ING Bank Just Divested Their DAPL Financing—We All Helped to Change Their Mind
March 24, 2017
Last month, bank officials met face to face with leaders of the Standing Rock Sioux, and this week they announced the bank had sold the loan at the request of tribal leaders.
Last November, I arrived in Amsterdam shortly after reporting from Standing Rock, where I had been covering the indigenous-led resistance to the Dakota Access pipeline. I checked on social media to learn the latest there and soon found myself watching on livestream as events at Highway 1806 near the Oceti Sakowin Camp deteriorated. People were being sprayed with water in subfreezing temperatures. Others were pepper-sprayed. There were makeshift ambulances. I looked on helplessly. What could I do from so far away?
I scanned a list of the banks that were financing the pipeline, and one name jumped out at me: ING Bank, headquartered right there in Amsterdam.
ING has cultivated a reputation for upholding human rights and sustainability principles, so I was surprised to find they were financing DAPL—even more so when I read the “ING Environmental and Social Risk Framework,” which says: “No financing will be allowed for activities that are known to have elements of human rights abuses.”
