The Ford Foundation has announced a plan to end further investment in fossil fuels and seek out additional climate-friendly investments.

According to the foundation, it has been reducing its exposure to fossil fuels "for some time" and only 0.3 percent of its endowment currently is directly invested in fossil fuel companies that explore for or develop reserves of fossil fuels, and the foundation has not made any such investments since 2013. Going forward, the endowment will not invest in any fossil fuel-related industries and will invest in funds that address the threat of climate change and support the transition to a green economy.

"The [f]oundation has legacy investments as a limited partner in a number of private equity funds with holdings in the fossil fuel industry," the Ford Foundation stated. "These indirect investments constitute less than [3] percent of the endowment, a number that will continue to decline over time. The [f]oundation has not made any new commitments to these limited partnerships since 2017, and we have no intention to do so going forward. These legacy investments are in runoff mode and will end as these partnerships are liquidated."

"We face profound challenges on an existential scale. Fires and floods are worsening — and on top of it all, the distortion of our market system, and the inequality it's produced, have overloaded the burden of these disasters onto the backs of the poor, the marginalized, and the vulnerable," said Ford Foundation president Darren Walker in a statement. "I believe that the intersecting crises of climate change and inequality threaten to make an outmoded vision of perpetuity, at best, obsolete — and, at worst, destructive."

(Photo credit: Ford Foundation)