Background on Divest Dundee
I began lobbying the University of Dundee to divest its £29million endowment from fossil fuels in 2015. The campaign really took off in 2019 when students from Duncan of Jordan stone College of Art & Design, led by Hannah Feuerstein, got involved. We held a rally and petition hand-in outside the main University building, which was picked up by the local media and was obviously not good PR fort he University. This coincided with having a new Director of Finance (Carol Prokopyszyn) in post who had come from Loughborough where she had overseen the divestment of that university’s endowment, and so was more sympathetic to our cause than her predecessor.
We continued lobbying through the start of the pandemic, and then in November 2020– the university finally announced that they would divest their endowment from fossil fuels.
University press release: “University to divest from fossil fuel companies” (5 November 2020)
Student story: “Divestment at Dundee: How We Did It” (13 November 2020)
Barclays campaign
As soon as the University committed to divest its relatively modest £29million endowment from fossil fuel companies in November 2020 – on ethical grounds – it opened a can of worms of all the unethical financial arrangements it still had ongoing. The most obvious of these was that Barclays – the bank which is Europe’s biggest fossil fuel financier, pumping hundreds of billions into the companies most responsible for the climate crisis – was still the University’s Investment Manager.
So the next phase of our campaign became focussed on getting them to make the switch. The governance structures of the University, where financial decisions had to be agreed by the Endowments sub-committee, meant that this was also a slow burn(pardon the pun), but we continued to keep the pressure up with our social media campaign, and lobbying behind the scenes. Our cause was again helped by another change of personnel with a new Director of Finance (Peter Fotheringham) being even more sympathetic to our cause. With the help and guidance from SOS-UK we were able to give examples of best practice from other universities which had taken that step that Dundee could learn from. By March 2023 an invitation to tender for a new investment manager was put out, and in February 2024 we had the brilliant news that the new manager, Greenbank had been appointed. So a big thanks to Peter for his determination to see this through.
The next big challenge for the University to overcome, is switching all of their business banking to ethical banks, and I’m pleased to see that they are not part of an initiative led by University of Cambridge to find a sector wide solution to this.
Then finally, the biggest elephant in the room across the entire Higher Education sector is the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) pension scheme, which is currently investing £570 million in fossil fuels companies. Once Dundee and other universities have their own financial houses in order, they must work together with the Divest USS campaign to lobby their pensions provider for divestment. As the largest pension scheme in the whole UK (in terms of its value), this really would have the biggest impact in averting climate catastrophe.
Facebook updates:
Under pressure from our campaign, last week University of Dundee made the historic announcement that they would divest their endowment from all fossil fuel companies within five years. They didn't agree to our final demand though - that is to switch investment manager away from Barclays UK to one that actually cares about ethical investment. Barclays are still fuelling climate change so the University must divest from them too!
University of Dundee might have agreed to divest their endowment from fossil fuels, but they are still allowing Barclays UK - one of Europe's biggest fossil fuel financiers - to manage their fund. They've also not committed to any positive investment in the new industries we need to make a just and green transition. We’re working with People &Planet and Students Organising for Sustainability UK to keep the pressure on. Please join us!