The majority of top workplace pension providers are severely lacking in their approach to tackling the climate crisis, according to new research.

A survey of the top 20 defined contribution workplace pension providers, conducted in late 2023 by sustainability research provider Profundo and the campaign group Make My Money Matter, assessed their publicly available climate documentation.

Between them, these providers manage more than £500 billion of the nearly £3 trillion in assets held in UK pension schemes, with more than 15 million active members combined. The significant amounts invested have a crucial role to play in combatting the climate crisis. 

The analysis focused on seven core indicators of tangible climate action: commitment to a pathway to 1.5°C, measurement and disclosure of carbon footprints, setting detailed targets, investing in climate solutions, phasing out fossil fuels, deforestation and land use, and portfolio stewardship instruments. 

The findings revealed that 17 (85%) of these providers have ‘inadequate’ or ‘poor’ plans in place – with only Aviva, Legal & General, and Nest deemed ‘adequate’.

Four providers – Hargreaves, SEI, The People’s Pension and Mercer, which manage a combined two million UK savers’ pensions – received just a score of just one out of 10 for climate action, the lowest possible ranking. 

Despite making a raft of commitments to actively engage with efforts to tackle climate change, many providers were found to be failing in multiple areas. In two strands in particular, companies were accused of making “woefully inadequate” progress. 

Eight of the 20 companies scored zero out of 10 on policies relating to oil, coal, and gas.

On deforestation and land use, all 20 of the UK’s leading companies have poor or inadequate plans in place. 

The research concluded that, in order to make meaningful progress in targets, funds need to: set ambitious goals, develop detailed targets (ensuring they cover emissions throughout the value chain of investee companies), phase out fossil fuels, tackle deforestation, invest in climate solutions, and strengthen their stewardship – including divestment and exclusion policies. 

Richard Curtis, co-founder of Make My Money Matter, said: "Climate leadership is not just important for the planet – it's popular too. But the fact that 17 of the UK’s top 20 providers have inadequate or poor climate plans tells you all you need to know about how seriously the industry is taking this issue.   

"The public will rightly be worried about these results and we hope this ranking acts as an urgent wake-up call for the pensions industry to up its game on climate change. In doing so, they can help protect the planet and provide savers with pensions they can be proud of.”

Jan Willem van Gelder, director of Profundo, added: “Given the disappointing results, I encourage UK pension providers to use the methodology of this study as a guide on what the public can expect of a robust climate action plan. Grand commitments to tackle climate change need to be followed by bold actions.”

Previous research by Make My Money Matter, published last June, found that an estimated £88 billion of pension savers’ money is invested in the fossil fuel industry – as much as 10 times the amount invested in FTSE 350 stocks involving clean energy. 

It also found that none of the top UK pension providers had set limitation on investing in firms which continue to pursue new oil and gas projects, with “only a handful” publicly voting against fossil fuel companies in the 2023 AGM season.

70% and 60% of those funds analysed listed Shell and BP respectively among their top holdings, while not listing any investments in renewable energy. 

In October, Friends of the Earth revealed that Local Government Pension Schemes (LGPSs) had double the investment in big polluters compared to the previous year, with a staggering £16 billion invested in the fossil fuel industry, with £8 billion in companies developing new oil and gas. 

Campaigners accused the investments of turning “public savings into fossil fuel playthings”.

A recent study conducted by the Economics of Energy Innovation and System Transition (EEIST) project, led out of the University of Exeter, also found that current models for a net zero transition used by pension funds assume that pre-existing climate-related trends will continue at a gradual pace, failing to account for climate tipping points. 

It was established that many funds still operate on models which predict that global warming of 2-4.3°C will have minimal impact on member portfolios, and rely on ‘flawed’ estimates of damages stemming from climate change. Some of these predict that, even with rising temperatures of up to 7°C, economic growth will continue.

However, the research indicates that the retirement savings of millions of people could be at risk by ignoring critical advice from scientists that warming on this scale would pose “an existential threat to human civilisation”.

Climate scientists have warned that the Earth is already on the verge of crossing five tipping points, natural thresholds which if breached pose “threats of magnitude never faced by humanity”, triggering domino effects which can lead to “mass displacement, political instability and financial collapse”. 

