Words by Justine Cerna
“Should the University of Western Australia divest from fossil fuel companies?”
That was the million-dollar question at the centre of a collegial discussion on divestment held on Tuesday 4th of October, the latest in a series of events concerning UWA’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry.
Facilitated by the UWA Climate Change Community of Practice and keynoted by Professor Raymond Da Silva (Chair of the Academic Board), Bec Perse (convenor of Fossil Free UWA), and Professor Alex Gardner (Faculty of Law), the event provided a platform for the parties to present their stance on divestment at UWA.
It has come just a few weeks after the UWA Student Guild announced this year’s election referendum result, in which 83% of participants voted YES in response to the question: “Should the University of Western Australia (UWA) take action on the climate crisis by divesting from fossil fuels (i.e., exclude fossil fuel companies from its investment portfolio)?”
The meeting was not without some uncomfortable moments, with student representatives and staff united on the issue of transparency (or rather, the lack of it) from UWA regarding its investment portfolio. There was also concern that in maintaining the status quo, UWA would fall behind the times and be on the wrong side of history.
Below is a summary of the standpoints presented by each party to those in attendance, as well as excerpts from the held question time.
The Academic Board: “We’ve got to stay in the game.”
Speaking on behalf of the University as Chair of the Academic Board, Professor Da Silva began by acknowledging the growing dissent amongst students and staff concerning UWA’s relationship with the fossil fuel industry, stating that: “Activism is a legitimate form of engagement, and that concerned parties should not be dismissed.” Thus acknowledged, Professor Da Silva proceeded to what is presumably the university’s view on the ‘Aims and effectiveness of divestment’. Exploring the idea beyond the context of universities and looking to big business, referencing articles from the Washington Post, The Sunday Morning Herald, and the Australian Financial Review, Da Silva seemed to say that divestment is not the answer to the world’s problems. In light of this, he concluded, it would be better if the university focused its energies on transition efforts.
Fossil Free UWA: The student’s case for fossil fuel divestment
Bec Perse (a chemical engineering/German studies student and convenor of FFUWA) gave the students’ perspective on divestment, concentrating on global trends pertinent to universities. Seeing divestment as a means to bring about social change in the revoke of social license, the case for divestment included current plans at Harvard and Cambridge (arguably two of the biggest dogs in the university game) to divest from fossil fuels.
With resounding support from the student body and formal recognition of the referendum result by the Student Guild, Bec emphasised FFUWA’s three demands contained in “The Case for Divestment.”
1. Publicly and fully divest from Carbon Underground 200 by the 30th of June 2026.
2. Develop a Divestment Roadmap within the Sustainability Strategy.
3. Publicly take active leadership by making climate-positive investments and ceasing any new carbon-intensive investments.
Bec said to the university that they have an opportunity to lead the divestment movement in WA.
A Law Professor’s assessment: “That’s our problem – we are not keeping up.”
Providing a nuanced perspective as a legal expert and staff member involved in the divestment conversations of 2015, Professor Alex Gardner was unambiguous in his messaging – the university’s investment approach is not good enough. The main problem concerns the university’s election of Mercer (an asset management firm) to handle its investment portfolio. Further, the university’s Investment Policy lacks “goals and definition of process” and does not currently rule out new investments into fossil fuels.
Other issues concern the opacity surrounding the university’s investment portfolio, as well as converse industrial investment in selected schools (i.e. Woodside’s presence in UWA’s Business School). This, the professor points out, recalls two of the three requests from staff and post-graduates made in 2015, which asked the university to:
- ‘Investigate and disclose its investments in companies whose primary business is the exploration, extraction, processing, and transportation of fossil fuels; and
- Report on the university’s policies for future management of its financial and academic investments in the fossil fuels industries.’
The university remains uncommunicative despite repeated calls for transparency. To this, the professor simply asks: “Why not publish information?”
Question Time:
The significant turnout (21 students and 11 staff) saw a robust discussion on issues raised in the presentations. Below are select parts addressing UWA’s relationship with Mercer, academic advice on transition research and nuanced policy approaches, and relationships between the represented groups.
