For seven years, the Fossil Free UCT campaign has been asking UCT, Africa’s leading university, to stop breaking Africa’s climate with its investments in fossil fuels. It is unseemly for an African university with a declared social mission to be investing in ways that disregard and destroy the livelihoods of ordinary Africans; and for a centre of excellence in climate research, it is a science communications disaster – rather like being a doctor who smokes in front of their patients.
South Africa is warming twice as fast as the global average and global actions by governments fall far short of what is needed to stop the 6C–8C of warming we face before 2100. Our current trajectory is a recipe for more droughts, more wildfires, more disease; less water, food, and wildlife; and catastrophically degraded natural infrastructure.
Divestment from fossil fuels is a global movement embracing well over a thousand institutions and over $14 trillion in capital. Recent divestment commitments include eThekwini/Durban and the University of Cambridge. Divestment from coal, gas and oil is the right thing to do, it’s consistent with UCT’s stated values and mission, and its duty of care to students, and will most likely improve returns more than continued investments in Sasol.
In response to our campaign, the university has appointed a panel on responsible investment (the UPRI), to which this campaign was able to make recommendations in October – but which will put its own recommendations to Council only in September 2021. Who knows when and if they will be approved. In an accelerating climate emergency, the UPRI will have taken four years to make its first recommendations on responsible investment. When global emissions must be halved by 2030 to meet the Paris climate targets, every month of further delay is a kick in the teeth of future generations.
Two previous motions of Convocation have called for UCT to divest; and this past year, nearly one hundred academic staff, Cape Town school children and a thousand science students have written to and petitioned the new Council in support of divestment. Yet there has to date been no acknowledgement or response to these calls from Council. Our requests to directly present this cause to the joint investment committee and Council have been turned down. When it comes to the greatest human rights crisis facing humanity, this is not a university that listens.
Research from UCT’s own Graduate School of Business shows that responsible investment in South Africa rarely goes beyond rhetoric. Professor Mariana Mazzucato, the head of mission-oriented research in the EU, says that real mission-based actions are by definition ambitious, risky and experimental. UCT now has the opportunity to align its investment practices with its declared intention to be a mission- and values-based institution.
We call on the Joint Investment Committee and Council to allow us to present our case to them directly, to clearly and publicly acknowledge the university’s special responsibilities in a climate emergency, and to take actions consistent with the university’s traditions, mission and values.
Divestment cannot happen overnight, but the university should kick off the divestment process by immediately diverting R300 million, less than 5% of the current endowment, to seed-fund a new SA equity fossil-free and socially responsible investment fund or funds this year. Offshore investments can be quickly reinvested in more sustainable funds. UCT should commence the reinvestment process in collaboration with other progressive universities, philanthropies and retirement funds; and publicly declare this climate emergency investment plan.
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