ClientEarth lawyer Catriona Glascott told Byline Times: “Climate action is not a ‘nice-to-have’ add-on for a pension scheme in the UK – it is a legal obligation for these funds’ trustees to manage financial risk, which includes the risks of climate change.  

“Pension schemes are required by law to assess the risks their portfolios are exposed to – and climate change poses risks to individual investments, to the portfolio as a whole and to the wider economic system in which the pension fund sits.  

“This report highlights that pension funds have a long way to go when it comes to turning their commitments into action – and they have to act sooner rather than later if they want to fulfil their legal duties.”

The day before COP28 began in the UAE last November, a damning report was released by the Centre For Climate Reporting, confirming what many had already suspected: COP28 President Sultan Ahmed Al Jaber had taken multiple meetings with various oil-producing countries throughout the year, likely swaying his priorities for the conference ahead. While Al Jaber’s legitimacy had already been in question…

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One of the last legal defences available to protestors accused of criminal damage in the UK is hanging in the balance following a hearing at the Court of Appeal.

A panel of three senior judges heard arguments in London yesterday about the kinds of defences that can be made in court and the extent to which judges or juries have the power to decide a case. 

The hearing was sparked by a December request from Attorney General Victoria Prentis for a review of whether climate protestors can make the argument of 'consent’ in court.

While the hearing took place, members of campaign group Defend Our Juries held a surprise ‘people’s assembly’ inside the Royal Courts of Justice, to highlight what it argues was a “threat to British justice and democracy”. Spokesperson Tim Crosland dubbed the action a  "makeover of British justice".

The gathering was prompted by the Attorney General’s application to reduce the defences available for those taking direct action over, for example, climate change or the war in Gaza. 

Around 100 members of the public gallery are understood to have taken part. Organisers claimed the demonstration was “entirely lawful and peaceful, and [would] cause no disruption to the ordinary running of the court”.

Prentis had asked the court’s criminal division to consider whether “claims that protestors honestly believed organisations affected by their stunts would have consented to the damage – if they had known more about the impact of climate change – can be a defence in court”. 

A mock-up of the Royal Courts protest on Wednesday (21 February)

She said the argument had been used by environmental campaign groups, resulting in acquittals for criminal damage. The previous month a jury cleared nine women of criminal damage for breaking the windows of HSBC’s headquarters in London. 

The judge allowed them to argue that they truly believed HSBC’s shareholders would have agreed to their actions if they had known the scale of the climate crisis and the bank’s contribution to it. 

While the request focuses on climate protest, similar arguments have recently been used by Palestine Action activists on trial for targeting Israel’s largest private weapons company.

Tom Little KC, representing the Attorney General, said the Government wanted clarity on the issue because the defence of belief in consent has only recently begun to be used and judges have responded inconsistently. 

He argued that this provision in the UK’s Criminal Damage Act 1971 was being interpreted too broadly. He said it was not designed for protest cases but rather to, for example, protect someone who broke a car window to stop a dog overheating. 

Henry Blaxland KC, representing a protestor at the centre of the issue who cannot be named for legal reasons, argued that there were no restrictions on using this defence in criminal damage cases, and the key issue at stake was whether the defendant really believed it. Whether this is accepted, he told the court, is ultimately a matter for the jury: “That belief may be mistaken… it may be unreasonable. But that’s the issue that needs to be determined.”

At stake, Blaxland continued, was the much bigger constitutional question of the right to a fair trial: “It’s only in rare cases that a court is entitled to withdraw matters that would otherwise be a matter for the jury.”

The move by the Attorney General echoes a previous referral by her predecessor Suella Braverman at the Court of Appeal. This followed a jury acquitting four Black Lives Matter protestors of criminal damage, for toppling a statue of slave trader Edward Colston in Bristol and throwing it into Bristol Harbour.

Braverman's request was made on the same day as a similarly-worded briefing was published by think tank Policy Exchange, which is part of international fossil fuel-funded Atlas Network. 

The court subsequently ruled that protestors accused of high-value criminal damage could not rely on the European Convention on Human Rights, making it much more difficult for activists in such cases to mount a legal defence.

That decision was part of a wider restriction on the kinds of defences that protestors can use in court in recent years.

