While climate change indicators reach record levels, oil and gas expansion continues, through projects financed by large banks, particularly French ones…The dominant finance today remains in fact at odds with the objectives of social justice and climatic.
With his NGO Reclaim Finance Lucie Pinson works to convince financial institutions to stop investing in certain projects. And it works! Thanks to its mobilization several French financial groups have decided to get out of coal. After coal, she would like to get the banks out of gas and oil… What is her strategy? How does she go about interacting with financial giants? What are his next fights?
She looks back for us on her journey, her victories and her commitment to the climate fight, a fight that she never considers lost in advance as long as we continue to fight.
From South Africa to Friends of the Earth: the birth of a vocation
Coming from a background anchored to the left and resistant to employers, Lucie Pinson has always been predisposed to community and activist commitment. Her experience in South Africa, confronted with social injustice, reinforced her convictions. Back in France, she joined the alter-globalization movement and completed an internship at AITEC, where she discovered the importance of financial questions in development problems: “I realize that this is not going to suit me at all, that I don’t want to fall into the stereotype of the expatriate who lives in Africa completely disconnected from local realities and who acts in the place of the locals.”
This is how she joined Friends of the Earth and focused on the financing of fossil fuels, an under-exploited lever for action.
Earth squared Listen later
Lecture listen 55 min
Alpha Coal: an initiatory battle and a significant victory
In 2013, Lucie Pinson tackled the Alpha Coal project, a coal mine in Australia supported by Société Générale. “It’s a bit like my initiatory battle.“She denounces the disastrous environmental impact of the project and the responsibility of the French bank. She returns in particular to her fight, carried out in collaboration with the Basque association Bizi, as she says: “the challenge is major because the climate at that time is a non-issue. Coal, too.“
After a year and a half of mobilization, Société Générale withdrew from the project, a first important victory for Lucie Pinson.
Always looking for concrete victories
In fact, the activist keeps repeating it: “I’m obsessed with efficiency. We must fight effective battles“. Its strategy is based on the identification of achievable short-term objectives and on a gradual intensification of the balance of power. It obtains commitments from French banks to no longer finance coal projects in Australia, a significant step forward in the fight against the financing of fossil fuels.
Reclaim Finance: a new tool to target climate-killing finance
Building on her successes, Lucie Pinson created the NGO in 2020 Reclaim Financewhich focuses on financial players, “the blind spot in the fight against global warming“. His action earned him the Goldman Prize for the Environment in 2020, recognizing his unwavering commitment and victories against the financial powers fueling the climate crisis.
Car “We can win the climate war“, assures Lucie Pinson.
► Learn more about his career and his convictions, as well as his determined approach to the fight against global warming, by listening to his entire speech on Mathieu Vidard’s microphone.
