Israeli soldiers take up positions near the Gaza Strip border, in southern Israel, December 29, 2023
BRITAIN’S sick decision to suspend funding for Palestinian refugees while they face famine and mass displacement in Gaza shames our country in the eyes of the world.
We will not escape blame simply because, alongside other wealthy countries such as Germany, Italy and Canada, we are falling into line behind the United States, the first to freeze funding for the UN Relief & Works Agency (UNRWA) following allegations that 12 of its 30,000 employees were involved in Hamas’s October 7 attack on Israel.
This act of inhuman cruelty further underlines the divide in international politics between the West and the rest. Since Israel’s invasion of Gaza began the gulf between the handful of US allies who facilitate its mass murder of Palestinians and the huge majority of countries which back an immediate ceasefire has yawned ever wider.
UNRWA chief Philippe Lazzarini rightly calls this collective punishment. Innocent Palestinians will starve to death because of an unproven Israeli accusation that a tiny number of its staff may have played a role in Hamas’s raid. An accusation UNRWA immediately pledged to investigate, with survivors among the named 12 already sacked.
But the collective punishment of Gaza’s population is nothing new. Over 25,000 people, mostly women and children, have been killed as Israel’s merciless bombardment flattens neighbourhoods and its rampaging soldiers shoot their way into hospitals, a collective punishment for Hamas killing over 1,100 Israelis on October 7.
People light candles by the monument at the Birkenau Nazi death camp in Oswiecim, Poland, January 27, 2024
SURVIVORS of Nazi death camps marked 79 years since the Red Army’s liberation of Auschwitz-Birkenau at a modest ceremony in southern Poland on Saturday.
About 20 survivors of various camps set up by Nazi Germany across Europe laid wreaths and flowers and lit candles at Auschwitz’s Death Wall, where thousands of inmates, mostly Polish resistance members and others, were executed.
Later the group, along with state officials and other participants, gathered for a ceremony by a brick women’s barrack at nearby Birkenau that has recently undergone conservation.
The group prayed and lit candles at the monument in Birkenau, near the crematoria ruins, to remember around 1.1 million camp victims, mostly Jews.
Events were also held in many other countries to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which commemorates the Nazis’ killing nearly six million European Jews and countless others.
Image of UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak. UK halts aid to UNWRA in Gaza over Israeli allegations that 12 staff from a total of 13,000 were involved in the 7 October 2024 attack on Israel.
The head of the United Nations has promised to hold to account “any UN employee involved in acts of terror” after allegations that some refugee agency staff members were involved in the 7 October Hamas attacks on Israel.
But Antonio Guterres implored governments to continue supporting the UN refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) after nine countries suspended their funding.
“Any UN employee involved in acts of terror will be held accountable, including through criminal prosecution,” Mr Guterres said in a statement.
“The Secretariat is ready to cooperate with a competent authority able to prosecute the individuals in line with the Secretariat’s normal procedures for such cooperation.
“The tens of thousands of men and women who work for UNRWA, many in some of the most dangerous situations for humanitarian workers, should not be penalised. The dire needs of the desperate populations they serve must be met.”
23.05 GMT I doubt that much happened today to halt this funding since nobody is at work because it’s a Sunday. Hoping that there’s a more reasoned recognition tomorrow of the desperate situation in Gaza.
The bank’s work for businesses expanding production of fossil fuels is a stark contrast to its climate change promises
Every year business and world leaders jet into Davos to discuss climate change and other global issues at the World Economic Forum. And every year they are met with vigorous accusations of hypocrisy. Those accusations may well be levelled at the executives from HSBC – one of the world’s top funders of fossil fuel expansion – as they mingled with their peers in the pretty Swiss ski town this week, discussing how to develop a long-term strategy for climate, nature and energy.
HSBC says delivering a net-zero global economy is “a pillar of our strategy as a business”. In December 2022, the bank made the shock announcement that it would stop financing new oil and gas fields. Environmental campaigners celebrated, with the responsible investment charity ShareAction saying the decision set “a new minimum ambition for all banks committed to net zero”.
But on the same day, HSBC bankers started selling shares in the refining business of Saudi Aramco, one of the most aggressive expanders of oil and gas. An investor in HSBC told the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that the bank’s policy has been cleverly worded to allow it to fund some of the world’s biggest polluters while boasting about its green credentials.
An analysis of Refinitiv data by TBIJ has found that in the year since HSBC’s new policy was announced, the bank has helped raise more than $47bn (£37bn) for companies that are expanding the production of oil and gas, despite dire warnings from scientists that this will push the world beyond its survivable limits.
Fatih Birol, executive director of the International Energy Agency, told ITV News: “In the world, if we make large scale oil, gas and coal development, we cannot reach our 1.5 degrees target, full stop.” He said if a bank is serious about aligning its business with net zero, it cannot continue to fund companies developing new oil and gas fields.
