Quezon City, 9 May 2023—Greenpeace today called on stockholders of Shell Pilipinas to heed the call of climate impacted communities and stop being complicit to climate destruction brought on by Shell’s fossil fuel operations.
The call came as Shell Pilipinas Corporation held their Annual General Stockholders’ Meeting following 2022’s record high profits of its global parent company, Shell plc. Greenpeace says that companies like Shell, which hold a lion’s share of the responsibility for climate emissions, continue to profit from climate-change causing extraction and production and have repeatedly flouted the warnings of the scientists to rapidly exit fossil fuels. Greenpeace also sent copies of the Commission on Human Rights’ landmark National Inquiry on Climate Change (NICC) report to Shell Pilipinas Corporation’s top stockholders, to spotlight the message that climate impacts from fossil fuel operations causes human rights harms to communities.
“Greenpeace is calling on Shell to immediately halt expansion and pay for reparations for losses and damages from climate impacts,” said Greenpeace campaigner Jefferson Chua. “We are also calling its stockholders to stop supporting Shell’s expansion, call for the company’s alignment to the 1.5 commitment of the Paris Agreement, and ensure Shell pays for the harms it has brought and continues to bring to communities, particularly in the Philippines.”
Letters and the full report were sent to the offices of The Insular Life Assurance Company, LTD., Spathodea Campanulata Inc., Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, and Metropolitan Bank & Trust Company, among others as they began their meeting online. Shell Pilipinas’ PHP 4.08 billion in profits reflect the upward trend of fossil fuel earnings around the world, which comes alongside ballooning inflation and skyrocketing living standards, brought about in part by disruptions in global fuel supply, and the aggressive expansion of industries following the Covid pandemic. The company plans to expand their market in the country through 2025 with even more investment in climate emissions-causing fossil fuels, primarily fossil gas (called liquefied natural gas or LNG), whose expensive import and operational costs will lock the country into fossil fuels for another 30-40 years.
Early this year, the biggest fossil fuel companies, including Shell, Exxon Mobil, British Petroleum, and Chevron, announced historic profit records for 2022, with the fossil industry as a whole earning USD 4 trillion for 2022, at a crucial decade when scientists are calling for the immediate phase out of fossil fuels in order to prevent runaway climate change. Greenpeace believes that these companies must: 1) acknowledge its disproportionate role in historical carbon emissions and commit to a just transition away from fossil fuels; 2) stop all fossil fuel expansion; and 3) pay up for the economic and non-economic loss and damages caused by climate impacts.
Meanwhile, the Philippines continues to lose billions of pesos yearly to climate impacts. Last November 2022, the World Bank estimated that aside from substantial human costs, the climate crisis is expected to reduce the country’s GDP by as much as 13.6 percent by 2040, with the poorest households most affected. Meanwhile, another study has projected that the Philippines stands to lose USD 124 billion in water-related disasters such as floods and storms by 2050, as climate impacts increase.
“Fossil fuel companies must be held responsible for the harms brought on by climate impacts. By continuing to prioritize profit over people and the planet, Shell blatantly ignores the recommendations given by the Commission on Human Rights and the world’s leading climate scientists, and continues to do what it does best: turning a blind eye on—and profiting from—the collective pain of the most vulnerable ,” says Chua. “We urge Shell’s stockholders to be on the right side of history: don’t be complicit in climate catastrophe, make Shell own up, and pay up!”
Media Contact:
Katrina Eusebio-Santillan, Digital CampaignerGreenpeace Philippines| [email protected] | +639992296451