Bristol Uni student calls out fossil fuel donations during graduation protest
Photo: Ben Keen
“UoB took £3m from fossil fuel since 2017.”
These were the words emblazoned on a banner unfurled on stage today at the University of Bristol’s Wills Memorial Building, during a graduation ceremony in front of hundreds of departing students and their families.
Paddy Vipond, a 34-year-old Masters student, revealed the banner after walking onto the stage to collect his certificate. He was graduating from the university’s competitive MSc programme in society, politics and climate change with a distinction.
The online livestream of the graduation ceremony was cut as soon as Vipond pulled out the banner, returning once the student had left the stage.
The protest was in response to the university’s decision to accept millions of pounds worth of funding from oil, gas and mining companies in recent years, the student says, a reality Vipond wasn’t aware of until he was deep into his climate change studies.
“I discovered that late in my year as a masters student,” he told the Cable. “They shout about the divestment, and they’re proud to promote that, but they hide the fact that they still accept money from the same companies.”
Bristol has taken £3m from oil, gas and mining companies since 2017, according to a report by openDemocracy. More than £200,000 of this funding came from BP and Shell plus £500,000 from Total, Equinor, Chevron and Petrobras.
Significant funds were also taken from BHP, an Anglo-Australian mining company that faced legal action last year over its role in the Mariana dam collapse, Brazil’s worst environmental disaster.
Some of the university’s top climate academics spoke out after this funding came to light, branding it “hypocritical and unacceptable”. But Vipond was conscious not to let all the responsibility to call for change fall on the shoulders of academics and lecturers.
“I saw the graduation as my last hurrah, my last opportunity to do anything really as a student,” he said. “There are some activities that students have the ability to do that the teachers and the lecturers don’t have, even if perhaps they would like to.”
‘It’s rank hypocrisy’
Bristol University – which is famed for its world-leading climate research – has made progress in recent years in response to various student-led campaigns, such as in 2020, when the institution announced that it had divested from all fossil fuel investments.
Robert Kerse, Bristol’s then-chief operating officer, said the resources owned by fossil fuel companies posed “a material threat to our planet”.
Vipond said his actual masters programme didn’t avoid the depths of the planetary crisis we face either, discussing in depth topics such as climate security, migration, plastic pollution and soil degradation.
“The course really drove home how difficult the situation is and how complicated and complex it’s going to be to try and find a solution,” he said.
But as the Cable revealed last year, despite the university’s confronting degree courses, the institution went on to accept over £1m in funding from fossil fuel and mining companies since its divestment announcement in 2020.
“I assumed, naively, that they would have a policy, or that [the divestment decision] would include a policy, where they don’t accept money from fossil fuel companies,” Vipond said.
“You can’t claim to be green and ethical and sustainable on one hand and say ‘we’re not investing’, but then, on the other hand, you just take millions in donations from the same companies. It’s rank hypocrisy.”
In response, Bristol University said it “plays a key role in tackling environmental change through its research, its teaching and how it operates.”
“Our research partnerships undergo stringent due diligence checks and ethical review,” a university spokesperson told the Cable. “Though the University works with a small number of organisations within the fossil fuel sector, the emphasis is primarily on the progressive side of their businesses, focussing on lower carbon futures.
They added that examples of this research include creating sustainable materials which provide alternative lower energy and greener routes to essential chemicals, developing the basic science behind the exploration of new copper deposits which are essential as conductors to transport renewable electrical power and reducing Co2 emissions by designing catalysts as green routes to renewable fuels.
The university said sustainability was one of the central strands shaping its vision of the future. “We were the first in the UK to declare a climate emergency in 2019 reaffirming our strong and positive commitment to take action on climate change and, a year later, in 2020 we completely divested from all investments in fossil fuel companies,” spokesperson said.
‘This is for everybody’
Vipond traces his interest in environmental causes to “two defining moments” – one after he graduated from Brighton University in 2012 and joined an international development charity, the second while he was working in a safari lodge in Guyana, South America.
Surrounded by wilderness and with an array of environmental literature at his disposal, Vipond became accustomed to a slower, more thoughtful pace of life.
“Being in that environment hammered home the point that we really need to look after our planet, and we need to minimize the harm we do”, he said. From then on, Vipond pledged to “take a slower pace of life and a less damaging pace of life”.
But today’s graduation stunt is not a one-person show, and nor does Vipond want it to be. “I’m fully aware that if you want to go fast, go alone; if you want to go far, go together,” he said.
Campaigners from the Fossil Free Careers campaign group stood outside the Wills Memorial Building today collecting signatures for a petition which calls on the institution to refuse all new relationships with oil, gas or mining companies.
The group is also asking the university to adopt a publicly available ethical careers policy that explicitly excludes oil, gas and mining companies from recruitment opportunities.
“I just think it’s really hypocritical that it has these ongoing relationships,” said Trixie Panatti, campaigns coordinator for the Earth Justice Society, who was outside the hall. “It doesn’t sit right with me and a lot of other people. It definitely tarnishes their sustainable image.”
And what does Vipond say to those who criticise him for disrupting one of the most important days in any student’s educational life? He and other members of the campaign group asked this question many times.
“I’m the only person going to be on the stage when I do it, so it’s not really going to directly impact on anyone else. Everybody else still gets their opportunity to go up, shake hands, have their certificate and have their photos,” he said.
“I would hope that the majority of people understand why we’re doing it,” he added. “This is for everybody, and everybody’s aware of it.”