Andrew Harper, chief responsibility officer at Epworth, an investment manager that holds HSBC shares, said: “[HSBC’s] policy, which is supposed to act as a safety net for the climate, is by design letting the bank circumvent its pledges by allowing them to adhere to the letter rather than the spirit of what they’re claiming.
“As investors, we’re not going to be fooled by the marketing, by the pledges, by these policies. We want to see real change and for them to seriously end new fossil fuel financing, no loopholes. Anything short of that is the bank trying to dupe its key stakeholders.”
HSBC said its policy allows the bank to continue providing finance “at a corporate level” and its approach “is based on the latest science for achieving net zero and follows the UN-backed approach for climate target setting and net zero alignment for banks”.
New projects, no problem
In its feted policy, HSBC notes that global demand for oil and gas to 2050 is “more than met by existing [oil and gas] fields”. It says the bank will therefore no longer provide finance for “new oil and gas fields and related infrastructure whose primary use is in conjunction with new fields”.
However, that has not stopped HSBC from funding companies that are exploiting new oil and gas fields, and providing the necessary infrastructure to do so.
In the first half of last year, HSBC, with other banks, helped the UAE’s state oil and gas company, Adnoc, raise $3.2bn from selling shares in its gas and logistics businesses. Adnoc will receive a further cash boost of $3bn in hefty dividends from Adnoc Gas.
Separately, HSBC helped arrange a $3.2bn loan for Borouge 4, a petrochemicals plant that will be a key customer for Adnoc’s gas, and was described by its project director as “an enabler of Adnoc’s growth strategy”.
Scientists agree that we cannot develop any new oil and gas fields if we are to limit global heating to 1.5C. Adnoc plans to increase oil production by 25% between 2023 and 2027, however, which would dramatically overshoot these limits.
Last year, Adnoc rubber stamped the exploitation of a vast new gas field off the UAE coast, which threatens a vital habitat for sea cows. Burning the gas Adnoc plans to extract from this field would produce 30m tonnes of carbon dioxide per year – more than Denmark’s annual emissions.
HSBC has similarly close ties with Saudi Arabia’s national oil company. The share sale for Saudi Aramco’s refining business, Luberef – which HSBC bankers were working on as it unveiled its new oil and gas policy – raised $1.3bn. After the share sale, Saudi Aramco remains a 70% shareholder of Luberef and has management control of the business.
A couple of months later HSBC bankers helped raise $3bn in bonds for Greensaif, a company set up for the sole purpose of taking a stake in Saudi Aramco’s gas pipelines business, alongside Saudi Aramco, which retained the controlling stake.
And in another wildly successful share offering, HSBC helped raise $1.2bn for Ades Holding, which provides oil drilling rigs primarily to Saudi Aramco, among other oil and gas expanders in the region. Adnoc and Saudi Aramco declined to comment.
Adnoc is investing heavily in offshore expansion in the United Arab Emirates Giuseppe Cacace/AFP via Getty Images
HSBC rejected the suggestion that its policies allow for financing that is at odds with a net zero transition. “Net zero-aligned scenarios require continued, though declining, financing of fossil fuel supplies to meet energy demand, security, and affordability during the transition.”
The bank said its policy makes clear that it will continue to provide finance for companies with transition plans that align with its climate commitments. “HSBC’s approach is to engage with our major oil and gas clients on their targets and transition plans, and to align our oil and gas financing portfolio to a 2030 net zero aligned financed emissions target.”
Transition plans
Saudi Aramco, the world’s biggest polluter, does not appear to be preparing for a transition away from fossil fuels. The company expects to grow oil production by 8% by 2027, and increase gas production by up to 60% by 2030. Last year UN experts sent a letter of concern to Aramco – and its banks, including HSBC – saying its ongoing expansion of fossil fuel production threatens human rights by worsening climate change.
HSBC has chased business in the oil-rich Middle East and was last year named the region’s best bank for financing by Euromoney. Julian Wentzel, HSBC’s head of global banking in the region, told the magazine: “We have been at the nucleus of every major deal in the region, providing the full suite of banking services to our valued partners.”
Ed Matthew, campaigns director of think tank E3G, told TBIJ: “There’s a complete conflict between [HSBC’s] ambition to be at the heart of Middle Eastern oil and gas development and their commitment to start to pull out of fossil fuel financing globally.
“They can’t have their cake and eat it. Either they’re serious about delivering on the Paris Agreement or they’re not. At the moment, they’re putting short-term profits ahead of a habitable planet.”