Last year, Extinction Rebellion co-founder Gail Bradbrook was found guilty of criminal damage and given a 15-month suspended prison sentence after being forbidden from speaking about her motivations in front of a jury.

Prentis stressed that, whatever the Court of Appeal’s latest decision, it would not change previous acquittals such as those for the HSBC activists. But it would affect future cases. 

While the hearing was ongoing, trials of climate activists were happening across the UK.

Climate Clampdown

In one ongoing case, five Extinction Rebellion members have been charged with criminal damage for breaking windows at JPMorgan Chase’s London offices in September 2021. The bank is one of the world’s biggest financers of fossil fuels, and its asset management arm recently quit an international investor group set up to encourage companies to lower their carbon footprint.

This trial is being held at the Inner London Crown Court in front of judge Silas Reid, who has forbidden defendants in similar cases from mentioning climate change or fuel poverty in their defence.

Last year, Reid sentenced one of the current defendants in the JPMorgan case, Amy Pritchard, alongside two others, to prison for breaching this ruling during a previous trial. Pritchard spent three-and-a-half weeks in jail.

Reid has also faced criticism for his response to activists concerned about his approach. He led 68-year-old Trudi Warner to be prosecuted with contempt of court after she held a sign outside his court spelling out the right of a jury to acquit a defendant based on their conscience, sparking an escalating series of protests across the UK under the banner Defend Our Juries.

Reid delayed the start of the JPMorgan activists’ defence in case the Court of Appeal releases its decision later this week.

Another trial began at Reading Crown Court of eight Insulate Britain activists charged with public nuisance for blocking junction 31 of the M25 motorway in September 2021.

And a third trial is being held at Basildon Crown Court of five Just Stop Oil activists charged with public nuisance and conspiracy to cause a public nuisance for occupying tunnels near an oil terminal in Grays, Essex, in August 2022. 

The UK’s approach to protest is now coming under international scrutiny.

In January, UN Special Rapporteur on Environmental Defenders and the Aarhus Convention, Michel Forst, expressed deep concern about the increasingly severe crackdown on peaceful protest, particularly some tough prison sentences. He said it was leading to increased threats, abuse, and state justification for severe measures against them, and having a “chilling effect” on free speech.

Additional reporting by Josiah Mortimer

Do you have a story that needs highlighting? Get in touch by emailing josiah@bylinetimes.com

Seven-year-old Zane Gbangbola and his family lived in a semi-detached Victorian house in Chertsey, Surrey, between the River Thames and what appeared to be an attractive lake, just the other side of the field that their home backed onto. To all appearances, it was an idyllic spot in a desirable greenbelt location.

Zane’s parents, Kye and Nicole Gbangbola, were both successful young professionals and their only child was a bright, lively boy, popular at his school and in the church community to which Kye and Nicole belonged.

But in January and February 2014, the heaviest rainfall since Met Office records began – the first climatic event attributed to climate change by a UK prime minister – showed the grim downside of living so close to water for many thousands of people in southern England.

Homes were inundated from Cornwall to Kent, rail lines were washed away and, on 5 February, amid mounting criticism that the Government was failing to get to grips with the crisis, Prime Minister David Cameron held the first of a series of COBRA meetings.

Two days later, in the early hours of 8 February, the happy lives of Zane and his family were shattered forever.

Kye and Nicole’s home had never been inundated before, and it had a flood basement designed to protect from this risk. As the torrential rain continued in that first week of February, this was doing what it was meant to do – collecting floodwater that had overflowed from the nearby lake, which Kye and Nicole were pumping out with electric pumps. They had also hired a petrol-driven pump, but only used this for a short period in the morning of 7 February to set it up and test that it would work if needed as a back-up.

All members of the family had been feeling unwell in the previous few days, but believed this was due to seasonal infections.

That evening, Kye took Zane with him to a local residents’ meeting calling for councillors to do more to protect vulnerable residents from the impacts of flooding. Afterwards, they returned home and Zane enjoyed the treat of watching the opening ceremony of the 2014 Winter Olympics on TV. 

After he had been put to bed, Kye used the bedroom next to his son’s to work on his computer. He and Nicole were taking it in turns to be on “floodwatch” during the night, to check that the electric pumps were working to protect their home.

