As a member of Business Declare’s Naturesave will be attending The Big One this Friday, 21st April, alongside more than 200 supporting organisations — including Greenpeace, Friends of the Earth and PCS Union to name but a few.
The Unite to Survive at ‘The Big One’ is a four-day protest action between the 21st and the 24th April, where people from all groups and movements will gather throughout Westminster and at the Houses of Parliament.
Why are we at the #BigOne? Preventing the impacts of the climate and nature crisis are central to our business objectives. Since Naturesave Insurance was founded in 1993, the central tenant underpinning the entire business has been the concept of Sustainable Development. Pursuing the objectives of Sustainable Development has shaped every business decision for 30 years – from the creation of The Naturesave Trust, to the Campaign for Insurance Divestment.
The definition of Sustainable Development comes from the 1987 Brundtland Report “Our Common Future” which is defined as ‘meeting the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs’.
In 2021, the International Energy Agency (IEA) announced that there should be no investment in new oil, gas and coal if we want to limit global temperature rise and avoid climate catastrophe. Our government are not making decisions that are 1.5 degree compatible, and as we nudge towards 1.3 of warming, every tenth of a degree counts.
The Cambo oil and gas field is among 138 infrastructure projects the government said would be accelerated “as fast as possible” under the mini-Budget, with the aim to get the vast majority of the projects under-way by the end of 2023. This also includes an acceleration through planning reform, regulatory reform, and “improved” development consent processes.
Nearly three-quarters of the resource in these fields is oil, 80 per cent of which is exported, according to climate charity Uplift, and expanding licensing for these sites offers no solution to the UK’s energy problems or energy security. A single new oil and gas field in the North Sea would be enough to exceed the UK’s carbon budget from its operations alone.
At the same time there is a bill in the House of Lords, on its second reading – the Well-being of Future Generations Bill. If passed, this bill explicitly makes provision for requiring public bodies to “act in pursuit of the environmental, social, economic and cultural well-being of the United Kingdom in a way that accords with the Future Generations principle”.
Allowing new oil gas and coal expansion goes directly against Future Generations principles and intergenerational equity – putting the lives of ourselves and the future generation at threat.
The Big One Demand is for a citizen-led democracy to end the fossil fuel era. This does not mean by tomorrow and it does not mean so the lights go out. What this does mean is an immediate end to all new fossil fuel licences – something which the insurance industry plays a key part. Our economy, our safety, our health and our society itself faces certain disaster. Tomorrow we need our politicians to recogise this and to do the right thing.
Join us and up to 30,000 others as we march and Unite to Survive – if you can’t be there then why not join Business Declares – a network of businesses declaring a climate and ecological emergency, taking purposeful action to reach carbon neutrality
So give us a call today and make every Earth Day – Find out what we can offer here
*All facts and statistics cited are taken from research by the campaign group Make My Money Matter