Yesterday, during Barclays Annual General Meeting, climate activities at BankTrack put pressure on the bank to stop financing the meat, fossil fuel and biomass sectors. 

The focus of Barclays AGM this year is their recently published “Say on Climate” plan, which details how the bank plans on fulfilling its commitment of two years ago to become net zero by 2050 across all direct and indirect emissions and align all of its financing activities with the goals and timelines of the Paris Agreement. As detailed in BankTrack’s blog post,  Barclays has made no commitments to introduce policies on industrial livestock companies or drop clients that repeatedly fail to fulfil climate or deforestation commitments. As activists disrupted the meeting, shareholders were in attendance, voting on the bank’s climate plan. Almost 20% of shareholders rejected the bank’s plan, which is, as The Guardian describes, “an embarrassing blow to Barclays’ climate credentials.”