The United States Federal Reserve has withdrawn from the Network of Central Banks and Supervisors for Greening the Financial System (NGFS), a global coalition of central banks engaged in the study of climate risk that was launched in 2017.
“While the Board has appreciated the engagement with the NGFS and its members, the work of the NGFS has increasingly broadened in scope, covering a wider range of issues that are outside of the Board’s statutory mandate,” the central bank said in a statement on Friday.
The Fed has come under pressure in recent years from Republican lawmakers, including over concerns that climate concerns have unduly influenced financial regulation and that the central bank has become increasingly politicized.
In September, two House Republicans asked the Government Accountability Office to evaluate U.S. bank regulators’ membership in the NGFS.
Graham Steele, a former Biden-era Treasury official, said the Fed’s decision is “clearly a political move.”
“It defies what we know about the science and economic science risks of climate change,” Steele said in a statement. “There is no way to read this as anything other than responding to short-term political considerations.”
The central bank joined the global coalition in 2020.
Hellbound and Down 