Fifty academics from Edinburgh University have signed an open letter calling for the institution to divest its £230m endowment fund from fossil fuels and the arms trade.

The letter, to Edinburgh vice-chancellor Prof Sir Timothy O’Shea, is published in advance of a meeting on Monday of the university committee responsible for recommending options for fossil fuel divestment. It is convening for the last time before the university’s central management group makes its decision on divestment in April.

The letter states: “Our continued investment in fossil fuels and arms, combined with the futility of shareholder engagement, constitutes inaction on climate change and human conflict across the globe. It is time that we stop thinking in terms of the risk of divestment and lead the way in creating a sustainable and secure future.”

Dr Aaron Thierry, who studies the impact of climate change in the Arctic at Edinburgh’s School of Geosciences, said that the letter showed there was strong feeling amongst staff as well as students. “It’s important that academic staff show their support for this campaign. Investment in fossil fuels is not in line with the values of this institution and we should be leading by example.”

This marks the culmination of a three-year campaign by students, who successfully pushed the university to divest from military drone manufacturer Ultra Electronics in 2013.

It comes after Glasgow University became the first academic institution in Europe to divest from the fossil fuel industry last October, voting to begin divesting £18m from the fossil fuel industry and freeze new investments across its entire endowment of £128m.



At the time, American environmentalist Bill McKibben described the Glasgow result as “a dramatic beachhead for the divestment movement”, saying that it sent a powerful signal that Europe would be “just as powerful in this fight as Australia and North America”. The University of Edinburgh’s endowment fund is the third largest in the UK.

Founded in 2011 across just half a dozen US college campuses, the student-led global divestment movement has gained remarkable traction over a relatively short period of time. A study by Oxford University last autumn found that it had grown faster than any previous divestment campaign, including those relating to apartheid, armaments and tobacco.

Ric Lander, finance campaigner for Friends of the Earth Scotland, welcomed the academics’ letter. “Our academics are right to urge universities to stop investing in dirty fossil fuels: centres of learning exist to tackle global challenges, not profit from global destruction,” he said. “ The environmental rationale for divestment is crystal clear and the economic case for taking your money out of fossil fuels is growing by the day.”