A staff or student speaker will be designated ‘Floor’, with affiliated groups noted where possible.
Is UWA doing enough?
Floor (Student Guild): What is (UWA’s) path forward?
Da Silva: We work with Mercer. I do wonder if the 2050 commitment is conservative. Another discussion we are going to have is when UWA investment management will explain how investing works. Hopefully, they will come.
Floor (Student Guild): What is Mercer doing regarding transition?
Da Silva: Not doing anything special [like Blackrock].
Floor (Student FFUWA): Do you think Mercer is actively engaging with the goals [set out in the Paris Agreement]? Are they planning to do it fast enough?
Da Silva: That’s a valid question, that we ask how they are doing.
Floor: I wonder if UWA has a good line of sight over Mercer?
Da Silva: It’s as good as any committee can have. But these companies are good at hiding their tracks.
Floor (Student Guild): Why is the university hesitant to be open about its investment portfolio?
Da Silva: That’s a great point – maybe we should [be more open]. University’s finances are notoriously opaque at all levels.
Floor (Student FFUWA): What will it take for the institution to listen to students? (Referencing the cuts) will we have to protest?
Da Silva: If you think we are not listening, it’s clear we have a problem.
Floor (Staff): It strikes me that Mercer is fudging its commitment to its goals. If the goal is divestment, should we be thinking about the social license granted with companies like Woodside investing in schools at UWA? (Taken as a comment).
Floor: Can you provide an example where Mercer has had success with investor activism?
Da Silva: No.
Floor (University): [to Bec Perse] “No WA university has divested. Why do you think that is?
Bec: WA is resource-heavy. Maybe there are perception problems with divestment in practice, but as to not changing… not enough student activity? WA is behind in the time zones – things take a bit longer.
Floor (Student Guild): Fossil fuels have a lot of influence in the university. If we do divest, what is the replacement for that funding?
Gardner: Good question. Right now, the state government is investing in hydrogen (e.g. FMG with diesel to hydro technology), with a transition plan to move those people to other jobs. A similar thing could happen in the university space.
Floor (Student Guild): Does UWA face reputation damage if it doesn’t divest?
Da Silva: Yes, that is often a threat, that we will lose [students] and your name is in the mud.
Gardner: In 2019, we organised a symposium on this, and several people were concerned with the various bits of publicity [associated with] the vice-chancellor and the university, with our significant investments in fossil fuels. Now, if the whole of the community was it? I couldn’t say, but it was very clear that there are already people concerned about the reputation. And I think it extends to our courses. You know, we don’t do well enough in educating our students about climate change, mitigation, and adaptation. We should do far better. And some students will choose to go to universities because they are doing it. That’s another aspect.
Floor (Student): You said it’s a [lengthy] process to transition. Why do you think the universities’ goals are not sooner?
Gardner: Well, I think there are two issues. The university is invested in its own campus’ sustainability. I’m sorry; others can speak to this far better than I can. Uh, though, toying with carbon neutral by 25, I’m not sure if that is being retained?
Geraldine Tan (Manager, Energy and Sustainability at UWA): I can speak to this. Well, operations will be done by 2025. It started with energy neutral, which is probably 80% of our scope two. Still, a little bit of work to do there. But all our scope two will be covered by 2025, and we still have scope three by 2040. So, we are doing work in that space.
Gardner: To answer the question, we are doing well in some aspects, but on the investment policy, as you can see, my analysis is that we’re not doing well. And other criteria are clearly there globally. They’re being adopted by major industry players, including some that interact with UWA. And yet, we haven’t seem to have got so far as actually making a clear commitment.
And, you know, I would say – that transition is an investment. It’s a community divestment from fossil fuels. Some of it will be, um, perhaps net zero.
I actually support the paper and the ideas put forward. I just think there’s a degree of nuance in how you achieve them. And, of course, it does present you with a challenge if and if we say to those research partners who are investing in research and education at UWA, we want you to be committed to the Paris stream of goals meaningfully – that presents you with an interesting challenge.
Bec (FFUWA): And Alex, just responding to what you said: If a company that we have a research partnership with doesn’t listen to us when we say: “We want you to be more sustainable,” what’s the next thing that you do? How do you actually motivate a company to genuinely change the statement without calling it out?
