Reports indicate that the Glasgow Financial Alliance for Net Zero (GFANZ) coalition led by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney has dropped a requirement for its members to sign up to a United Nations emissions reduction campaign.

GFANZ has been threatened with several defections over what some banks see as overzealous criteria for membership, but that campaigners see as necessary for the group to maintain its credibility.

GFANZ’s second annual Progress Report drops the commitment that “all GFANZ members must align with the [UN’s]Race to Zero criteria”, and has no mention of any requirements for its members related to the UN campaign. The report simply lists Race to Zero along with the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC), Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), International Energy Agency (IEA), the UN High-Level Expert Group on Net Zero and others, as bodies that GFANZ “will continue to engage regularly with.”

Paddy McCully, senior analyst at Reclaim Finance commented: “It is disappointing that GFANZ is ‘quiet quitting’ the Race to Zero. Clearly they are giving in to their Wall Street members who have been reported as threatening to quit the alliance if they are expected to actually pull back on their finance for fossil fuels.”

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