blue moon fund: Integrating Mission into Investments
By: Diane Schmidt, Chief Financial Officer & Jason Green, Chief Investment Officer blue moon fund, Inc. is a private foundation working to build human and natural resilience to a changing and warming world. We work to protect landscapes and livelihoods threatened by climate change, focusing on conservation and preservation of biodiversity and critical habitat regions in Asia, North America and the Tropical Americas. Eleven years ago, Diane Edgerton Miller launched the fund with these themes in mind: Holistic. Operational. Leverage. One challenge to her vision for blue moon was the traditional foundation model of absolute separation of program strategy …
First Peoples Worldwide Announces Partnership with Trillium Asset Management
Research and Advocacy Collaboration To Promote Indigenous Voices in the Boardroom Contacts: Lisa MacKinnon, Trillium Asset Management (617) 423-6655 Katie Cheney, First Peoples Worldwide (540) 899-6545 February 1, 2012 — First Peoples Worldwide (FPW), a global indigenous nonprofit dedicated to strengthening Indigenous Peoples, today announced a new partnership with Trillium Asset Management. Under the terms of the partnership, Trillium is undertaking custom research and shareholder advocacy focused on how corporate policies and programs can better protect and enhance Indigenous Peoples’ rights. Founded in 1997 by widely acclaimed advocate Rebecca Adamson, FPW supports projects that preserve biodiversity, identify contemporary applications for …
Royal Bank of Canada – Tar Sands Financing
WHEREAS RBC’s 2009 Environmental Blueprint believes that “preservation of the environment is fundamental to the sustainability of our communities, our clients and our company.” This document recognizes that “it is of vital importance that we all contribute to efforts to reduce greenhouse gas emissions” and that “the identity, cultural beliefs and economies of some indigenous peoples are intrinsically tied to their region’s history, biodiversity and natural landscapes” and that “financial institutions should play a role in supporting efforts to address global water issues.” Notwithstanding these policy commitments, RBC is among the largest financiers of companies engaged in oil sands operations …
ConocoPhilips – Environmental Impacts of Oil Sands (2010)
WHEREAS ConocoPhillips has extensive interests in oil sands operations in the Canadian boreal forest region. Our company is the operating partner of the Surmont oil sands venture and is a partner in the FCCL Oil Sands Partnership, in addition to having interests in other properties. Oil sands extraction presents a unique set of challenges due to its resource intensive and environmentally damaging nature. Oil sands mining requires heavy water use, land disturbance, toxic waste storage, and emission of air pollutants. These environmental impacts, along with their implications for local populations and wildlife, can introduce legal, regulatory and reputational problems to …
ConocoPhillips Cops Out on Aggrieved Refinery Neighbors
In early June, I traveled with members of the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR) through Louisiana’s heavily industrialized and highly polluted 85-mile stretch between New Orleans and Baton Rouge known as “Cancer Alley,” then further west to the town of Mossville, a cancer alley unto its own. Our guides were leaders from local environmental justice, indigenous community, and coastal restoration groups, including the New Orleans-based Advocates for Environmental Human Rights (AEHR), which fight to restore the state’s damaged coastline and obtain environmental justice for neglected communities. Mossville was once rich in biodiversity and natural resources. The country town was …
ConocoPhillips – Environmental Impacts of Oil Sands (2009)
WHEREAS ConocoPhillips has extensive interests in oil sands operations in the Canadian boreal forest. ConocoPhillips holds a 9% interest in Syncrude; is the operating partner of the Surmont oil sands; and is a partner in the FCCL Oil Sands Partnership. Total production capacity for these projects is estimated at 950 MBD within the next few years. The boreal provides critical climate regulation for the earth as a whole, storing more than 186 billion tons of carbon — equivalent to 913 years’ worth of Canada’s greenhouse gas emissions. More than 30% of North America’s bird population rely on the boreal for …
Chevron – Global Environmental Standards Report (2009)
WHEREAS The Chevron Business and Ethics Code places the highest priority on the safety of its staff, community members and the environment where it operates. Corporate Policy 530 “commits Chevron to comply with the spirit and letter of all environmental, health and safety laws and regulations, regardless of the degree of enforcement.” Our company operates in 180 countries, including Africa, Asia and Latin America nations where environmental regimes may be less protective of human health and the environment than in other countries where Chevron operates. CEO David O’Reilly has recognized the importance of our company’s relationships with oil producing nations …
Boundaries of Responsibility
You’ve heard about conflict diamonds. Now get ready for “conflict coltan.” Coltan is an ore mined in several countries including the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). Processed coltan yields valuable tantalum, a component in electric capacitors found in cell phones, laptops, DVD players and game consoles. But tantalum doesn’t come cheap. The U.N. Security Council has published a series of reports since 2001 on the illegal exploitation of natural resources in the DRC, singling out the coltan trade as subject to “highly organized and systemic exploitation.” All parties in the ongoing civil war, which has claimed four million lives, have …
Tar Sands Development Stickier Than Anticipated
In a rational global economy not entirely driven by short-term profit maximization, the collective body politic of all nations would have applied the precautionary principal to the threat of climate change twenty years ago. We’d now be celebrating the fruits of two decades of aggressive efficiency measures, phased down fossil fuel use, and the mass distribution of renewable energy technologies. Instead, we have the tar sands. Record oil prices and declining access to the oil and gas resources of nations such as Russia, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Venezuela has led to a rush to develop Canada’s tar sands deposits. CIBC …
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