National Trust urged to ditch Barclays
The National Trust is Europe’s biggest conservation charity, protecting more than 780 miles of coastline, 250,000 hectares of land and more than 500 historic houses and parks across England, Northern Ireland and Wales. It announced in 2019 that it would stop investing in fossil fuels because of climate change. But it still banks with Barclays, which campaign groups say is Europe’s largest funder of fossil fuel projects and companies. The FT reports that Dominic Acland, the grandson of a key National Trust donor, has written to the organisation’s financial director three times in the past year to urge the charity to cut its ties to the bank. Barclays aims to be a “net zero bank” by 2050, but has not followed rivals in announcing restrictions on oil and gas lending.
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