Four Ways Wall Street’s Annual General Meetings Impact the Amazon | Amazon Watch
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Four Ways Wall Street’s Annual General Meetings Impact the Amazon

During AGM season, consumers and shareholders can pressure corporations to change policies to respond to the climate and guarantee respect for human rights

May 3, 2022 | Eye on the Amazon

Photo credit: Will Bozian

We’re in the middle of the Annual General Meeting (AGM) season, which means corporations and financial institutions – including many complicit in Amazon destruction – will gather investors to discuss key business strategies and annual performance. During these meetings, shareholders can put forth and vote on important policies. Amazon Watch has historically strategized around these meetings to pressure and demand accountability from corporate campaign targets that profit from Amazon destruction. We’ve accompanied Indigenous leaders from across the Amazon to attend AGMs, partnered with socially responsible investors to draft resolutions and advocate for their adoption, and led protests outside of corporate headquarters. 

Most recently, we’ve focused on amplifying and promoting policies calling for accountability from Chevron for its pollution in Ecuador, strict oversight of investment from Royal Bank of Canada and BlackRock in mining near or on Indigenous lands, as well as an end to fossil fuel financing and the adoption of an Indigenous rights and deforestation policy from Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase, Vanguard, and BlackRock. This year, we’re also joining activist mobilizations and amplifying investor briefings for companies like Chevron, in order to move forward our campaign demands.

As these meetings take place over the next few weeks, here are four things you should know about AGM season: 

#1 AGMs are an opportunity to “socialize” and build momentum for strategies that address the rainforest and climate.

Amazon Watch is working with partners and allies during AGM season to demand that financial institutions, and the extractive companies they bankroll, take into account rainforest protection and human rights in their business. This year, we used Citi’s AGM to demand it exclude financing and investments for all oil and gas activity in the Amazon Biome. We promoted our Exit Amazon Oil & Gas Campaign with Stand.earth and released an “Investor Risk Alert,” warning investors that Amazon crude is tied to human rights violations, corruption, deforestation, and pollution. The world has now seen successful regional exits and exclusions, where companies and asset managers exclude certain types of investments from their portfolios. This happened a few years ago for the Arctic and most recently in Russia, and the Amazon Biome could be next.

#2 At an AGM, shareholders come together to discuss and decide on resolutions that dictate how a company is run. We’re working to get the Amazon on the agenda. 

Alongside allies, we’re calling on the world’s largest asset managers, including BlackRock and Vanguard, to place emissions reductions, Indigenous rights, and ending deforestation at the center of any action related to our planet. Last week, the two asset managers voted on key climate and rights resolutions. Unsurprisingly, BlackRock and Vanguard failed to support bank resolutions, including one at the Citigroup AGM, demanding an end to financing new fossil fuel development despite support from other investors into the billions. In positive news, over one-third of shareholders at Citigroup voted for Indigenous rights policies, including the right to Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC). We’re waiting to see if BlackRock and Vanguard supported these resolutions. Though both resolutions failed to pass, they demonstrate growing momentum for human rights policies and an end to fossil fuel financing. 

At its upcoming AGM on May 26, BlackRock must define targets and emissions reduction goals for heavy polluting sectors like oil and gas and mining. This is a crucial opportunity to push the asset manager and the companies it bankrolls to implement policies and accountability measures in line with the latest science and climate projections. If we’re going to limit warming to 1.5°C, vague ideas without real roadmaps won’t cut it! If the results of this AGM are anything like BlackRock’s half-baked promises of the past, we’ll need you to join us to call it out.

#3 “Shareholder activists” can be a sea change for the direction of an oil company.

Last year, two ExxonMobil board members lost their seats after a shareholder campaign citing the need to shift away from fossil fuel dependency. Demonstrating that inside and outside movement-building and pressure work, it placed board members who fail to integrate climate into their business strategies on notice. Amazon Watch’s work is complementary to this strategy, as we have historically brought Indigenous partners’ experiences with oil companies directly to boardrooms during AGM season.

This year we’re co-hosting and amplifying a Chevron Investor Briefing led by the Union of Concerned Scientists alongside community advocates, shareholder groups, and corporate accountability experts to discuss Chevron’s track record on climate, disinformation, human rights, environmental and racial justice, and corporate governance, as well as opportunities for shareholders to take action this year. You can join us on May 11 from 11:00 am – 12:30 pm PT / 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm ET for Chevron on Notice: How 2022 Shareholder Action Can Advance Corporate Accountability. Also ahead of Chevron’s AGM, we’ll take part in the Annual Anti-Chevron day. Register to join us in Richmond, CA, and if you’re not local, you can hold your own Chevron protest or amplify messages online sharing social kits that will be available at truecostofchevron.com. 

#4 People power is revoking companies’ social license to operate. Banks and asset managers could face increasing financial risk, from the front lines to the boardroom.

The Royal Bank of Canada (RBC) held its AGM on April 7, and this year it abruptly canceled the in-person portion of its events as Wet’suwet’en Chiefs traveled from northern British Columbia to the meeting in order to confront the bank for funding the Coastal GasLink pipeline. Pressure from frontline activists is so frightening to banks that RBC was willing to cancel its in-person AGM overnight. Pipelines are actively and very publicly losing their social license to operate, and banks are forced to deal with the fallout. It’s our responsibility to be in solidarity with activists and earth defenders on the front lines, making extractive projects socially unpopular to finance.

RBC isn’t just backing oil and gas, according to our recent report with APIB, Complicity in Destruction IV — it is also financing mining companies destroying the rainforest and violating Indigenous rights. In our report, we revealed that five Canadian investors alone were responsible for injecting over $2 billion into mining companies with interests in Indigenous territories in the Brazilian Amazon. The Royal Bank of Canada is one of the main institutional investors of the Belo Sun project in Brazil, a planned mega-mine that experts say could cause ecocide in the region. In solidarity with a delegation of Indigenous leaders traveling to Europe to denounce Belo Sun and the impact of the mining industry, we’ll be holding a social storm on May 6. Sign this petition to join us and be informed of next steps!

AGM season is an opportunity for shareholders to change companies’ business policies from within and for the public to call out corporations and their investors for bankrolling climate chaos. Your advocacy plays a major role in highlighting the ways in which companies can change their business models to protect the Amazon and defend its defenders. Together we can amplify the harm their investments are causing and the financial risks tied to rainforest destruction and human rights violations. With your solidarity behind our campaigns, we show companies that there’s a whole community of Indigenous alliances, organizations, and environmental activists like you working to change them. 

As our financial targets carry on their AGM season, we’ll be gearing up to face them and we need your voice. Stay connected with us on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and take action to learn about how you can deepen your advocacy for the Amazon and hold corporations and financial institutions accountable!

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