Click here to sign now - Tell Citi: Don’t Invest in Environmental Racism
In October 2023, Indigenous and frontline leaders met with staff of Citi, the world's second largest funder of fossil fuel projects behind JP Morgan Chase, to demand the bank stop financing fossil fuel projects that exacerbate environmental racism and make climate change worse.
Citi could be asked to finance the ‘Sunshine Project’, a $12 billion petrochemical plant in St. James Parish, Louisiana. The 2400-acre complex would manufacture the building blocks of single-use plastics and other materials, increasing local pollution by 800 tons annually and greenhouse gas emissions by 13.6 million tons annually. The construction of the plant would also destroy the burial grounds of enslaved ancestors of some of the current population of St. James Parish.
During the meeting frontline leaders shared lived experiences, firsthand impacts, and calls for solutions directly with Citi staff. But Citi has still not responded to these requests.
Citi claims to screen projects that raise environmental justice concerns, but fossil fuel projects disproportionately affect Black and Indigenous communities, and lie at the heart of racial injustice in the United States by generating toxic air and water pollution, as well as greenhouse gas emissions that drive the global climate crisis.
Formosa Plastics has been named a ‘serial offender’ for its disregard of the environment and human lives around the world. In Vietnam, a steel plant owned by the company released toxic chemicals into the ocean, destroying marine life and leaving the local fishing community destitute. To this day, many victims have not been compensated and the environment has not been restored. Formosa Plastics’ Point Comfort, Texas plant was given a zero discharge of plastic mandate following a $50 million Clean Water Act settlement – the facility has been tested three times a week since June 2021 and it has failed every single test.
If Citi is serious about supporting the transition to a responsible and sustainable low-carbon economy, it will stop investing in all fossil fuel projects, including petrochemical plants like the Formosa Plastics’ ‘Sunshine Project’.
Add your name to demand Citi denounce, divest and defund Formosa Plastics’ toxic and racist ‘Sunshine Project’ in St. James, Louisiana.