Campaign timeline - Cities
Note: Please see our separate campaign timelines for:
2020
September: eThekwini/Durban announces that it will divest.
2019
September: Cape Town’s deputy mayor, Ian Neilson, addresses the global divestment conference, Financing the Future.
2018
19 June: The City of Cape Town’s Mayoral Committee “approved an amendment that bans the City from investing in instruments with high carbon dioxide emissions. Effectively, this policy will divert from the use of fossil fuel assets and companies”. (But in the same week, the City “signed a new grant agreement with a US Trade and Development Agency (USTDA) last week to study the effective use of natural gas distribution networks”.)
2017
19 June: After nine months of joint representations from FFSA and 350 Africa, the City of Cape Town commits to fossil fuel divestment. Mayor Patricia de Lille:
I am taking this a step further and I have informed our Finance Directorate that we are going to divest from fossil fuel assets and companies in favour of greener and cleaner investments which are in line with our vision of a sustainable future. We are going to instruct investors looking after our money not to put our money into fossil fuel-related companies or for it to be used to fund the development of dirty and unsustainable projects. We want our investments to be aligned with our principles of resilience and sustainability.