BankTrack, the tracking, campaigning and civil society support organisation focused on the impacts of private sector banks and their finance on people and planet, today releases its 2017 Annual Report.

The report sets out the organisation’s work over what it describes as a year of huge challenges and uncertainties, but also some great successes. Among the successes were:

• Our ‘Equator Banks, Act!’ campaign met its immediate goal, spurring the announcement of a revision of the Equator Principles which will take place over the next 18 months,
• Our human rights campaign efforts helped effectively challenge the Thun Group of banks' efforts to play down the sector’s human rights responsibilities,
• Several banks, most notably ING and BNP Paribas, made significant moves to exit finance for parts of the fossil fuel sector, following sustained campaign pressure from us and our allies,
• We published the online report “Banks vs the Paris Agreement”, featuring an interactive database on the financial links between private sector banks and the 120 companies responsible for planning and developing most new coal power plant capacity around the world.

The year also saw BankTrack hit for the first time with a lawsuit, from Energy Transfer Partners, the company behind the Dakota Access Pipeline. The court is still considering our motion to dismiss the suit. 

BankTrack director Johan Frijns comments: "This year, 2018, will be BankTrack’s fifteenth anniversary year, as well as marking the tenth anniversary of the global financial crisis. We have our work cut out for us, making good on the campaign successes of 2017, pushing for an Equator Principles revision that delivers for the climate and Indigenous people, holding banks to account for their responsibilities on human rights, and moving ever more of the world’s banks out of financing more and more sectors of the fossil fuels industry. And we will deal with the ETP lawsuit as it unfolds, but without allowing the matter to sidetrack us from our mission.”

For more details on all of our activities during 2017, download the 22-page Annual Report here.