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GVs of The Wellcome Collection and Institute and interiors of it's reception. Euston Road London.
The Wellcome Trust has refused to divest all of its fossil fuel assets but sold off ExxonMobil oil investment in January 2015. Photograph: Sarah Lee for The Guardian
The Wellcome Trust has refused to divest all of its fossil fuel assets but sold off ExxonMobil oil investment in January 2015. Photograph: Sarah Lee for The Guardian

Wellcome Trust sold off £94m ExxonMobil oil investment

This article is more than 9 years old

However, medical charity refuses to divest all fossil fuel assets and despite calling climate change ‘one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health’ just 0.9% of £3.5bn it awarded over five years went to climate change work

The Wellcome Trust has quietly sold off a $138m (£94m) investment in ExxonMobil, the oil giant which previously funded climate change denial, the Guardian can reveal. But the medical charity, which says “climate change is one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health”, has refused to divest all its fossil fuel assets, as called for in a Guardian campaign launched on Monday.

Doctors and Wellcome Trust grant recipients labelled this stance contradictory and called for full divestment. The UN World Health Organisation (WHO) said health professionals should take a leading role in fighting climate change and that divestment by the Wellcome Trust would be in line with calls from UN secretary general Ban Ki-moon to cut such investments.

Existing fossil fuel reserves are several times greater than can be burned if the world’s governments are to fulfil their pledge to keep global warming below the danger limit of 2C, but coal, oil and gas companies continue to spend billions on exploration. The fast-growing divestment movement argues that fossil fuel investments are a threat to both the climate and investors, as action to combat climate change could render the fuel reserves worthless.

The Wellcome Trust is the world’s second biggest non-governmental funder of medical research and is dedicated to improving global health, most recently leading the fight against the ebola epidemic in west Africa. It declines to reveal the full extent of its fossil fuel investments, but in 2014 its £18bn endowment included over £450m invested in the fossil fuel majors Shell, BP, Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton alone.

The chair of Wellcome’s board of governors, Sir William Castell, set out the Trust’s position in a letter to the medical campaign group Medact in 2014: “The Wellcome Trust considers climate change to be one of the greatest contemporary challenges to global health. We have made understanding the connections between environment, nutrition and health one of our five key research challenges.”

But the Guardian can reveal just 0.9% of the £3.5bn given out by the Wellcome Trust over the last five years was dedicated to this key challenge. Castell is a former senior director of BP and chaired the oil company’s safety committee at the time of the Deepwater explosion in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010.

Sir William Castell, Chairman of the Wellcome Trust Photograph: Julian Makey/Rex Features

A spokeswoman for the Wellcome Trust said climate change and health was “a highly complex issue which we take seriously in our decisions and on which we engage with policy-makers, researchers and the businesses in which we invest.”

Wellcome argues engaging with the fossil fuel companies it invests in “offers a better prospect for change than divestment”, but it declines to give examples of its engagement.

A spokeswoman said Castell had no conflict of interest: “He has, and has had, no material interest that would exclude him from discussing wider investment policy in the energy sector.” His directorship at BP ended in 2012.

“Climate change poses the single biggest threat to the health of humanity over the next few decades,” said Dr David McCoy, director of Medact and a former NHS director of public health. “It is already causing deaths, ill health and suffering. The Wellcome Trust’s acknowledgement that climate change is a very serious public health issue is contradicted by their investment policy. I am absolutely sure that within the Wellcome Trust and among their grant holders there are many, many people who want to divest from fossil fuels.”

Dr Taavi Tillmann, at University College London and whose research into heart disease in eastern Europe is funded by the Wellcome Trust, said: “I really think the Wellcome Trust should divest from fossil fuels. It makes perfect sense, as health organisations have already divested from other sectors which are thought of as unethical, like tobacco.”

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“We take the precautionary principle very seriously in the health sector and the risk of climate change to health invokes that principle,” Tillmann said. “We have the right and responsibility to invoke that principle, and to speak out and take action.”

“The World Health Organisation is very much convinced that health professionals should take a leading role in fighting climate change,” said Dr Maria Neira, the WHO’s director of public health and the environment and a former health minister in Spain. “It is clear from the global perspective that we have to stimulate companies to disinvest from fossil fuels. Our secretary general Ban Ki-moon has been very strong on urging companies - and the Wellcome Trust could be one of those - to reduce their investments in fossil fuel.”

In February, a coalition of medical groups including Medact issued a report arguing that the health sector, including the Wellcome Trust, should not be helping to fund the harm they exist to tackle. The British Medical Association, which represents UK doctors, voted to divest from fossil fuels in June 2014.

The Wellcome Trust is a “transparent” investor, according to Castell, but only publishes its 30 largest holdings in its annual reports. Its investment in ExxonMobil was revealed in regulatory filings to the US Securities and Exchange Commission filed in January. The Wellcome Trust said the investment was sold in January, but did not give a reason.

Many senior figures and institutions in the financial world, including the World Bank, Bank of England, HSBC, Goldman Sachs and Standard and Poor’s, have warned that only a fraction of known fossil fuel reserves can be safely burned and that the remainder could plummet in value posing huge risks to investors. Norway’s sovereign wealth fund, the world’s richest, revealed on Friday it had dumped over 50 coal companies.

Over 180 institutions around the world, including pension funds, cities, universities and faith groups, have already divested and the Go Fossil Free campaign received a significant boost on Sunday, when it received the support of the UN organisation in charge of global climate change negotiations.

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