Knowledge

Background

Recommended resources on the World Bank and the IMF 2024

12 February 2025

Content indexing work area in the German National Library in Frankfurt am Main

Reports

  • Towards economic and climate justice: A feminist analysis of critical trends.
    WEDO, December 2024
    This report examines the progress and challenges in realising the vision of the Feminist Action Nexus for Economic & Climate Justice, as outlined in the Blueprint for Feminist Economic Justice and distilled into WEDO’s seven key demands. It focuses on four thematic areas: 1) debt, 2) the Bretton Woods Institutions (the World Bank and International Monetary Fund), 3) taxation, and 4) climate finance, highlighting key developments and releases of data between late 2023 and October 2024.
  • Reclaiming energy: public pathways to break the fossil fuel cycle
    Transnational Institute, 5 December 2024
    What if energy could be reclaimed as a global public good, free from profit-driven systems and rooted in justice? This report offers systemic solutions to the climate crisis, advocating for decolonial, democratic governance and transformative public-community partnerships.
  • Climate finance, reparations and human rights
    Center for Economic and Social Rights, 10 November 2024
    This resource examines the legacy of structural injustices that created the climate crisis, while highlighting the urgent need for reparative measures to hold historically high-emission countries accountable.
  • Program of action on the construction of a new international economic order
    Progressive International, 8 November 2024
    On the NIEO’s 50th anniversary, this program of action adapts this vision to the conditions of the twenty-first century – focusing on shared institutions and coordinated actions that Southern governments can take collectively and unilaterally to transform the global economic architecture.
  • Global advocacy brief on fiscal space for health
    WEMOS, 7 November 2024
    Targeted at global actors, this briefing highlights key findings and actionable recommendations for global actors (i.e. IMF, World Bank and development partners) for increasing fiscal space for health in the countries where they operate, using the findings from Mozambique’s fiscal space analysis.
  • 2024 Trade and Development Report: Rethinking development in the age of discontent
    UN Conference on Trade and Development, 29 October 2024
    This yearly report takes a nuanced view of the narrative that affirms that the global economy has surfaced in 2024 in reasonable shape, having avoided a recession and having achieved a “soft landing” after the inflation crisis. The report however cautions that the global economy has reached a dangerous “new normal” of low growth insufficient to meet the growth needs of low and middle-income countries. In analysing the context, it asserts unequivocally that austerity is not the answer.
  • Climate finance unchecked
    Oxfam, 17 October 2024
    An Oxfam audit of the World Bank’s 2017-2023 climate finance portfolio found that between $24 billion and $41 billion in climate finance went unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed.
  • Multilateralism in an era of global oligarchy: how extreme inequality undermines international cooperation
    Oxfam, 25 September 2024
    This report stresses the urgency of addressing the growing income and wealth gap, arguing that the rise in extreme inequality feeds the development and strengthening of a global oligarchy which in turn challenges the stability and efficacy of the multilateral system. Whilst highlighting the dangers of the deepening wealth-political power nexus, the report sounds an optimistic note by focusing on several initiatives from the Global South, such as on tax cooperation, that hold the promise of substantive change.
  • Fiscal space for health analysis in Mozambique
    WEMOS, 1 August 2024
    This research provides an in-depth analysis of the fiscal space for health in Mozambique, offering insights into how financial resources can be mobilized more effectively to strengthen health outcomes.
  • Policy gaps allow World Bank Group to indirectly finance captive coal
    Recourse, Trend Asia and Inclusive Development International, 8 July 2024
    This report demonstrates that publicly funded Multilateral Development Banks are at risk of funding a wave of ‘captive’ coal expansion in climate-vulnerable countries, despite commitments to shift funds from fossil fuels to renewable energy.
  • De-risking for climate? A closer look at the MIGA-supported investments on energy projects
    Recourse, Big Shift Global, Coastal Livelihood and Environmental Action Network, and Lumière Synergie pour le Développement, 1 July 2024
    This report argues that the current WBG reform discussion is an opportunity for MIGA to align its policies and activities with the 1.5℃ goal of the Paris Agreement by quitting fossil fuel projects and instead channelling funds to facilitate the just energy transition.
  • Exporting extinction: How the international financial system constrains biodiverse futures
    Centre for Climate Justice at the University of British Columbia, Climate and Community Project, Third World Network, May 2024
    Extractive activities are a main driver of biodiversity loss. This study of extractive sectors in 5 countries shows how the international financial and monetary system pressures governments to maintain and expand these sectors, despite state commitments to reduce drivers of biodiversity loss.
  • Between life and debt
    Christian Aid, 16 May 2024
    This report shines a light on the debt crisis across Africa, showcasing five African countries – Kenya, Nigeria, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Malawi. Christian Aid partners highlight how paying debt comes at the expense of African nurses’ salaries, investment in schools and expansion of social protection measures.
  • Greening IMF lending: Elusive prospects, mixed evidence
    Recourse and LSD Senegal, 11 April 2024
    According to this report, despite IMF claims to increase climate ambition, an initial assessment of the IMF Resilience and Sustainability Trust (RST) shows little room for optimism.
  • The IMF talks about climate change but it pushes Argentina into more and more fracking
    Recourse, 9 April 2024
    This report argues that while the International Monetary Fund claims to have added the fight against climate change to its mandated work, when designing plans to help countries restore economic stability, it pushes them to deepen their dependence on fossil fuels, which are the main cause of global warming. This is exactly what is happening in Argentina, its largest debtor, with a liability of more than 44 billion dollars.
  • Towards economic and climate justice: A feminist analysis of critical trends
    Feminist Economic Action Nexus for Economic and Climate Justice, 18 January
    This report provides a snapshot of recent trends, particularly from the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 onwards, where available statistical and other data exist. Its analysis employs a structural feminist lens to identify positive and negative developments around each of our seven focal areas, favouring solutions that emphasize the agency of people and communities rather than corporate interests and technological fixes. This report spotlights both local sites of struggle against the consequences of neoliberalism and global advocacy proposals from civil society and Global South countries to transform our economic system.

