Banks can easily be seen as the evil opposition to environmental concerns since they only seem to care about money. But there are many banks that take the environment and sustainability seriously. They have agreed to the Equator Principles. There are 10 of them.
The first seven are all about finding out the environmental and social impacts and figuring out how to ease them and letting people know what it coming. These are all well and good but without follow-up after the project is done, they mean nothing. And that is where the final 3 principles come in. Covenants, which are parts of the financing contract and prescribe what can be done is number eight. Nine and ten are all about making sure that the covenants created are being followed and there is also annual reporting about how well everyone is doing.
This all sounds great. But which banks have signed up to follow these Equator Principles?
Of the top 15 North American banks , these subscribe to the Equator Principles (with rankings in parentheses): Citigroup (1), Bank of America (2), JP Morgan Chase (3), Wachovia (4), Wells Fargo (6), Royal Bank of Canada (7), Toronto-Dominion Bank (9), and Canadian Imperial Bank of Canada (12). There is a lot of money on this list saying “Yes” to the environment.
Is your bank on the list?
(A quick thanks to John (mdllp.net), an environmental lawyer for the heads up on this.)
