Below we look back on some of the successes and highlights from the last year of bank campaigning. Together as a movement, we’ve achieved a lot – pushing banks to make policy advances, persuading others to avoid financing some of the most egregious projects and companies, and publishing data and benchmarks to better understand the banking sector’s impact on people and planet and underpin our campaigning.

But clearly 2024 has, overall, not been a banner year in the fight for a just and equitable world and a stable climate. We’ve had a trio of failed UN conferences, on nature, climate and plastics, and election victories for Trump and other right-wing populists intent on undermining efforts to addressing these urgent crises. On top of that, we have seen a surge in global conflict, including what Amnesty and many other experts conclude is a genocide taking place in Gaza. 

Against this background, banks’ progress towards tackling these crises – often faltering and inadequate – has in some cases gone into reverse. 2024 saw a group of banks walk out of the Equator Principles, dropping what was already a low standard, and banks including Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Macquarie took backward steps in their climate policies.

Amid these challenges, it’s important to look back at the real achievements of our work, but it’s also clear that we as a movement must redouble our efforts, and carefully prioritise strategies that deliver the strongest results. That’s what we plan to do in 2025. Thank you to everyone who is together with us in pushing in the right direction! 

Our 2024 Successes and Highlights

Challenging banks to protect nature:

• Our Banks and Nature campaign saw our campaigners head to Cali in Colombia for COP16, where we participated in actions to highlight greenwashing at TNFD (the Taskforce for Nature-related Financial Disclosures) and filed a formal complaint against the initiative.
• The twin Banking on Biodiversity Collapse and Regulating Finance for biodiversity reports found major banks fuelling biodiversity collapse with  USD 395 billion since the Paris Agreement, while governments are failing to reign them in.
• Together with partners, we published the first ever stock-take on bank policies related to the plastics supply chain. Our Plastic Banks Tracker shows there is a long way to go for banks to help end our global addiction to plastic.

Ending bank finance for coal:

• Our ‘Coal Havens’ report showcased the loopholes in the policies of major global and Asian banks which still leave room for the financing of a massive coal expansion in Asia.
• Our End Coal Finance campaign with partners Inclusive Development International and Recourse was launched with a new campaign website, and outreach around the campaign resulted in 16 banks committing not to provide project finance for coal expansion in Asia.
• Over 68,000 people joined a call from BankTrack and partners on global banks to break ties with Adaro and stop funding its coal expansion. Following this, Deutsche Bank ruled out refinancing a $750 million Adaro bond issue.

Ending bank finance for oil & gas:

• Banking on Climate Chaos 2024 was released, with record endorsement of 589 organizations in 69 countries. The report showed that since the Paris Agreement, the world’s 60 largest private banks financed fossil fuels with USD 6.9 trillion.
• Following years of advocacy from communities and organisations in the US Gulf South and around the world, ING introduced a new policy excluding finance for LNG export terminals and pure play oil and gas companies.

Challenging banks to finance decarbonisation of steel:

• Five new banks adopted policies on metallurgical coal this year; 46 banks now have an iron and steel decarbonisation target set under the NZBA, up from only 16 in August 2023.  
• Five banks have confirmed they are engaging with ArcelorMittal following the “Shiny Claims, Dirty Flames” campaign around the steel company’s Olympics sponsorship.

Challenging banks to protect human rights:

• Raiffeisen Bank International faced renewed protests in Vienna, questions at its AGM and a 50,000-strong petition urging it to pull out of Russia. A new briefing shows the scale of the bank’s involvement.
• Our new Global Human Rights Benchmark was published, assessing 50 of the largest banks in the world, and finding gradual progress but little action in addressing impacts, protecting vulnerable groups and supporting affected communities. Register now for the launch webinar!
• Earlier in 2024 we published a Latin American benchmark and a new analysis of our Response Tracking database.

Tracking the Equator Principles: 

• In response to a BankTrack complaint, the chair of the UN Working Group on the Business and Human Rights and the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to development warned the Equator Principles about its lack of accountability, saying an effective grievance mechanism at the Principles is “vital”. In the absence of this, affected communities could use our own Equator Complaints channel.

Challenging banks on Dodgy Deals:

• Our six-year advocacy for commercial banks not to finance the East African Crude Oil Pipeline with the #StopEACOP coalition looks set to continue: the project loan is still not agreed, most European banks have said “no” to the project, and support from Chinese banks is delayed.
• Our OECD complaint about UBS and its investments in US private prisons operators CoreCivic and GEO Group was accepted by the Swiss National Contact Point; we’re waiting to hear from the UK NCP on its decision regarding Barclays and HSBC.
• After numerous major global commercial banks distanced themselves from PT Adaro Energy and some of its most controversial projects, thanks to the pressure from BankTrack and partners, the company took the decision to sell its thermal coal business unit in response to its growing struggles to receive finance.

Are you in a position to help us do more in 2025? Please consider donating!