Why Divest?

Divestment is the practice of removing certain companies or industries from an investment portfolio for ethical, financial, or social goals and refusing to reinvest in them in the future. For example, investors concerned about practices they are funding may decide to screen out companies involved in tobacco, alcohol, gambling, weapons manufacturing, nuclear power, fossil fuels (coal, oil, gas, etc.), and human rights or environmental abuses.

You are Supporting Big Oil

As students, faculty, and other members of the Concordia community, we invest our own time, money, and energy into the university. Their financial investments, by extension, are ours. The fossil fuel industry is one of the largest contributors to the environmental crisis locally and globally, and this has devistating consquenses for the people and the planet. We are already seeing irreparable damage to communities and ecosystems, and the Canadian economy is still driving us rapidly off a cliff. We need to have been acting on this crisis, yesterday, and the biggest contributor driving it is the fossil fuel industry.

Despite rhetoric praising its own progressive eco-consciousness Concordia is invested in fossil fuels through its endowment fund.

  CO2 + Money = Fire

 

What Kinds of Institutions are Divesting?

  1. Faith-based Organizations — 28%
  2. Philanthropic Foundations — 18%
  3. Governments — 15%
  4. Educational Institutions — 15%
  5. Pension funds — 14%
  6. NGOs — 4%
  7. For Profit Corporations — 4%
  8. Healthcare Institutions — 1%
  9. Cultural Institutions — <1%
Pledged divestments have increased from 2013 to 2018.
 

Source: Fossil Free. 1000 Divestment Committments and Counting. December 2018. https://gofossilfree.org/1000divest-report.

We can Divest too

Learn about strategies available to us, and the current situation at Concordia.