At around 3.30am, Nicole checked on Zane and found he was not breathing. She tried desperately to resuscitate him while waiting for an ambulance but neither she nor the paramedics could revive him. Zane was pronounced dead in hospital a short time later.

A second ambulance crew found Kye unconscious and in cardiac arrest in the room where he had been working, less than two metres from Zane’s room. He regained consciousness in hospital but had lost all sensation and power in his legs. Kye was later told that he would never walk again.

Hydrogen Cyanide

Exactly what caused Zane’s death and left his father in a wheelchair was, two-and-a-half years later, the subject of an inquest that many now believe failed to properly examine the strong evidence that points towards a deadly chemical culprit: hydrogen cyanide, conducted into the family's home along with water from the nearby lake that had, unbeknown to them, previously been a landfill site for all manner of waste materials.

The coroner found that, “on the balance of probabilities”, Zane was killed by carbon monoxide from the petrol-driven pump, despite Kye and Nicole’s denials that this was used that night – and despite the fact that officers of Surrey Fire and Rescue Service’s specialist HAZMAT team, which arrived at the family’s home at 4:30am that morning, found that the pump was cold and showed no sign of recent use.

The HAZMAT team detected no unusual levels of carbon monoxide within the house, but its specialised equipment did detect hydrogen cyanide at potentially dangerous levels – not once but three times.

Several other anomalies throw doubt on the coroner’s conclusions.

The carbon monoxide found in Zane’s blood was well below levels that would normally be fatal or cause serious symptoms. The Environment Agency national incident recording system classified the 25,000ppm reading for hydrogen cyanide, as reported by the fire crew, as "very high", and Kye and Nicole were advised not to return to the house for over a year, even to collect belongings. And in July 2014, a leading neurophysiologist ascribed Kye’s paralysing condition as being “due to hydrogen cyanide”.

Since 2014, Kye and Nicole have fought tirelessly for a full, independent panel inquiry into what happened that night. They have gathered an impressive body of evidence as well as support from unions including the Fire Brigades Union, the Communication Workers’ Union and UNISON, environmental scientists, local councillors, and many prominent politicians including Keir Starmer, Andy Burnham, David Lammy, Jess Phillips, Jeremy Corbyn and Caroline Lucas.

A petition by the 'Truth About Zane’ campaign calling for an independent investigation has been signed by 118,000 people.

Earlier this month, an Early Day Motion signed by 32 MPs called for an independent panel inquiry with full powers to compel disclosure into Zane’s death. It noted that “the victims and bereaved in this case have been blamed, abused and scapegoated” and that there had been a “lack of proper investigation” with “masses of evidence undisclosed or ignored and a flawed judicial outcome”.

The MPs also drew attention to a particularly shocking aspect of the case: “Zane’s family were refused legal aid for his inquest, whilst legal support for public officials was paid from the public purse and the coroner received legal aid.” This denial of so-called 'parity of arms’ meant that Zane’s parents have been faced with a steeply unlevel playing field in legal terms.

'Ticking Time Bombs’

During the past few years, evidence has emerged that strongly suggests the landfill site next to the family’s home, which had later been turned into that pretty lake, had previously been used to dispose of highly toxic material.

In 2020, a Ministry of Defence whistleblower told the BBC that chemical waste from an MoD research facility had been dumped in metal drums into gravel pits around Chertsey, including the one from which floodwater entered Kye and Nicole’s home.

This tallied with evidence uncovered in planning documents for an aviation fuel pipeline, which revealed that a borehole sunk into the gravel pit in 1972 (before it was flooded later that decade) had struck “a metal canister... which released a substance that effervesced with water in the borehole and gave rise to an 'obnoxious smell’”.

What happened to Zane and his family in 2014 also highlights a growing danger faced by many others who live near old landfill sites.

In 2021, independent environmental analysts the ENDS Report found that there are around 21,000 such sites across England and Wales. Of these, 1,287 are categorised as containing waste that would be hazardous to human health if it escaped. Very few of these sites are known to have been properly lined to stop residues being released.

