Battle over investments
The Western Sahara freedom movement has filed papers in the High Court to stop the New Zealand Superannuation Fund from investing in the disputed North African territory claimed by Morocco.
The Polisario Front has warned the investments prejudice New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community, but the Fund said it does not accept the allegations and will defend the case.
For years the Front has been trying to put a halt to the extraction of the phosphate from Western Sahara by Morocco, which it says belongs to the Sahrawi people.
New Zealand companies Ravensdown and Balance AgriNutrients import about $30 million worth of the product a year to spread on farms.
The Front is putting heat on the Guardians of the Super Fund, which oversees global investments worth $44.5 billion, to stop investing in the region.
The Sahrawi representative to Australia and New Zealand, Kamal Fadel, alleges the Fund is exposed in two ways to the disputed territory: It has investments in farms in New Zealand which use phosphate, and it invests through index funds in companies operating in Western Sahara.
Until 2018 it invested in the Moroccan state-owned phosphate agency OCP, but has since withdrawn its stake.
The Fund owns a number of farms in Waikato, Canterbury and Southland which use Western Saharan phosphate supplied by Ballance. Its farming operations are managed by FarmRight Limited.
But through index funds it is also exposed through investing in a slew of companies that allegedly support OCP’s operations in the Western Sahara, from a wind farm through to banking services. The total came to $142.3m in 2017.
Since 2012, a number of other similar funds had banned on ethical grounds any stake in companies that extract resources from the region.
These include the Norwegian Government Pension Fund, National Employment Savings Trust (United Kingdom), APG (Netherlands), AP Funds (Sweden), FDC (Luxembourg), and BMO Global Asset Management.
‘‘The Sahrawi people are determined to protect their natural resources with all available means. This legal action is a message to all who are involved in the exploitation of Sahrawi natural resources that they face legal action, reputational risks and investor withdrawal,’’ Fadel said.
In 2017 a vessel bound for Ballance’s home port of Tauranga a representative of the Polisario liberation movement, pictured.
with a $5m cargo of phosphate was seized in South Africa, where a court found it legally belonged to the Sahrawi Government, and not OCP.
A spokesperson for the Guardians said it took its obligations as a responsible investor very seriously, through its ‘‘responsible investment framework’’.
A recent review of its investment practice looked at whether the framework was consistent with ‘‘avoiding prejudice to New Zealand’s reputation as a responsible member of the world community’’.
It concluded that the Guardians was meeting its obligations. Overall the Guardians received an AA excellent rating for its approach to environmental, social and governance governance.