Sustainable Banking and Investing for Individuals Spiritual and Practical Ideas | Baha'i Panel

“Be anxiously concerned with the needs of the age ye live in, and center your deliberations on its exigencies and requirements.” -Bahá’u’lláh This webinar covers how to concretely apply spiritual principles of social and environmental justice to personal banking and investing (asset management) choices. Attendees will be introduced to the concepts of ‘ESG’ (environmental, social and governance metrics) as they apply to finance and the economy and the ways by which personal banking deposits and asset management investments are leveraged for social and environmental harm and good. Spiritual texts such as those from the Bahá’í Faith will be used. There will also be a practical discussion of available resources to support aligning one’s own banking and investing with faith-based principles of justice. Uniting spiritual & material progress No matter how far the material world advances, it cannot establish the happiness of mankind. Only when material and spiritual civilization are linked and coordinated will happiness be assured. Then material civilization will not contribute its energies to the forces of evil in destroying the oneness of humanity, for in material civilization good and evil advance together and maintain the same pace. For example, consider the material progress of man in the last decade. Schools and colleges, hospitals, philanthropic institutions, scientific academies and temples of philosophy have been founded, but hand in hand with these evidences of development, the invention and production of means and weapons for human destruction have correspondingly increased…. All this is the outcome of material civilization; therefore, although material advancement furthers good purposes in life, at the same time it serves evil ends…. If the moral precepts and foundations of divine civilization become united with the material advancement of man, there is no doubt that the happiness of the human world will be attained and that from every direction the glad tidings of peace upon earth will be announced. Then humankind will achieve extraordinary progress, the sphere of human intelligence will be immeasurably enlarged, wonderful inventions will appear, and the spirit of God will reveal itself; all men will consort in joy and fragrance, and eternal life will be conferred upon the children of the Kingdom…. Therefore, the material and the divine, or merciful, civilizations must progress together until the highest aspirations and desires of humanity shall become realized. Abdu’l-Bahá, The Promulgation of Universal Peace, p.151-152 E-S-G Take from this world only to the measure of your needs, and forego that which exceedeth them. Observe equity in all your judgements, and transgress not the bounds of justice, nor be of them that stray from its path. Baha’u’llah, The Summons of the Lord of Hosts, p. 194 Financial Injustice: Roots of the Banking Industry - Wall Street - 1711-1850s On December 14, 1711 – a law passed by the New York City Common Council made Wall Street the city’s first official slave market for the sale and rental of enslaved Africans and Native Americans. NY received 40% of US cotton revenue through money its financial firms, shipping businesses and insurance companies earned. Roots of the Insurance Industry - 1800s Slave owners could purchase life insurance on their slaves and be paid ¾ of their market value upon their death. These insurance companies, including modern household names New York Life, Aetna, and U.S. Life, were just some of the many northern corporations whose fortunes were bound up with slavery. The Homestead Act of 1862 Offered 160 acres of expropriated Indigenous land west of the Mississippi to any citizen or person eligible for citizenship (which, after the 1790 Naturalization Act, was only white immigrants) if they could reach the land and build on it. An estimated 46 million people are propertied descendants of Homestead Act beneficiaries. This report adds up financing (lending, and underwriting of debt and equity issuances) from the world’s 60 biggest banks for the fossil fuel sector as a whole, as well as for top expanders of the fossil fuel industry and top companies in specific sectors. Fossil fuel financing from the world’s 60 largest banks has reached USD $4.6 trillion in the six years since the adoption of the Paris Agreement, with $742 billion in fossil fuel financing in 2021 alone. Overall fossil fuel financing remains dominated by four U.S. banks — JPMorgan Chase, Citi, Wells Fargo, and Bank of America — who together account for one quarter of all fossil fuel financing identified over the last six years.