KR Foundation Newsletter
10 May 2023

Welcome to a new edition of KR Foundation’s newsletter

Our first board meeting of the year has just concluded and a total of 17 projects were approved for funding. We have highlighted a few of them below. Besides making grants to a range of impactful projects, there was a teary-eyed goodbye to two of KR Foundation’s board members who have been onboard since the foundation was established in 2014. Read about their accomplishments in this edition.
 
For more frequent updates and to stay tuned about events at Læderstræde 20, please follow us on LinkedIn.
 
 

If burned, the reserves in currently operating oil and gas fields would heat the world beyond 1.5C, even if coal was phased out overnight. This means there is no room for new oil and gas extraction, and some existing infrastructure will have to be retired early. Yet the oil and gas industry, supported by governments and investors, plans to expand production significantly. Adding fuel to the fire, Russia’s war in Ukraine is being used by producers as an opportunity to double down on a last-ditch push for gas and oil expansion around the world.
 
The Global Gas and Oil Network (GGON) is a network that has grown steadily over the last four years to more than 200 organizations across more than 50 countries on six continents working to address the continued expansion of the global oil and gas production. KR Foundation was among the initial funders of GGON in 2018 and has been involved in setting up the secretariat. This grant will support the growth of the GGON network and enable the secretariat to build capacity in communications, research, security, legal strategy and campaign development over the next two years.

Citibank is the world’s second largest financier of fossil fuels, having poured more than USD 332bn into fossil fuel projects from 2016-2022. It is also the largest financier of the state-sponsored destruction of the Amazon biome.
 
To shine a light on this and get Citibank to change its course on fossil fuel finance, Stand.earth is launching a global campaign. In partnership with KR Foundation grantee The Sunrise Project, Stand.earth will use science-based research to demonstrate the impacts that Citibank’s investments have on climate change, environmental degradation and frontline communities and address the financial risks that are connected to fossil fuel finance. 
 
The campaign will leverage the momentum in the current Climate Finance movement, where big commitments from major institutions in the past year have been driving global total divestment to more than 1,590 commitments with assets totaling more than USD 40tr.

The marketing, advertising, and PR industry drives behavior and influences the public agenda. High carbon clients, including oil and gas firms, rely on the power of the “influence industries” to ensure public acceptance and grow their business. Meanwhile, there is a growing movement calling for change – to divest from oil and gas and stop the influence industries work for big polluters.
 
Creatives for Climate is a global not-for-profit network of thousands of creative industry professionals committed to using their creativity for good. Through community and capacity building, Creatives for Climate help industry professionals tackle greenwashing and find opportunities to drive action.
 
Creatives for Climate focus on three core pillars of activity: 1) Creating connections between industry professionals and facilitating both on- and offline community activities. 2) Workshops and training to provide new skill-sets to people in the creative industry. 3) Creative impact campaigns that mobilize public support for divesting both talent and money from the high carbon industries.

Law firms representing the fossil fuel industry play a significant role in perpetuating the climate crisis. Between 2017 and 2021, top law firms in the US took on 420 lawsuits on behalf of fossil fuel companies and facilitated more than USD 1.62tr in fossil fuel transactions, while the percentage of pro bono environmental law work within corporate law departments dropped from 6 pct. in 2012 to 2 pct. in 2020.
 
Law Students for Climate Accountability (LSCA) is a law student movement pushing the legal industry to phase out fossil fuel representation. LSCA has grown into a large network of climate-conscious law students mobilizing across the United States. LSCA works with three interconnected approaches: 1) Expose work that law firms do for the fossil fuel industry and facilitate a debate about it. 2) Engage and organize law students and lawyers that are interested in climate change issues. 3) Get law firms to commit to ethical standards for their work and, and ultimately, phase out fossil fuel-enabling work.

Climate misinformation is a big obstacle to effective climate action. The United Nations has warned that “Rampant disinformation is delaying climate action”, and the latest report from the UN’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) notes that: “Vested interests have generated rhetoric and misinformation that undermines climate science and disregards risk and urgency” resulting in “public misperception of climate risks and polarised public support for climate actions”.
 
The UK-based Stop Funding Heat campaign aims to defund climate misinformation in the media by supporting and growing a grassroots movement that encourages brands to pull advertising from media that promote climate misinformation. The idea for The Stop Funding Heat campaign has grown out of the successful Stop Funding Hate campaign, which has had great success with this approach in curbing hate speech in the media. Stop Funding Heat will start its campaign in the UK and later scale to other countries.

Poland is a critical nation in the geopolitics of climate action. As a large economy at the heart of the world’s biggest trading bloc, it has the power to shape European policy and lead coalitions of nation-states within Europe. Climate misinformation is rampant in Polish media, making it hard for decision makers and citizens to have an informed conversation about climate change solutions. A recent report shows that out of over 800 climate-related news articles published in just five months, one out of three contained misinformation. The situation is aggravated by the fact that from 2021 the biggest oil company owns the publishing giant Polska Press, which includes 20 regional dailies and over 500 online news platforms.

Climate Strategies Poland Foundation (CSP) is working to curb climate disinformation in Poland by supporting and educating journalists and civil society leading up to the parliamentary elections in Poland in 2023. The organization works with a range of partners from the Polish civil society such as The Demagog Association, Climate Science Portal, and other local organizations, activists, fact-checkers and experts. Together with these partners, Climate Strategies Poland will work to ensure a public debate about climate change that is fact-based and focused on energy solutions that can drive a green transition aligned with the goals of the Paris Agreement.

The parliamentary election in Denmark on 1 November 2022 brought about a new political landscape in Denmark, with a majority government consisting of parties from both sides of the political spectrum. The election result is a major change in Danish politics and will potentially have a significant impact on Danish climate policy.

Foreningen Klimaindsigt (Climate Insights) will work to get a better understanding of how the Danish population thinks and feels about climate change issues in the wake of the election and examine the level of support for new ambitious climate initiatives. Through extensive data collection and subsequent segmentation, the project will update a previous analysis they have done that mapped how Danes feel and think about climate change issues. This previous analysis has been an integral part of KR Foundation grantee DeltagerDanmark's ongoing work in the 70by30 project and the updated knowledge will contribute to further strengthening and qualifying DeltagerDanmark's work in mobilizing for climate action.