The European Climate Foundation's Backing of Big Finance “Carneyage”
Part 4/5: How the finance industry found a way to save itself: Nature
The European Climate Foundation (ECF) has dominated the climate debate in Europe and globally by funding environmental NGOs, using them like an “influence flotilla” to forward the agenda of large climate-driven foundations pulling the strings behind the scenes. The Firebreak has been conducting an ex-post evaluation on how the climate/net zero/ESG/WEF agenda over the last decade had almost succeeded in dismantling Western economic and political structures, and how a group of billionaires have been acting as a new power base, using their foundations to influence the media, politicians and NGOs. This translation of Florence Autret’s article, published in 2023, fits nicely within this objective. Her analysis is precise and insightful. For the purpose of considering each of the valuable points of her argument, the English translation has been broken into the following five chapters:
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Another field not immune to the influence of big philanthropists is finance.
After the financial collapse of 2008-2009, a handful of experts from the markets created the first European NGO specializing in finance: Finance Watch. With the enormous ambition of transforming the financial system and the support of MEPs, notably the Belgian and German Greens, Philippe Lamberts and Sven Giegold, they wanted to create an independent organization capable of counterbalancing the capture of political power by banks and funds, of which the financial crisis was the sad result.
At the time, the Commissioner for the Internal Market and Financial Services, Michel Barnier, was in favor of the idea of this “counter-lobby”. But the Commission refused to provide it with stable, independent funding. It simply promised to match each euro of private donations with one euro of public money. Finance Watch was therefore forced to find private funding.
Sustainable Finance
In the meantime, the financial world had found a way to counter the zeal of regulators of all stripes. It would be known as “sustainable finance”. The shift was initiated by a speech delivered by the Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney. In September 2015, from the headquarters of Lloyd’s, the Canadian, future UN special envoy for climate and finance, explained that market solutions would make it possible to avoid “the tragedy on the horizon” of global warming.
"With better information as a foundation, we can build a virtuous circle of better understanding of tomorrow’s risks, better pricing for investors, better decisions by policymakers, and a smoother transition to a lower-carbon economy. By managing what gets measured, we can break the Tragedy of the Horizon." Carney concluded from the headquarters of the world's oldest insurance group.
Four years after his speech, Mark Carney would take over the role of UN Special Envoy for Climate Action, previously held by Michael Bloomberg, the head of Bloomberg Philanthropies (and founding funder of the European Climate Foundation).
Carney’s message, in short, is that to limit global warming, we need to quantify more, price more, and trust the markets more. Barely seven years after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, finance has found a way to save itself: nature.
Philanthro-capitalism and the financialization of nature
At a time when the green finance agenda was being put in place, Finance Watch was struggling to garner private donations. It was then, in 2017, that the Swiss foundation, Mava, proposed to put its money in the pot, on condition that the association work on “natural capital,” in other words the financialization of nature. Projects on the separation of banking activities and other attempts to stop the diversion of resources to markets with dubious social utility were relegated to the shelves.
In 2022, Finance Watch began working on “sustainable finance,” the issue of gender in financial services, and “net zero.” It counts Mava and the ECF among its benefactors, as well as the Quadrature Climate Foundation, a new foundation created by a hedge fund, according to a model reminiscent of the CCIF's "venture philanthropy", a mix between an investment vehicle and a tool of influence. (Firebreak editor note: Mava has since folded its operations.)
“The foundations rushed behind Carney. He had created a narrative," - Comment from the head of an NGO.
Finance Watch was joined in Brussels by Positive Money, another NGO working on finance but from the angle of monetary policy. Created in London, it set up its Brussels office on the same floor as Finance Watch. Positive Money is also financed by the ECF as well as by another foundation of foundations based in Gland, Switzerland: Partners for New Economy, which brings together the Oak (Geneva), Ford, Laudes (Zug) and Mava (Gland) foundations.
Switzerland seems to be the base camp for philanthro-capitalism.
At Mava, created by one of the heirs and shareholders of the pharmaceutical group Hofmann La Roche, the ornithologist Luc Hoffmann, we now find Tom Brookes. The famous former spin doctor of Big Tech who supervised the sorting of Greta Thunberg’s emails, a pillar of the ECF and the GSCC. Brookes is an “advisor” to the “Finance for Biodiversity” program.
Tom Brookes is also one of the five members of the board of directors of “Nature Finance”, a “think-tank”, financed in particular by Mava, which claims to “make nature count in global finance”. Nature Finance has created the “Task Force on Nature Markets”, what an insider calls “the largest lobby for the financialization of nature”. One of its reports begins with this very “Carneysian” sentence: “markets, trade and the global economy have historically undervalued the price of nature”.
The implication is that to give it a fair price, efficient markets must be urgently created where what was previously thought to be a common good can be exchanged.
“We could have approached this agenda critically. Instead, all the NGOs created a “sustainable finance” position… Foundations rushed behind Carney. The head of an NGO commented: “He had created a narrative. More resources should have gone into a structure like Finance Watch capable of creating its own vision.”
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Postscript from the Firebreak editor
The finance industry was a major driver in the push for net-zero (a strategy developed by the European Climate Foundation). It was not just the World Economic Forum’s influence, and Klaus Schwab’s personal ambitions, that brought us to this point. It was not just actors in major hedge funds developing and forcing ESG on corporations. It was not just campaigns from supranational groups like the Climate Disclosure Project (CDP). People like Mark Carney had larger ambitions (he is presently campaigning to be the next Canadian prime minister).
UN agencies fell into the European Climate Foundation strategy in forming, with bankers, the Net-Zero Banking Alliance. The UN also set up the Net Zero Asset Managers Initiative with the largest investment fund managers (presently suspended). Both of these organizations have been driving the finance industry’s commitment to net zero carbon emissions by 2050.
A large number of the philanthropists funding the European Climate Foundation come from the asset management and finance worlds. Their resources make up a considerable amount of the capital invested in these markets. So when the financial world demands net zero by 2050, how deep is the philanthropists’ influence here?
If only the European Climate Foundation were transparent, maybe we would know how much they influenced the net-zero strategy within the finance industry. But as long as these foundations keeping buying the silence of NGOs demanding transparency from other industries, like Corporate Europe Observatory, we can expect to be kept in the dark.
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