"Barclays recognises that the bank’s major impacts tend to be indirect, via business relationships, arising from the provision of financial services to business customers operating in sensitive sectors. Appropriate risk management of environmental and social impacts is both a business imperative and the right thing to do. Our dedicated environmental risk management team, part of the central credit risk function, manages our approach which is a combination of policy, standards and guidance to assess individual transactions and relationships.

As part of this, Barclays fulfils the requirements of the Equator Principles (EP) (of which Barclays was a founding member), an internationally recognised framework for environmental and social risk due diligence in project finance. Rigorous adherence to the provisions of the Equator Principles ensures that Barclays would only proceed with certain transactions if potentially adverse environmental and social impacts are appropriately mitigated. We have developed a series of briefing notes available to colleagues in business development and credit risk functions outlining the nature of environmental and social risks of which to be aware, as well as factors which mitigate those risks. These cover ten industries, including a Metals and Mining Environmental and Social Risk Briefing which incorporates human rights issues into the assessment of financial transactions and business relationships..."