October 26, 2016

ABP fails leadership test at National Climate Summit

Protestors interrupt high profile national climate summit hosted by the Prime Minister and featuring speakers from Shell and the ABP - Netherlands' largest pension fund.

Today the head of the ABP – one of the largest pension funds in the world – Corien Wortmann-Kool missed the chance to show leadership at the national climate summit by ignoring calls from pension holders to divest their funds from fossil fuel companies.

Although the tagline for the high profile event was “Bring Paris home”, Wortmann-Kool didn’t respond to the calls from members of ABPfossielvrij to announce her commitment to divest from fossil fuels today. The campaigners argued it is hypocritical to speak of a sustainable pension fund while still investing in the fossil fuel industry responsible for fuelling the climate crisis.

During the climate summit ABPfossielvrij made their argument very clear by revealing a huge banner while Corien Wortmann-Kool was on stage.  It read: “ABP, make a choice!”.  According to Chris Roorda, spokesman of ABPfossielvrij, the head of the ABP is fast losing her credibility on the issue of climate change:

“Wortmann-Kool says she takes climate change very seriously, but that’s incompatible with continuing to invest our pension money in the fossil fuel industry driving the climate crisis. The National Climate Summit was billed as being about concrete, ambitious actions. Unfortunately we haven’t seen that from ABP or Corien Wortmann-Kool today.”

This year the mayors of Amsterdam and Utrecht,  as big employers connected to the ABP, also called on the ABP to divest from fossil fuels. And research by the newspaper Trouw showed that this opinion is shared among the majority of the participants of the pension fund.

###

 

FacebookTwitter