An earlier government study into the link between birth defects and proximity to landfill sites found that 80% of the British population lives with two kilometres of such a site (it also found that incidence of birth defects and low birth weight increased with proximity, though causation could not be established with certainty).

Mapping by the Ends Report shows that 9% of such potentially dangerous sites lie directly under housing and 4% under commercial areas containing shops and restaurants. A further 45% of such sites are under green spaces or parkland. Nearly 750 are within 500 metres of bodies of water and 1,364 are in zones at risk of tidal flooding.

Like Zane’s family, most people who live close to these sites have no idea that they are there or of the potential dangers they may pose. This is not surprising, as information about historic landfills is by no means easy to come by.

Although the Environment Agency keeps records, these are, by its own admission, “not detailed” and often it is simply not known what materials may have been buried within these sites. Nor, in many cases, is it clear who is responsible for making sure that they are safe.

Such landfills may contain anything from household waste to industrial sludge, asbestos, toxic mining waste, polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (linked to a range of cancers) and polychlorinated biphenyls (linked to altered thyroid and reproductive function and increased risk of cardiovascular and liver disease, and to diabetes). Some sites are even thought to contain toxic materials from the UK’s historic chemical weapons programme.

Dr Paul Johnston, a specialist in environmental toxicity at Exeter University’s Greenpeace Research Laboratories, has described these landfills as “ticking time bombs”, noting that: “With the climate crisis set to bring more flooding and coastal erosion to the UK, some of these sites are at even higher risk of leaking their toxic contents. This is a difficult and costly problem to tackle, but we're going to have to do it at some point, or there'll be some nasty surprises in store."

Earlier this month, it was revealed that research undertaken on “a number of different operational and closed landfills” for the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs and the Environment Agency had found 17 of these to be leaking highly toxic substances containing banned and potentially carcinogenic “forever chemicals” – in some cases at levels 260 times higher than is deemed safe for drinking water.

Zane’s Law

As the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill reached committee stage in the House of Lords last year, Green Party Baroness Natalie Bennett drew the attention of her fellow peers to plans to build homes on two former landfill sites known to have been used to dispose of highly toxic materials (in Coseley, near Dudley, and in the village of Somercotes in Derbyshire).

She sketched out the history of regulation of such sites, pointing out that “EU regulations on waste and pollution came in through the Environmental Protection Act 1990, tightening up controls. In particular, Section 143 provided an obligation for local authorities to investigate their area and draw up public registers of land that may be contaminated. Section 31 of that Act also gave local authorities powers to inspect and close landfills and clean them up if necessary”.

But, as the peer explained, these sections of the 1990 Act were never properly implemented, with the justification given for this being that it was about “the cost and desire not to place ‘new regulatory burdens’ on the private sector”. Later, the Cameron Government’s so-called “bonfire of red tape” had further reduced the right of authorities to use the law to enforce clean-up of these sites.

With this – and the horrific experience of Zane’s family – in mind, Baroness Bennett proposed an amendment to the Levelling-up and Regeneration Bill, which would place a duty on local authorities to report on land contamination in their areas, and for the Secretary of State to publish a nationwide review of the incidence of such contamination, identifying the resources and any legal changes needed to bring all potentially hazardous sites in England to safe levels.

Baroness Bennett proposed that this amendment be known as Zane’s Law.

It did not succeed in making it into the Act as passed but, with climate change driving an increasingly severe risk of flooding around such historic landfill sites, the need for stronger regulation is becoming ever more urgent.

“Surely, a basic duty of the Government is to ensure the security of people in their own homes, which, quite frankly, they are unable to do now because they are not empowering, directing and resourcing local authorities to ensure that they know what is in their land,” Baroness Bennett told the House of Lords.

This week, Zane’s parents have launched a petition for a change in the law, with Lewes Council becoming the first in England to pass a motion calling for a Zane’s Law.

Green Lewes councillor Imogen Makepeace said: “We hope that in passing this motion of support for Zane’s Law, our council will be paving the way for more local authorities to take up the call. Many thousands of people live near such potentially dangerous former landfill sites and are entirely unaware of the risks that they pose.”

Any change in the law will come too late for Zane and his family. But it can’t come soon enough for many others who face the growing risk from landfill’s toxic legacy.