Alastair Marsh and Jennifer A. Dlouhy, Bloomberg Green
A group of investment firms, conservationists and indigenous groups have called on some of the world’s biggest insurers to cease supporting oil and gas projects in the U.S. Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, even as the Trump administration advances plans to auction drilling rights in the Alaska wilderness.
The Gwich’in Steering Committee, a group representing indigenous tribes that live in Alaska and Canada and opposes efforts to drill in the refuge, coordinated the letter with investment firms, including Boston Common Asset Management LLC and Domini Impact Investments LLC, which collectively manage more than $47 billion of assets. Recipients of the letter, including American International Group Inc. and Allianz SE, are being asked to stop insuring or investing in oil and gas projects in the refuge. Officials from AIG and Allianz weren’t immediately available for comment.
The rugged and remote territory in northeast Alaska, which is home to polar bears, caribou herds, Arctic foxes and more than 200 species of birds, has become a focus of environmental activists and an embodiment of the vastly different climate policies of President Donald Trump and President-elect Joe Biden. While the Trump administration has set the stage for a possible sale of oil and gas leases in the refuge’s 1.56-million-acre (6,313 square kilometers) coastal plain before Biden’s Jan. 20 inauguration, Biden has promised to permanently protect the land.
The Alaskan wilderness also serves as a reminder of how proactive investors and pressure groups can force financial giants to change the way they operate. Most major U.S. banks have said they won’t finance oil drilling projects in the Arctic, after a similar pressure campaign. And the one major holdout, Bank of America Corp., was the target of a shareholder resolution filed this week by Trillium Asset Management asking how it will deal with the business risks of backing Arctic oil ventures.
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