Friends of the Earth

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FoE's Green Paycheck Campaign empowers individuals to match their values with their investments by teaching small savers how to establish a socially and environmentally responsible pension option in their workplaces.

Shareholder activism is a way to claim your ownership in a corporation and push for changes in corporate policy and behavior.

Learn more about socially responsible investing at: www.socialinvest.org

Friends of the Earth is working with local communities and human rights groups to make Wall Street banks and investors more accountable for the environmental and social impacts of their loans and investments. And increasingly, investors and public interest groups are demanding stricter environmental rules for the stock market, and have successfully advocated for big banks and investors to adopt green financing policies that protect ecosystems and communities.

FoE was the first US environmental group to convince major US banks to develop environmental policies and procedures. By teaming up with socially responsible shareholders, FoE has successfully pressured banks such as Citigroup, Morgan Stanley, Merrill Lynch, Bank of America, and JPMorgan Chase to create environmental lending policies for corporations seeking loans. Friends of the Earth also founded an influential international network of NGOs that today is known as BankTrack, which plays a lead role in monitoring the Equator Principles.

The Equator Principles

In response to increasing public pressure, ten leading international banks launched the Equator Principles (EPs) in June 2003. These Principles commit adopting banks to follow the environmental and social procedures and guidelines of the International Finance Corporation (part of the World Bank) when lending to big projects like dams and oil pipelines.

As of June 2005, 31 banks, which arrange over 80% of the world's project loans, have adopted the Equator Principles, which have fast become the industry standard for addressing social and environmental impacts of projects.

When announced, Friends of the Earth cautiously welcomed the Equator Principles as a good first step towards creating environmental and social standards in project finance. But Friends of the Earth remains concerned that Equator banks have been slow to implement the EPs; that they are not transparent about their compliance; and that despite the EPs, many banks still have financed a number of environmentally and socially harmful projects.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is the top cop on Wall Street, and sets rules for all companies traded on the stock market. Through the Corporate Sunshine Working Group, FoE leads an alliance of investors and public interest organizations to institute new rules that would require companies to fully account for their liabilities, risks and opportunities related to how they treat the environment, their workers and communities.