Stand.earth Wins 2023 Keeling Curve Prize from Global Warming Mitigation Project

The Global Warming Mitigation Project has named Stand.earth as a winner of the 2023 Keeling Curve Prize in acknowledgment of its research driving the campaign to halt expansion of oil and gas drilling by advocating for the adoption of Amazon Exclusion Policies by major global banks.

The Global Warming Mitigation Project announced on July 10 that Stand.earth Research Group was one of 10 winners chosen from a pool of more than 350 applications originating from organizations spanning 114 countries. This award comes on the heels of the announcement in March that Stand was named No. 4 on Fast Company’s 2023 list of Most Innovative Nonprofits. 

“It’s an honor to have our work acknowledged alongside these other impressive organizations that share our commitment to reducing emissions at scale worldwide,” Stand Executive Director Todd Paglia said. “Our organization is dedicated to innovating breakthrough strategies that help create an equitable and climate-safe world, and the Keeling Curve Prize provides us with even more motivation to push the limits of what’s possible through our research, advocacy, and organizing.”

Following a rigorous screening process conducted by a team of climate experts, Stand learned this spring that it was one of 20 climate solutions projects selected as finalists. Stand and the other nine winners announced this week each receive a prize of $50,000.

“In every corner of the world, there are startups and nonprofits working tirelessly to bring down greenhouse gas emissions,” said Ashwati Ramesh, Keeling Curve Prize judge and lead of Climate Tech Investment Network. “They are the heroes that deserve recognition, support, and funding. At its core, that’s why the Keeling Curve Prize exists.”

The Keeling Curve Prize recognizes projects and programs from around the globe spanning five categories that are effectively reducing, removing, or replacing greenhouse gas emissions from the atmosphere. The prize is awarded by the Global Warming Mitigation Project, a nonprofit that activates and accelerates climate solutions projects and programs around the world that mitigate greenhouse gas emissions.

Stand Research Group was selected as one of the two winners in the finance category in recognition of its leadership and innovation in financial, policy, and supply chain research in the Amazon. These efforts are part of Stand’s Amazon campaign’s broader goals to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by keeping Amazon oil and gas from being burned, and to maintain unroaded, intact rainforest landscapes that act as carbon sinks. 

The Amazon Banks Database and Mapping Project is a project of Stand.earth, in partnership with Amazon Watch (database) and Earth InSight (mapping), and in support of Indigenous organizations including COICA, the Coordinator of Indigenous Organizations of the Amazon River Basin, and CONFENIAE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon. These collaborative efforts are designed to build the financial conditions to empower the Amazonia for Life movement, which aims to avert the tipping point by protecting 80% of the Amazonia by 2025.

“We ask banks to stop financing the oil and gas industry, leading to curtailment of credit that slows oil and gas expansion and supports Indigenous leaders to seek policy changes like the recent moratorium on oil expansion in the Ecuadorian Amazon,” said Angeline Robertson, senior researcher with Stand Research Group. “Already the work has resulted in four banks committing to end oil and gas trade financing, a flow of credit worth over $7 billion USD since 2009, and we have seen banks such as BNP Paribas take on the ambition of applying their commitments across the Amazon Biome.”

On the success of this effort, Stand began work in 2022 on the Amazon Banks Database and Banks Exposure Map, which will identify all banks involved in oil and gas activities in the Amazonian regions of Brazil, Peru, Ecuador, and Colombia, as the key countries exporting oil and gas from the Amazon. These resources will become publicly available on the Exit Amazon Oil and Gas website in time for the Amazon Summit in August 2023, and are intended to help secure commitments from a critical mass of banks to discontinue financing for Amazon oil and gas. In late July 2023, Stand also plans to release the first of a series of reports on Amazon oil and gas financing, revealing the top eight banks supporting the industry for the past 15 years.

This research is an effort at reducing carbon emissions by making oil and gas activities harder to finance. By restricting credit, the cost of borrowing goes up, and oil and gas companies have to contend with higher costs for their drilling campaigns and infrastructure plans, leaving oil in the ground and more rainforest intact, and buying more time for a just transition.

“Indigenous peoples of the Amazon have fought against the oil and gas industry for decades, protesting the violation of their rights, pollution and disease in their communities, the threat to their food security and water quality, and because the roads built by the oil sector cause deforestation and loss of biodiversity,” Robertson said. “This project responds to the request of indigenous leaders to innovate mechanisms of influence that allow adequate accountability on the part of industry, governments and financial institutions that invest in the destruction of the Amazon.”

Stand Research Group is the research arm of international advocacy organization Stand.earth. It supports the global environmental community with cutting-edge investigative research to trace the sources of raw materials and energy used to drive the world economy.

Media contact:

Cari Barcas, Communications Director, cari.barcas@stand.earth