It’s been a year already!

One year ago today, BlackRock CEO Larry Fink announced a set of initiatives “to place sustainability at the center of [BlackRock’s] investment approach.”

A year later and it is abundantly clear: BlackRock has failed to live up to its rhetoric. It is still the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels.

As we embark on a new year still reeling from a global pandemic, with climate change at the top of the President-elect’s agenda, and the time to tackle the climate crisis slipping away — leadership needs to be about more than words. It needs to be about actions.

That’s why the BlackRock’s Big Problem campaign has released a clear set of actions BlackRock must take if it is serious about climate justice. Read all about them here.

BlackRock’s announcement last year was a watershed moment. BlackRock manages over $7 trillion in assets and after years of sustained campaigning and grassroots pressure the company’s leadership finally acknowledged climate change as a threat.

Fink and BlackRock took some tiny steps in the right direction in 2020, but one year later it’s clear those steps do not yet amount to the most important thing: slowing and mitigating the climate crisis.

Despite its promises, BlackRock is still the world’s largest investor in fossil fuels and companies driving deforestation in critical ecosystems across the globe.

In 2021, BlackRock must take responsibility for the climate impacts of its entire portfolio and shift capital out of the industries driving the climate crisis. BlackRock CAN become a climate leader — but it needs to do much more than it did in 2020 to get there.

Two clear next steps BlackRock must take are:

Improve its coal exclusion policy, expanding it to be a fossil fuel exclusion policy, starting with tar sands, amazon and arctic oil.
Adopt a policy recognizing human rights and the rights of Indigenous Peoples.

Toward the end of January we’ll be hosting a webinar with BlackRock’s Big Problem featuring leaders from the Association of Brazil’s Indigenous Peoples to hear first hand about the impacts of BlackRock’s investments on the ground and the solution we need to see. Stay tuned for more details. For now, check out the new BlackRock’s Big Problem website.

In solidarity,
Stop the Money Pipeline

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