Aggressive fossil fuel expansion
HSBC also funded oil and gas businesses far beyond the Middle East. In December, the bank helped arrange a $5bn loan for TransCanada Pipelines, which is among the top companies in the world expanding infrastructure for oil and gas, according to the Rainforest Action Network. (TC Energy, which owns TransCanada Pipelines, said: “Sustainability is foundational in everything we do.”) A few weeks later, the bank helped secure a $4.7bn loan for Occidental Petroleum, which is buying a Texas oil driller to expand its operations in the biggest shale field in the US.
In Europe, HSBC was among the banks that arranged a $3.3bn loan for Eni, the Italian oil and gas expander. Eni announced last year that it plans to increase its oil and gas extraction by 3-4% a year until 2027.
Experts have praised HSBC’s oil and gas policy for prohibiting funding for infrastructure linked to new oil and gas fields, in addition to the projects themselves. But the bank has continued to raise money for companies involved in the frantic building of export terminals for natural gas on the US southern coast.
The expansion of gas drilling and export in the region has been described as a “carbon bomb” – if all the planned projects are built, the associated annual emissions would outstrip those of Russia. Last year, HSBC, together with a slew of other banks, helped arrange loans worth $14.3bn for two of the companies building gas export hubs in the region.
HSBC was also among a group of banks to arrange loans worth $6bn for Baker Hughes, which provides oilfield services and equipment to oil and gas companies around the world. It helped raise a further $790m in share sales for oil drilling services companies Saipem and Nabors during the year.
At Davos there has been plenty of debate about how to limit global heating to 1.5C but campaigners fear it will remain just that. “Davos has always been a lot of talk and not much action,” said E3G’s Matthew. He would like to see stricter regulation of fossil fuel funding. “We can’t just leave it in the hands of banks, we need stronger action by governments and central banks to help prevent these investments. They need to introduce penalties for banks which are continuing to finance fossil fuel expansion.”
Header image: A liquified natural gas terminal on the Texas Louisiana border in the United States. Credit: The Washington Post via Getty Images.
Reporters: Josephine Moulds Environment editor: Robert Soutar Impact producer: Grace Murray Deputy editor: Chrissie Giles Editor: Franz Wild Production editor: Frankie Goodway Fact checker: Alice Milliken
This reporting is funded by the Sunrise Project. None of our funders have any influence over our editorial decisions or output.
Climate activist Greta Thunberg is joining local residents, Extinction Rebellion activists and climate change campaigners outside Farnborough Airport today (27 January) to protest against plans to increase private jet flights from 50,000 to 70,000 a year. The protesters are also calling for a total ban on private jets, which are up to 30 times more polluting than passenger airliners.
Greta Thunberg said: “The fact that using private jets is both legally and socially allowed today in an escalating climate emergency is completely detached from reality.
“There are few examples that show as clearly how the rich elite is sacrificing present and future living conditions on this planet so they can maintain their extreme and violent lifestyles.”
Hundreds of protestors will gather in Farnborough town centre at 11am today to march alongside Thunberg to Farnborough Airport, setting off pink smoke flares and waving banners proclaiming ‘Flying to Extinction’, ‘Stop Private Flights Now’, ‘No to Airport Expansion’ and ‘Private Flights = Public Deaths’.
This is the latest in a series of protests against the airport’s planning application, which seeks to more than double weekend flights and boost the use of heavier, more polluting private jets. In 2022, there were 33,120 flights to and from the airport, a 27% increase compared to 2021’s total of 26,007. Flights to and from Farnborough averaged just 2.5 passengers per flight. Currently 40% of flights to and from the airport are empty, according to research by campaign group Possible. Despite claiming the majority of flights are for business use, the research showed that most Farnborough flights are headed to holiday destinations. Last September a ‘pets on jets’ service launched to fly dogs and their owners from Dubai to Farnborough and back.
Todd Smith, former airline pilot and Extinction Rebellion spokesperson, said: “Flying is the fastest way to fry the planet, and private jets are the most polluting way to fly. Surely it’s a no brainer to ban private jets and stop expanding these luxury airports in the midst of a climate crisis? Survey after survey, as well as several citizens’ assemblies have shown this would be very popular and has widespread support from the general public.
“For most people, life has become more difficult. The cost of heating our homes, buying food and paying our bills has increased massively. So imagine looking out our windows to see yet more private jets flying billionaires around.
“Is this a fair society that we live in, or is there one set of rules for the majority, and another for the elites? Plans to expand the UK’s largest private jet airport seem to make this clear.”
Godalming resident Chris Neill, 67, a retired psychotherapist, said: “We’re in a global climate and ecological emergency. We need to reduce carbon emissions fast and there’s no realistic plan for taking the carbon out of jet fuel. Until there is, we need to fly much less, not more.
“This plan to expand a luxury airport used exclusively by very wealthy people at a time when ordinary people are struggling to manage everyday life is reckless, stupid and selfish. We need a government which has the courage to stop this.”