Briefings & Policy Papers

  • Trading with our future: IFC trade finance commitments for fossil fuels
    Urgewald, 23 October 2024
    The IFC operates nine trade finance programs, including the Global Trade Finance Program (GTFP) and the Global Trade Supplier Finance (GTSF). Transparency still remains an issue across all programs. The exact nature of the financed goods and businesses, especially those tied to fossil fuels, remains unclear.
  • Year one of World Bank Paris Agreement alignment in the energy sector: ‘green conditionality’ dwarfs green investments
    Bretton Woods Project, 1 October 2024
    Through a review of all 71 ‘energy & extractives’ projects financed by the International Development Association (IDA) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) in fiscal year 2024 – the first year of full Paris alignment – this briefing highlights a continued shift in the Bank’s energy financing, with DPF now the largest financing instrument. The briefing suggests that the Bank’s approach to Paris alignment is being used to a significant extent to impose ‘green conditionalities’ on borrowing countries, especially in the Global South.
  • Reforming the IMF surcharge rate policy to avoid procyclical lending
    Think20, 12 September 2024
    This policy brief reviews the rationale for IMF surcharges and evaluate their impact on member country economies and the IMF business model. The authors evaluate various proposals for IMF surcharge reform and advance a set of concrete steps for both the Group of 20 (G20) and the IMF.
  • IDA21 public enemy #1: rising inequality
    Oxfam, 1 July 2024
    This paper includes concrete recommendations pertinent to IDA21’s new Focus Areas and Lenses: Inequality Reduction, Progressive Domestic Resource Mobilization (DRM), Gender Equality, Education, Health, Social Protection, Climate and Private Sector Window (PSW).
  • A way out for IMF reform
    Bretton Woods Project, 3 June 2024
    This paper, authored by Paulo Batista Nogueira, former Brazilian Executive Director at the IMF, analyses the 16th General Review of Quotas and identifies key governance reforms feasible in the current economic and geopolitical context. The findings raise questions about the legitimacy of the Fund if nothing is done to rebalance decision-making and improve the institution’s governance.
  • The rising cost of debt: an obstacle to achieving climate and development goals
    CEPR, 30 April 2024
    This brief provides an overview of the creditor profiles and debt service burdens for developing countries, focusing on their foreign currency debts owed to external creditors. The findings highlight the burden of servicing these debts and the lack of options to seek relief, as a result of which many countries are unable to invest in urgent climate and development priorities.
  • Adapting our financial architecture in a crisis-prone world: a civil society proposal for Special Drawing Rights reform
    ActionAid USA, 10 April 2024
    This paper proposes reforms across three largely complementary areas: changes to make Special Drawing Rights (SDRs) allocations more regular and predictable; reforms to the accounting rules for SDRs that would modernize their usage in a manner comparable to other reserve assets and increase their liquidity; and changes to the allocation of SDRs to make their distribution more reflective of countries’ needs, rather than according to the IMF’s flawed quota formula.
  • Argentina under IMF orthodox adjustment policy and a fossil future
    FARN, 12 April 2024
    This paper assesses IMF’s programme in the country as President Javie Milei reached an agreement with the Fund for the seventh review of the arrangement under the Extended Fund Facility (EFF). The paper looks at this new programme and its impact in several areas, such as Argentina’s climate commitments and fiscal policy.
  • Blended finance for climate action: good value for money?
    Eurodad, 8 February 2024
    This paper explores trends, risks and opportunities of blended finance for climate action and highlights ways of ensuring that blended finance empowers communities, rather than create dependencies on richer countries.
  • Energy transitions for a socioecological future
    FARN, 7 February 2024
    This position paper outlines the main priorities, concerns, and position of Fundación Ambiente y Recursos Naturales (Environment and Natural Resources Foundation, FARN) from a comprehensive and intersectional perspective regarding the urgent need for an energy and socio-ecological transition in Argentina and globally, based on socio-environmental justice, inclusion, and citizen participation.

