For the urgent attention of Vimlesh Maru, CEO at Barclays UK

We – Shut The System – are writing to you in urgency to repeat our demands for Barclays, Europe’s largest banking investor in fossil fuels, to immediately cut off all support for the industries polluting our world.

Any chance of a livable future requires that Barclays immediately divest from coal, oil and gas companies responsible for climate devastation worldwide. Your establishment has already invested $235 billion since the 2016 Paris Agreement ¹. For the sake of young people’s future and more vulnerable communities today, Barclays must re-align its investment strategy with rapid decarbonisation that replaces fossil fuels with renewable energy to meet Net Zero targets and sustain the support systems for life on Earth.

World leaders have known of this existential threat since the 1980s. They committed to limit global warming to a safe level of 1.5°C in 2016. Last year average temperatures exceeded that target, the Met Office predicts temperatures will soon pass 2°C, and each year average temperatures are set to rise further without radical action. Bloomberg data exposes how millions of people are dying each year as a result of the worsening heat and extreme weather². More than 85% of the global population is scared of the effects this will have and increasingly, people are waking up to the need for radical action against the businesses and institutions responsible for perpetuating the crisis³.

As the CEO of Barclays, with tens of billions in annual investments at your disposal, you are in an incredible, rare position of power to change the course of events. The actions you take now have the potential to send shock waves through industry and society, dramatically re-engineering how the business-nature relationship plays out. You have the knowledge and influence to be a pioneer of an economic system which delivers for people and planet. Whereas we are just doing what we can as ordinary people who have come to understand the science and are petrified by the predicted consequences of further delays and inaction.

Barclay’s fossil fuel investments directly facilitate human rights abuses and devastate our ecosystems. One of the disturbing cases is its investments in coal, as it is the most polluting form of fossil fuels. Barclays invested in Canadian mines, including Glencore’s Elk Valley coking coal mine, which wiped out 95% of downstream fish populations and poisoned local communities’ water supplies with selenium, nitrates and nickel. The water is no longer safe to drink. The remaining fish are deformed and unsafe to eat. Such high levels of selenium lead to hair loss, skin lesions, neurological disorders, and intestinal problems. This is not to mention the millions of tons in emissions from coal extraction and combustion, exacerbating global heating and extreme weather globally^1,4,5.

Barclay’s current sustainability policies fall far short of what is necessary. These policies claim to rule out investing in oil and gas projects but instead they permit the bank to continue investing in fossil fuel companies more broadly and even increase funding ⁶.

Over the last years, a succession of campaign groups have attempted to use democratic processes to request that Barclays take essential steps to protect life. Christian Aid, Reclaim Finance, Share Action and Extinction Rebellion among others have used various methods to ask Barclays to divest. In failing to do so after so long, you have forced activists to escalate with more disruptive forms of action. Direct action and sabotage has proven successful for the Derry anti-war coalition in the north of Ireland, anti-apartheid activists, the Suffragettes and many more in forcing the likes of Barclays into action. Shut the System will therefore exert such pressure, while shaming Barclays publicly, until you act.

Barclays must immediately cut ties with coal, oil and gas industries profiting while polluting our world and destroying our children’s chances of a safe, healthy, livable future. You have the power and influence to divert financial flows to socially and environmentally beneficial industries in order to redirect the economy away from collapse.

Once again – you, Vimlesh Maru, the CEO of Barclays, have the ability to stop this. Shut The System cannot stand down until you do so.

For many amongst us, you and other power holders have known the existential threat of climate change since before we were even born. So we are asking you once more to act as if it is an emergency. 

Barclays must align its financing with a fair, just transition and credible 1.5°C pathways, which remain achievable until average temperatures have exceeded 1.5°C for 2-3 decades. To do this, Shut the System demand that Barclays:

• Prohibit all finance for fossil fuels immediately.

Barclays must end lending, underwriting, investments and insurance for any company expanding fossil fuels. This exclusion must include project finance and general corporate finance for any company with expansion plans, regardless of the scope of the expansion project. This is the most urgent step to strengthen climate policies.

