Church of England wants BHP to back Paris Agreement

The Church of England Pensions Board urged shareholder advisers on Wednesday to support a resolution asking the world’s biggest listed miner BHP to leave groups that lobby for policies inconsistent with global climate change limitation goals.

The board, which manages the retirement funds of clergy and other staff, has joined some other BHP shareholders in the resolution for BHP’s London annual general meeting (AGM) next week to increase pressure over the issue and wants more shareholders to support it.

“Corporate funding of lobbying, fuelled with shareholder funds, is continuing at pace,” said Adam Matthews, head of the board’s ethics and engagement.

The resolution recommends “memberships of industry associations be suspended where their advocacy demonstrates overall inconsistency with the Paris Agreement’s goals”.

The international agreement of 2015 aims to restrict global warming and the resolution’s authors say lobbying for the use of coal is inconsistent with this.

BHP said it was committed to cutting emissions and promoting sustainable mining and backs the Paris Agreement.

It said it was reviewing its membership of industry groups and had withdrawn from some of them but believed engagement with some of them helped to promote best practice.

“The decision by the proxy voting advisers ISS and Glass Lewis not to recommend support for the co-filed shareholder resolution raises serious questions about how investors can receive advice that enables them to meet their fiduciary duties to navigate the financial risks posed by climate change,” the pensions board said.

Asked to comment, Aaron Bertinetti, Glass Lewis’s senior vice-president for research and engagement, said investors focusing only on an adviser’s approach to a proposal rather than “the extensive analysis, reasoning, expertise and engagement such advisers conduct” would raise concerns about their own fiduciary duties to those they represent.

ISS did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In September BHP said its board would recommend shareholders oppose the resolution at its AGMs in London on October 17 and in Sydney on November 7.