: 99%

Low-carbon transition through a duty to divest: Back to the future, ahead to the past

Filho

Beynaghi

Al‐Amin

et al. 2018

Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

“…350.org joined forces with the student activists and launched its divestment campaign in 2012, with co-founder Bill McKibben relying on the Unburnable Carbon report [2] in his popular article, Global Warming's Terrifying New Math [12]. The divestment campaign argues for collective political action, highlighting that individual action on climate change is not enough [7,12,13].…”

Section: A Brief History Of Divestmentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This work was based on a literature review of the divestment movement, including academic papers, grey literature and websites of organisations involved in Divestment. In order to get a feel of different perspectives and experiences around the movement, I considered work that included participant observation and interviews with Divestment activists [13,17,23]. This was complemented by a small number of interviews conducted with present and former activists, as well as several actors in the finance sector who have an interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG) issues, including climate change related finance.…”

Section: Literature and Interviewsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement: Effects on Finance, Policy and Public Discourse

Bergman

2018

Sustainability

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The fossil fuel divestment movement campaigns for removing investments from fossil fuel companies as a strategy to combat climate change. It is a bottom-up movement, largely based in university student groups, although it has rapidly spread to other institutions. Divestment has been criticised for its naiveté and hard-line stance and dismissed as having little impact on fossil fuel finance. I analyse the impact of divestment through reviewing academic and grey literature, complemented by interviews with activists and financial actors, using a theoretical framework that draws on social movement theory. While the direct impacts of divestment are small, the indirect impacts, in terms of public discourse shift, are significant. Divestment has put questions of finance and climate change on the agenda and played a part in changing discourse around the legitimacy, reputation and viability of the fossil fuel industry. This cultural impact contributed to changes in the finance industry through new demands by shareholders and investors and to changes in political discourse, such as rethinking the notion of ‘fiduciary duty.’ Finally, divestment had significant impact on its participants in terms of empowerment and played a part in the revitalisation of the environmental movement in the UK and elsewhere.

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“…Even religious investors, who traditionally act on deontological ethics, have started to embrace this rationale, as evidenced by the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility's () campaign on climate change justice. Other fossil fuel divestment proponents also sometimes espouse this sentiment, citing the “responsibility of institutions of higher education to leverage their wealth and influence” to “confront the injustices perpetuated by the fossil fuel industry” (Grady‐Benson , 33, 55).…”

Section: Leverage‐based Responsibilitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Divesting from Climate Change: The Road to Influence

Richardson

2017

Law & Policy

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Is fossil fuels divestment likely to achieve its aims? This article evaluates the rationales for divestment in terms of their capacity to give the campaign influence. It focuses on the direct effects of divestment on financial actors because divestment is a specific means of exerting influence outside of conventional political channels. In seeking to end fossil fuel industries in order to halt climate change, the campaign deploys a variety of arguments to win support and wield influence, namely, the legality of divestment and, indeed, the emerging duty to divest; investors’ moral responsibility to avoid complicity in the fossil fuel economy; investors’ moral responsibility to use their leverage against climate polluters; and the power of financial sanctions to create a business case for abandoning fossil fuels. Although in combination they may be effective, each of these asserted rationales has some limitations that may diminish the influence of the divestment movement. Moreover, the movement does not engage sufficiently with the systemic qualities of finance capitalism that must also be reckoned with in order to address broader patterns of environmental unsustainability. Although the divestment movement aspires to ultimately change government policies on climate change, it may achieve greater influence by also seeking better government regulation of the financial economy.

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Fossil fuel divestment in US higher education: student-led organising for climate justice

Cited by 90 publications

References 9 publications

Low-carbon transition through a duty to divest: Back to the future, ahead to the past

Low-carbon transition through a duty to divest: Back to the future, ahead to the past

Impacts of the Fossil Fuel Divestment Movement: Effects on Finance, Policy and Public Discourse

Divesting from Climate Change: The Road to Influence

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