To receive any deputations notified under Standing Order 12.
Minutes:
In accordance with Standing Order 12, the Panel and Board received a deputation from Ms Kerrie Sinclair representing the Dirty Money campaign, a group of Hampshire Pension Fund members, industry experts and environmental campaigners. The group is urging that the Pension Fund and Access Pool assets fund climate repair, not climate damage.
Ms Sinclair said that we need all those with their hands on the levers of financial and political power to step up and we need sustainable capitalism. She quoted the economist Nicholas Stern, who has said if we’re to have a chance of controlling it [Climate Change], and to stop it from spiralling away, we need net zero by 2050 (or sooner) to hold at a 1.5C [temperature increase].
Ms Sinclair asserted that investment must flow to companies supplying the goods and services, innovation and impetus, to build the sustainable global economy, not flow to those still locking us in to using oil, coal or gas for which there are no zero-emissions adaptations.
Ms Sinclair highlighted the best practice of asset owners such as Allianz and Aviva Investors, who are members of the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance who have set 1.5C-aligned, near-term, portfolio-wide decarbonisation targets including Scopes 1, 2 and 3. Similarly the Wiltshire Pension Fund has added the belief to its Investment Strategy Statement (ISS) ‘to protect the Fund’s investments into the future, the Fund supports a global warming scenario of 2C or lower and states an ambition to achieve net-zero emissions across all investment portfolios by 2050’. Wiltshire consulted with its employers who supported this belief.
The Dirty Money Campaign asking the Hampshire Pension Fund to revise its the ISS to embed the net-zero by 2050-or-sooner portfolio-wide decarbonisation, to specify the commitment to investing in line with guarding 1.5C, and to conduct a consultation. Ms Sinclair pointed to the Pension Fund having received about 100 emails regarding aligning the portfolio to guard the 1.5C limit, which should not be compared to the total membership of more than 183,000 as she suggested most people are trying to survive, particularly amid this deadly pandemic, and don’t know what’s at stake and what’s required.
Ms Sinclair criticised the Pension Fund’s Global Custodian who’s CEO has said ‘we need fossil fuels for decades to come’. Ms Sinclair urged the Pension Fund to fire JP Morgan replace them with the Brunel Pool.
Ms Sinclair finished by stating that Private investors can’t do this alone and governments still aren’t doing enough and that the Dirty Money campaign calls on the Hampshire Pension Fund to:
1. Produce a position statement on managing its portfolios to align with the Paris agreement of limiting our temperature increase to 1.5C.
2. Create a strategy and timetable for achieving this alignment
3. Report, consult and be advised by its members on its investment principles and how they are achieved
4. Call on members of the ACCESS Pool to become members of a 1.5 degrees Celsius-focused asset owner alliance or initiative such as the Net-Zero Asset Owner Alliance or the IIGCC’s Net-Zero Investment Framework. This is the action taken in recent weeks by the Wiltshire Pension Fund committee and other funds in its pool.