{"id":3458,"date":"2022-10-26T18:52:38","date_gmt":"2022-10-26T22:52:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.presbyterianmission.org\/food-faith\/?p=3458"},"modified":"2024-04-25T11:14:07","modified_gmt":"2024-04-25T15:14:07","slug":"dignity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/centernet.pcusa.org\/food-faith\/2022\/10\/26\/dignity\/","title":{"rendered":"Can we have dignity in a world that crosses ecological limits?"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Presbyterian Hunger Program has been active in a transnational campaign that attempts to slow down the financialization of land – land grabbing – by\u00a0 universities and retirement companies, in particular TIAA, a retirement fund management firm that invests the retirement monies of teachers and nonprofits around the US.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

TIAA has become the largest\u00a0 purchaser of farmland on the planet and the negative impacts of this are numerous – on the rights of people in parts of Brazil, on Black farmers in Mississippi and beyond, on forests and ecosystems, and on the climate. The campaign is called Stop Land Grabs and you can learn more on our coalition’s website – Stop Land Grabs<\/a>.<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

ActionAid USA is a key partner in the campaign and their Communications Manager, Jenna Farineau, met the President and CEO of TIAA last week in Lexington, KY. Below is her account, which was originally posted here<\/a>. <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

\"people

Photo taken in the TIAA building in Washington DC after meeting with an investment manager of TIAA; PHP’s Valery Nodem and Andrew Kang Bartlett holding sign along with other Stop Land Grabs coalition representatives<\/p><\/div>\n

October 21, 2022<\/p>\n

By Jenna Farineau<\/p>\n

On Wednesday, I drove down to the University of Kentucky (UK) for a fireside chat with the new President and CEO of the Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America (TIAA), Thasunda Brown Duckett.<\/p>\n

Why?<\/p>\n

We wrote her a letter<\/strong><\/a>, along with 112 other organizations, in the fall of 2021 demanding that TIAA stop grabbing land from communities in Brazil and the United States.<\/p>\n

But she never responded.<\/p>\n

In April this year, we also hand-delivered a petition with over 20,000 signatures to her staff.<\/p>\n

Still no response.<\/p>\n

Finally, we joined a group of TIAA participants to file an 83-page formal complaint<\/strong><\/a> highlighting how TIAA\u2019s investments violate human rights and their Principles for Responsible Investment. So, I went to UK to give it to her personally and hear what she had to say. Unfortunately, there wasn\u2019t an actual fire (which is kind of unfortunate cause it\u2019s now cold here in Kentucky),<\/em> BUT her chat was still lit, nonetheless, for several reasons.<\/p>\n

First, a little background:<\/em>\u00a0 <\/strong>TIAA is one of the largest managers of pension and retirement funds in the U.S., managing savings for roughly 5 million people, including myself and everyone else at ActionAid USA. Several years ago, after learning that TIAA\u2019s portfolio invests heavily in expanding destructive chemical agriculture and contributes to and engages in deforestation and land grabbing \u2013 aka the money they tell us they are \u201cresponsibly investing\u201d on our behalf<\/em> \u2013 we decided to join the Stop Land Grabs campaign to hold TIAA to account. You can learn more here<\/strong><\/a>.<\/p>\n

Ok, back to the reasons:\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

In the Q&A, we asked if she is going to use her advocacy as the new CEO to drive TIAA in the direction of investing\/re-investing responsibly, to which she said:<\/p>\n

\u201cThe big change that we can make at TIAA is to make sure that people can retire with dignity. That\u2019s thing one for us in terms of who we are\u2026how do we continue to innovate and have products that can provide a choice, that you can have the level of transparency, not greenwashing, and the level of disclosure so that you can then say that within your allocation \u2018here\u2019s what I want, here\u2019s what those returns could look like,\u2019 and you can feel like you can stand behind what\u2019s important to you and how you want your retirement money to be invested.<\/p>\n