• Adopt absolute financed emissions reduction targets for oil, gas, and coal aligned with a rigorous 1.5°C scenario.

In combination with robust sectoral and expansion exclusions, Barclays must adopt binding and mandatory emissions reduction targets for up-, mid-, and downstream fossil fuels. These targets must be aligned with a rigorous 1.5°C scenario, including ambitious absolute targets for 2030, culminating in global justice-based, near-zero emissions by 2050 at the latest. Coal must be phased out sooner – by 2030 for OECD countries and 2040 for all others. The most recent Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change report emphasizes that an even faster transition is needed, especially for those with the highest cumulative emissions and greatest resources. Targets should be based on actual, absolute emission reductions, and not on carbon intensity measures or targets that rely on the use of false solutions such as carbon offsets or carbon dioxide removals (CDR).

• Robust transition plans for all existing fossil fuel clients.

Barclays must require all of their clients with any fossil fuel exposure to publish robust plans to zero out fossil fuel activity on a 1.5°C aligned timeline. They should end finance and contracts for clients who fail to align their activities with a credible 1.5°C pathway. Any expansion is incompatible with 1.5ºC.

• Protect Indigenous Peoples and human rights. 

Barclays must ensure that their clients respect human rights, and specifically safeguard Indigenous inherent rights and sovereignty and guarantee Free, Prior and Informed Consent (FPIC) for Indigenous Peoples as defined by the UN Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples. They must establish zero-tolerance policies to prevent violence towards Indigenous Peoples and frontline communities, as well as human rights due diligence mechanisms into their policies and risk management approach. Decisions must include frontline communities’ right to a healthy environment and to a just livelihood without coercion, violence, and ongoing colonial practices that divide communities.

• Scale up financing for a just and fair transition. 

Financing for renewable, breakthrough energy and other low carbon solutions must rapidly triple. By 2030 the ratio of renewable energy investment to fossil energy should rise to 10:1 according to the IEA’s NZE scenario. Barclays should remove barriers to financing for such projects, prioritizing local initiatives that uplift marginalized and impacted communities. Vulnerable communities and countries must have access to sufficient financing to achieve a just and equitable transition. Plans for a just phaseout of fossil fuel financing must take into account the social costs of transition by supporting local economic diversification and, with workers and communities, co-creating a new, people-centered, open source energy system.

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With business as usual the climate crisis will escalate and Shut the System will escalate with it until you do everything within your power to cut off Barclay’s funds to climate collapse.

In sincerity and hope,

Shut The System

¹Banking on Climate Chaos. Banking on Climate Chaos: Fossil Fuel Finance Report 2024. Banking on Climate Chaos, 2024, www.bankingonclimatechaos.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/BOCC_2024_vF3.pdf.

² Mathis, Will. “Climate Change Linked to 5 Million Deaths a Year, New Study Shows.” Bloomberg, 7 July 2021, www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-07-07/climate-change-linked-to-5-million-deaths-a-year-new-study-shows[1].

³ United Nations Development Programme. “The World’s Largest Survey on Climate Change Is Out – Here’s What the Results Show.” UNDP Climate Promise, 2024, climatepromise.undp.org/news-and-stories/worlds-largest-survey-climate-change-out-heres-what-results-show.

⁴ Mighty Earth. Tainted Steel: The Deadly Consequences of Hyundai’s Dirty Steel Supply Chain. Mighty Earth, Jan. 2025, mightyearth.org/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Tainted-Steel-Hyundai-Report-For-Release-01312025.pdf.

⁵ McKenzie, Marni. “From Canadian Coal Mines, Toxic Pollution That Knows No Borders.” Yale Environment 360, Yale School of the Environment, 27 Feb. 2024, e360.yale.edu/features/from-canadian-coal-mines-toxic-pollution-that-knows-no-borders.

⁶ Reclaim Finance. “Barclays’ Climate Strategy = Greenwashing and Business as Usual.” Reclaim Finance, 14 Feb. 2024, reclaimfinance.org/site/en/2024/02/14/barclays-climate-strategy-greenwashing-and-business-as-usual/.