Need, Mission, Focus & Partners

About Bank Climate Advocates (BCA): Founded in 2022, BCA is an innovative organization helping drive the systemic change in finance needed to avert the worst effects of climate change and help transform the global energy system. Our focus is on aligning the climate change policies and practices of leading public financial institutions (PFIs) with 1.5°C using legal advocacy and action. With such alignment, these PFIs will not only meet their critical share of climate obligations, but the conditions will be created for other public and private banks to follow suit. 

Need: The IPCC and Paris Agreement call for global warming to be limited to 1.5°C in order to avoid catastrophic effects from climate change. To meet this warming limitation goal,  root and branch transformation of societies and economies is needed. Overhaul of the financial system, and its structures and processes, must lead the way. Banks provided trillions of dollars annually to governments and corporations to finance projects around the world. They are responsible for substantial avoidable greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions because their GHG assessment and mitigation policies for projects they fund are severely outdated, not in line with good practices, and fall well short of what’s needed to achieve the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming goal. Moreover, banks are failing to adhere to their own GHG policies before and after loan issuance, and continue to fund fossil fuel projects that will prevent achievement of the Paris Agreement's objectives. Sweeping and uniform reform of banks’ climate change lending policies and their practices in implementation is urgently needed.  

Focus: BCA's initial focus is on greatly improving public finance institutions'  GHG assessment and mitigation requirements for projects they fund.  We are doing this through a novel strategic approach additive to others' efforts in the climate finance space that holds great promise to help achieve needed reform of all banks' climate change policies and practices.  Our first project to drastically enhance the International Finance Corporation's (IFC's) climate change financing policies and practices was launched in April 2023. 

Partners & Coordination:  Essential to achieving our mission is ensuring BCA’s efforts are complementing and enhancing those of Global South and North Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) working in the climate finance space. As such, we closely coordinate and partner with CSOs from all over the world on our projects and campaigns, with an emphasis on CSOs representing and working directly with communities who are most adversely and disproportionately impacted by climate change. BCA is also a member and active participant in The Big Shift Global coalition, Climate Action Network, The Big Shift Global Stop Funding Fossil Gas Working Group, and the Global Legal Public Finance Working Group.