Complaint: UNM Foundation invests in fossil fuels while its board members work in the industry

Student members of the University of New Mexico group Leaders for Environmental Action and Foresight (LEAF) have been demanding UNM officials take concrete action on the climate crisis for more than two years.

They have demanded officials update UNM’s 12-year-old climate plan, pull nearly $29 million worth of investments in fossil fuel companies, and plan for a zero-waste campus by 2030.

“Unfortunately, we have seen UNM take very little action,” said Raven Alcott (San Ildefonso), who is a senior at UNM and a LEAF co-organizer. She tries to limit her own individual impact on the climate, but she said real change comes from institutions using their power to address the climate crisis.

New Mexico will face some of the most severe effects of climate change, Alcott said, particularly frontline, historically underserved and Indigenous communities who will be the ones to endure those catastrophic effects to land, water, economy and society.

That frustration with the lack of action is what led LEAF, the UNM Coalition on Climate, and attorneys from the Climate Defense Project to file a complaint last week against the UNM Foundation, alleging that it violates state law by continuing to invest in oil and gas, and that some of its members’ ties to the industry are conflicts of interest.

Gambling with futures

 “Every dollar invested in the fossil fuel industry is one against the future that our degree is supposed to guarantee,” Alcott said. “We refuse to let UNM gamble our futures away. We need large institutions like UNM to do their part and follow through on their responsibilities and take a leadership role to create a renewable, bright future for us all.”

The UNM Foundation receives donations from alumni and companies, and then puts it in the school’s endowment, which is then invested in different companies and stocks with the objective of making the endowment larger, said Stefi Weisburd, a former faculty member and Coalition on Climate organizer.

“We think that their investments in fossil fuels are contrary to their charitable mission,” Weisburd said.

Weisburd said the money from the endowment has gone toward professorships, the recent rebranding of the UNM logo, the bail out of the UNM Athletic Department, and most ironically research in sustainable water.

“Now, why do you think water is a challenge in New Mexico?” she asked. “Because of those fossil fuel companies that the Foundation is investing in. They are flaring and venting and spilling and burning and extracting carbon in the hundreds of millions of tons each year in New Mexico, which is making New Mexico hotter and drier and using up our water.”

Attorney General reviewing complaint

The complaint, filed on Tuesday, Oct. 28, identifies 28 companies in which the Foundation invests through its public equity index funds that operate in New Mexico. Private equity investments have been more difficult to track down, Weisburd said.

The complaint asks Attorney General Hector Balderas to investigate the foundation and order it to cease its investments in fossil fuels.

“We can confirm we have received the complaint and it is under review,” the Office said in a written statement Friday afternoon.

The complaint is signed by current and former elected officials, scientists, frontline community members, alumni, students, faculty and 47 organizations based in New Mexico.

The complaint also accuses members of the foundation’s Board of Trustees and the UNM Regents of maintaining significant financial ties to the fossil fuel industry.

These conflicts of interests violate the “duty of loyalty,” according to the complaint, “because fossil fuel companies’ business models are in fundamental tension with the university’s mission” and the values the foundation espouses to hold. 

UNM student Jess Newman, who’s from Albuquerque, said we can see the effects of climate change right now, and they encroach on the future. 

“This year I crossed over the Rio Grande multiple days. I continue to all the time, and it is so depressing to see how low our river is and how little water we have here,” Newman said. “Sometimes we have weeks or months without any precipitation at all. Drought here is a threat to not only our livelihoods, but the delicate ecosystems that our native wildlife need to survive. Who knows if Albuquerque and the rest of the Southwest will be inhabitable in the next century, or even the next 50 years?”

Newman said it is time that contributors to climate change, like the UNM Foundation, cut their ties to harmful industries and reinvest in clean energy.

“New Mexico could be a leading state in solar and wind energy, yet it is not because of the fossil fuel industry here,” she said. “What are we doing?”