https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/sep/05/queensland-university-of-technology-to-dump-fossil-fuel-investments
[links in on-line article]
Queensland University of Technology to dump fossil fuel investments
QUT vice-chancellor says university’s $300m endowment fund will divest
its shares in coal, oil and gas companies
One of Australia’s largest universities, the Queensland University of
Technology, has committed to dumping fossil fuel investments after a
two-year campaign by students and staff.
In a move that surprised and delighted campaigners, the university’s
vice-chancellor, Peter Coaldrake, revealed on Friday the university’s
$300m endowment fund would divest its shares in coal, oil and gas companies.
QUT becomes the second-largest of four Australian universities –
alongside the Australian National University, La Trobe University and
the University of Sydney to join a global divestment movement that
withdraws support for industries fuelling climate change.
Coaldrake said he told staff in an email that a review of its
investments “relative to climate risk” had led it to direct its external
funds manager, the Queensland Investment Corporation, to ensure it had
“no fossil fuel direct investments”.
It followed an open letter a year ago from more than 120 QUT academics
urging the university – the ninth-largest in Australia with more than
45,000 students – to divest.
“We recognise our important responsibility to be an institution that is
not only environmentally and socially responsible but also financially
sustainable,” Coaldrake said.
“In practical terms this means that QUT is committed to an orderly and
considered transition away from investment in fossil fuel companies
while simultaneously ensuring that QUT continues to build the broader
funding base essential to our future.”
But the Queensland Resources Council mocked the announcement in a
statement from chief executive Michael Roche, which said “hundreds if
not thousands” of QUT graduates ended up in the resources sector.
“Presumably no QUT buildings in the future will be made from steel to
avoid having to use coking coal (an essential ingredient in making
steel), nor will students or staff be able to catch public transport or
ride bicycles, which are also made from resources commodities,” Roche
said. “Bicycles made from hemp seem like a safe option for the new real
world at QUT.
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“I also assume the science labs at QUT have come up with a way of
performing experiments without using Bunsen gas burners.”
Ruaela Rusch, a science student and spokeswoman for Fossil Free QUT,
said the university had “shown real leadership on climate change and I’m
so proud to be a student at an institution taking climate change risks
seriously”.
She said QIC’s typical funds exposure to coal, oil and gas companies was
10%, which, if extended to QUT’s investments, would amount to $30m.
Adrian Barnett, an associate professor in the health faculty, said the
university had “listened to the concerns of students and staff, many of
whom recognise climate change as the key issue of the 21st century”.
“It was an odd situation that we had staff researching the Great Barrier
Reef and the health effects of climate change, whilst at the same time
the university’s investments were propping up the major threat to the
reef and our health,” Barnett said.
Jubilant campaigners gathered at QUT’s inner Brisbane campus on Monday
to celebrate the decision, chanting: “We won.”
Mark Thompson, a QUT engineering graduate and coordinator of Queensland
campus divestment for environmental group 350.org, said it was “time for
other Queensland universities to follow QUT’s lead”.
The decision reflected staff and students’ “deep concern about the
morality of investing in an industry blocking action on climate change”,
he said.
Rusch said the campaigners would seek to continue pressure on the
university over its separate links to mining companies, including
between its business faculty and the Indian miner Adani.
The University of Sydney, Australia’s third-largest university with
54,306 students, remains the nation’s biggest tertiary institution to
dump fossil fuel investments.
Universities now account for 35 of the more than 520 institutions
worldwide – commanding $3.4tn in investment funds – that have committed
to dumping fossil fuel investments, according to 350.org.
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