There is a lot more work that we have done and that we are doing, but I will tell you that the number one priority for us\u2026 as a company that\u2019s focusing on retirement income is to make sure we are investing properly with our fiduciary requirements, are we hearing from our participants in terms of what they would like to see in terms of choice, are we working to design those products with transparency around it and disclosures around it\u2026\u201d<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I was pleased to hear her mention dignity in her response, but I couldn\u2019t help but think about what \u201cdignity\u201d means in this case. I imagine that for the people who work for TIAA, it means that they have made their clients enough money to live well in old age. And Thasunda Brown Ducket argued strongly that women, especially women of color, disproportionately lack access to retirement accounts, indicating that at least she believes dignity requires some kind of racial justice and equity.<\/p>\n

Of course, both of these are important, but at what cost? I\u2019m reminded of our dear comrade Altamiran Ribeiro, a land rights defender from Piaui state in the Cerrado in Brazil, who has experienced firsthand the impact of an irresponsible investment from TIAA.<\/p>\n

Altamiran shared with us<\/strong><\/a>:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s sad and concerning to see how much a person\u2019s greed to ensure futures is <\/em>destroying<\/em><\/strong> other futures. The trend will only increase if nothing is done.\u201d<\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Additionally, what kind of dignity is even possible in a future where the climate has warmed beyond 1.5 degrees C to 2 degrees or more? In that doomsday scenario, our food and agricultural systems would fail in extreme heat, mega-storms would make many parts of the world uninhabitable, and sea level rise would destroy most coastal cities. Hundreds of millions \u2013 and maybe even billions \u2013 could die by the time I am supposed to reach my own \u201cretirement age.\u201d<\/p>\n

TIAA \u2013 as a financial company that invests in the economy and sends strong economic signals to the private sector \u2013 needs to act immediately. Not only can they divest from companies whose business is not compatible with a decarbonized future \u2013 like the fossil fuel industry \u2013 but since TIAA owns stock in most of the biggest companies in the world, TIAA technically \u201cowns\u201d them and can demand that these companies decarbonize as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

I am energized by Thasunda Brown Duckett\u2019s approach to inclusive leadership and commitment to pushing TIAA to be better, but not at the expense of other people\u2019s futures. <\/strong>So, I remain in a I\u2019ll believe it when I see it <\/em>stage and will continue to push for TIAA to act like this is an existential crisis. It\u2019s 2022, and the planet is burning; it\u2019s about time we move past general statements and implement real change.<\/p>\n

\n

Your gifts to One Great Hour of Sharing<\/a> and the Hunger Fund<\/a> support the Presbyterian Hunger Program and our dozens of partners working globally to end hunger and its causes.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Presbyterian Hunger Program has been active in a transnational campaign that attempts to slow down the financialization of land – land grabbing – by\u00a0 universities and retirement companies, in particular TIAA, a retirement fund management firm that invests the retirement monies of teachers and nonprofits around the US. TIAA has become the largest\u00a0 purchaser… Read more »<\/a>","protected":false},"author":73,"featured_media":3461,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1842,6524],"tags":[6532,6640,6641,6635,6634,6636,547,6639,6642,6638,6637,6633],"class_list":["post-3458","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-climate-justice","category-land","tag-black-farmers","tag-brazil","tag-cerrado","tag-deforestation","tag-human-rights","tag-irresponsible-investments","tag-land-grabs","tag-land-rights","tag-mississippi-farmer","tag-plantation-agriculture","tag-risky","tag-tiaa"],"yoast_head":"\nCan we have dignity in a world that crosses ecological limits? - Food and Faith<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/centernet.pcusa.org\/food-faith\/2022\/10\/26\/dignity\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Can we have dignity in a world that crosses ecological limits?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The Presbyterian Hunger Program has been active in a transnational campaign that attempts to slow down the financialization of land – land grabbing – by\u00a0 universities and retirement companies, in particular TIAA, a retirement fund management firm that invests the retirement monies of teachers and nonprofits around the US. 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