Fossil Free Guelph says investments belie Guelph’s environmental mandate
On April 1 in Branion Plaza, while propping up a 100-foot long plastic pipeline in the breaking wind, Fossil Free Guelph (FFG) launched their campaign to get the U of G Board of Governors – who controls the university’s $270 million endowment fund – to stop investing in fossil fuels. Based on documents obtained from the university, the group estimates that between 10 to 15 per cent of companies in the U of G’s endowment portfolio are in the fossil fuel business – a figure they say does not sit well with the university’s reputation for environmental stewardship.
FFG is now asking the university to substitute those fossil fuel stock holdings for other options, preferably investments in renewable energy.
Boycotting investments for political or ethical reasons is known as divestment. As an environmental tactic, it has been gaining momentum on university campuses across North America in recent years.
At the University of British Columbia, for example, students voted overwhelmingly in favour of a 2014 referendum question that called on their student union “to make all reasonable efforts to urge UBC to divest from fossil fuels.”
Undergraduate student and FFG organizer Hannah Batten says FFG would love to see a Guelph referendum question on divestment. But first students have to be educated about the process.
FFG (which is now an action group of OPRIG) was founded in 2013 by Ryan Hayhurst, a PhD Student in Rural Studies, after he realized that Guelph didn’t have a divestment campaign of its own. Guelph is now part of the “Fossil Free” network, which includes about two-dozen other groups across Canada.
As a preliminary action, Hayhurst met with Don O’Leary, Vice President of Finance and Administration at the U of G, to talk about the specifics of the U of G endowment fund. He says they “weren’t able to create any momentum” out of that meeting, but Hayhurst still hopes the Board of Governors be proactive in developing a revised investment strategy. Unlike many other universities in Canada, the U of G does not have an ethical investment policy.
Chuck Cunningham, Assistant Vice President of Communications and Public Affairs, says that the Board of Governors is “interested in discussing the matter of ethical investments further.”
The FFG’s grandest ambition is to use divestment to help put financial pressure on the fossil fuel giants. But doing so would require a concerted effort by a huge number of investors, explains Professor Ilias Tsiakas of the Department of Finance and Economics at the U of G.
“If the university rebalances its portfolio to move away from a group of companies, this will likely have no effect on these companies because the size of the university investment is small relative to the size of the companies,” said Tsiakas. A massive movement is required, he added.
But FFG says that is no reason to delay.
“We need to be a leader rather than a lagger,” said Hayhurst, who now hopes the administration will begin to “sweat a little bit” while FFG continues to spread the word.
Altogether, he’s confident the status quo won’t resonate very well with students.
“[The administration’s] not out here in Branion Plaza saying, ‘We support fracking! We support fracking!’ They don’t want people to know, right?”