{"id":74589,"date":"2020-01-28T00:16:20","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T00:16:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-to-review-investments-for-environmental-social-impact\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T11:36:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T11:36:59","slug":"fort-lewis-college-to-review-investments-for-environmental-social-impact","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/fort-lewis-college-to-review-investments-for-environmental-social-impact\/","title":{"rendered":"Fort Lewis College to review investments for environmental, social impact"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Fort
Fort Lewis College plans to begin reviewing its investments this year for their impact on social and environmental causes.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Fort Lewis College announced Monday a portion of its investments \u2013 about $7.8 million \u2013 will be vetted annually for its impact on humanity and the environment.<\/p>\n

Students have been advocating since spring for a policy that takes into account environmental and societal consequences of the school\u2019s investments, said Marty Pool, coordinator of the FLC Environmental Center. It\u2019s a trend that has been happening nationwide among institutions of higher education.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe fact that there is going to be some reporting on this is a huge step,\u201d he said. Scoring of investments will likely inform future student action, he said.<\/p>\n

The FLC Board of Trustees unanimously supported the reviews that will examine investments based on environmental, social and governance factors, according to a news release. For example, the investments will be reviewed to see if they support clean technology, conservation, human rights and community development.<\/p>\n

The reviews will apply to the 20% of FLC\u2019s investment portfolio that the school controls directly. The rest of the school\u2019s investments are controlled by the Colorado State Treasurer, according to a news release. The investments controlled by the school totaled $7.8 million as of December, said FLC spokeswoman Lauren Savage.<\/p>\n

Student advocates fought for a similar change in 2014 when they asked the Fort Lewis College Foundation to divest from its fossil fuel investments<\/a>. At the time, fossil fuel investment constituted 0.8% of the $17.2 million the foundation had invested. The foundation declined to divest saying it would be a token gesture with no real impact and it would be hypocritical to drop fossil fuels when the college asked gas and oil companies for contributions during fundraising campaigns, board members said at the time.<\/p>\n

The new FLC policy requiring reviews does not direct divestment from investments and it does not apply to the FLC Foundation.<\/p>\n

The school\u2019s investments in diversified funds would make divestment difficult, Pool said. But the reviews can function as a tool to identify funds with screening criteria for what they will and won\u2019t invest in, he said.<\/p>\n

One of the students who advocated for the changes, Jazzmin Matchette, said the reviews are a good step but she expects more action will be needed.<\/p>\n

\u201cBecoming conscious of where we invest our money as an institution is a great starting point for these efforts. However, with the United Nations reporting that we have less than 10 years to prevent the Earth from increasing 1.5 degrees Celsius, more direct action to reduce our carbon footprint as an institution may be necessary soon,\u201d Matchette said in a news release.<\/p>\n

mshinn@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scoring system will be applied to 20% of school\u2019s holdings<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":74590,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[132,230,610],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-74589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-fort-lewis-college","tag-investments","tag-social-issues"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=74589"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90447,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/74589\/revisions\/90447"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/74590"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=74589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=74589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=74589"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=74589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}