Gardner: Well, there are examples from Macquarie University. About a week, or two ago, they said our students will not participate in Santos’ Science Experience. We’ll do our own. Thank you very much.
“A Complex Problem”
Floor (Staff Professor Christophe Gaudin from UWA Oceans Institute): Just one question; few comments. What do you think is going to be the response of companies like Insight that invest massively into research and infrastructure?
Garnder: I think they’ll probably carry out their own divestment.
Gaudin: Yeah, exactly. I think it’s a very complex problem to some extent. I’ll talk about our group and the experience we have [as ocean engineers]; we communicate with the gas industry. I used to be the head of the Ocean School, the ocean engineering group, and the director of Ocean Institute. Ten years ago, we started that shift in focusing our research on offshore renewable energy. At the time, about 70% of our funding was from the oil and gas industries – about 70%-80% of our activity is on offshore renewables. So what the fossil fuel industry does without knowing it’s actually subsidising the research on offshore renewables and clean energy but that wouldn’t be able to be done without these investments. So, it’s a very complex problem.
The second point is that we talk about fossil fuel companies as if [they] were a homogenous group, and it’s not at all. You know, some of them are still kind of in denial, you know, totally oblivious to climate change. Some of them actually have very aggressive transition agendas into transforming themselves into renewable energy companies. So, that raises the question of if we want to be part of a transition that sees them through that process, thinking actually that we got a role to play as an academic institution in supporting our partners into that or whether we need to divest completely.
Yeah, so it’s not black and white. I think it’s quite grey and we need some judgment into that to understand the consequences. That’s a rational part of myself as a senior leader in the university. And then as a citizen, you know, that looks at what’s happening in the world, and so you add some numbers, and it’s actually worse than that, you know, by far we are not doing enough, and we are doing it too late…
Interrogating Woodside
Floor (Student FFUWA): (To Gaudin) So you bring up that we don’t want to risk upsetting Woodside. We get a lot of money from Woodside that goes towards good research that can help with renewables and green energy. But I think most of us would agree that Woodside has been presented with really strong science as to why not to go ahead with Scarborough and made the decision to do so regardless. And, so, I wonder how confident people feel that continuing to do research will change things? How much of a role does that research have in swaying companies like Woodside to do the right thing?
I don’t feel confident enough that keeping those ties to have the money to do the research will be beneficial.
Gaudin: You’re right. And I was not saying we shouldn’t divest. I was just analysing the conversation and listing all the potential consequences. I wish the government of Australia, like many European governments – also European Commission – was investing massively into renewable energy. When we fight to get one million in research funding, our colleagues in Europe get twenty. And so it’s a totally different game they are playing compared to what we are playing here.
I’m not saying that we shouldn’t. I’m just saying it has consequences. We need to understand exactly what it means for the research landscape in Australia.
Floor (Staff): Do we invest in Woodside? And then the second question, or maybe this is taking us into the statement space – going to your point that it’s bad news if we no longer engage with Woodside, there aren’t other opportunities, but the kind of investments we’re seeing in, you know, green minerals in the state of Western Australia. We have some of the greenest mineral assets in the world. There are huge opportunities, but we’re all treating it like it’s all bad news.
So I think we actually have to ask ourselves how willing are we to continue that kind of acceptance that fossil fuels are part of life when we allow it in universities and make it acceptable for students. Cause it’s a sign on the business school saying, you know, “Woodside’s part of who we are, right?” So I think we have to ask ourselves serious questions because, you know, I have a three-year-old, and I think to myself, well you know, I’m passing on a pretty shitty planet and my employer is actually part of that problem?
Da Silva: Look, we don’t directly invest in Woodside, that’s for sure. Um, whether we invest in one of their funds… if we invest in a lesser fund, uh, that’s where we are at.
Students and the University
Bec Perse (FFUWA): A question to you, Ray: Given the amount of student interest in those investments to the referendum and the attendance here today, do you see any role opening up for a student advisory group for the investments?
Da Silva: Look, I can’t speak for the whole university.