Journal articles, books and blogs

  • Is the World Bank ready to end fossil finance?
    Big Shift Global, 21 October 2024
    New figures suggest there could be a decreasing trend in its direct fossil finance but can the World Bank Group pick up the momentum and make this a decisive shift?
  • The Global South’s poor should not be subsidising the IMF
    Shareen Talaat, MenaFem Movement, and Dan Beeton, CEPR, 4 October 2024
    In this op-ed the authors argue the IMF is needlessly making the polycrisis even worse by forcing its most indebted borrowers to pay extra fees in the form of surcharges. They urge rich countries to put a check on the IMF’s power and greed by supporting an end to the surcharge policy and by demanding that the Fund end its push for austerity amid a polycrisis that disproportionately affects the poor and working class.
  • More and more and more: An all-consuming history of energy
    Jean Baptiste Fressoz, 3 October 2024
    This book has significant implications for debates about strategies to combat the climate crisis. It casts doubts on the techno-utopian narratives of the current “energy transition” by reviewing the history of its supposed predecessors to show that the previous “transitions” from human power to wood, wood to coal, and coal to fossil fuels were no such thing. The book demonstrates that new energy sources did not substitute, but rather were additive to their dominant predecessors stressing that a new radical approach of reduced consumption and economic structures is required.
  • A critical assessment of the world bank’s climate change action plan
    Fran Witt, Recourse, 24 September 2024
    This blog unpacks the current CCAP and propose a new way forward, asking: Has the 2021-25 CCAP sufficiently changed the way the Group invests? And could an updated strategy – combining the new Corporate Scorecard with a CCAP 3.0 – help the Group redirect its investments towards a more equitable and just energy transition?
  • ‘Paris Alignment’ principles: what’s in a name?
    Ceren Temizyurek, Recourse, 29 July 2024
    In this blog, the author takes a closer look at what can be called ‘Paris aligned’ under the banks’ joint methodology. She finds several loopholes and inconsistencies that must be improved for the banks to be real climate leaders.
  • Reimagining economies: alternative feminist frameworks in the Global South
    Farah Galal, MenaFem Movement for Economic, Development and Ecological Justice, 24 July 2024
    This piece explores the core principles of feminist economic frameworks and highlights grassroots initiatives in the Global South that embody these principles, as a way to illuminate viable alternative paths to the current global economic order.
  • 80 years of broken promises: The BWIs, Neocolonialism, and the urgent need for a feminist global economic order
    MenaFem Movement for Economic, Development and Ecological Justice, 22 July 2024
    The Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) – the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) – are celebrating a dubious milestone in 2024: 80 years of shaping the global economic order. Established in the aftermath of World War II, these institutions promised a new era of cooperation and prosperity. However, their legacy, particularly for the Global South, is one of neocolonialism, economic injustice, and austerity. As such, we published a call for blog posts last month to collect and consolidate critical feminist reflections on the BWIs, mainly from the Global South, in an effort to provide an alternative perspective on this 80th anniversary.
  • 80 years post Bretton Woods, it’s time for just finance
    Jon Sward, Lara Merling, Niranjali Amerasinghe, Devex, 8 July 2024
    In this op-ed the authors argue that reforming the International Monetary Fund’s Special Drawing Rights is crucial but faces opposition from high-income nations.
  • Establishing a revolutionary era of resistance: a feminist perspective on Kenya’s finance bill 2024
    Femnet, 24 June 2024
    On June 20, 2024, citizens of Kenya from all regions of the country participated in a second round of public demonstrations to express their opposition to the Finance Bill of 2024. An assertive and daring stance to call for the rejection of the Finance Bill. A large majority, primarily consisting of Gen Zs, (born between 1997 and 2012), is seeing a gradual increase in political influence as they become progressively more vocal about their rights.
  • The “Billions to Trillions” charade
    Jayati Ghosh, Project Syndicate, 14 May 2024
    Multilateral development banks and international financial institutions argue that mobilising private investment is crucial to meeting developing economies’ needs for climate and development finance. But boosting government revenues is far more likely to generate the trillions of dollars needed to close these financing gaps.
  • The Bretton Woods Institutions’ colonial paradigm
    Elaine Zuckerman, Gender Action, for IBON International’s A People’s History of the IMF/World Bank, 15 April 2024
    This article describes the neo-colonial paradigm of the “twin” Bretton Woods Institutions (BWIs) that has framed BWI activities from inception to the present.
  • Remedy for sick development?
    Oxfam, 15 April 2024
    In this blog, Oxfam argues that in a context of rising inequality and cost of living crises around the world, public services like healthcare have never been more crucial. Yet far from moving toward universal health coverage, the world has been going in reverse.
  • A scorecard for Kristalina Georgieva’s IMF leadership
    Federico Sibaja, Recourse, 11 April 2024
    Kristalina Georgieva, the current managing director of the International Monetary Fund, has won the support of European countries for a second 5-year term. Yet does her performance in her first term justify the support?
  • Ending 30 years of IMF exceptionalism: a call for an accountability mechanism at the International Monetary Fund
    Luiz Vieira, Bretton Woods Project, Perspectives, 21, 9 February 2024
    On the 30th anniversary of the establishment of the World Bank’s Inspection Panel, this article calls for a creation of an accountability mechanism at the IMF, particularly given the expansion of the Fund’s work to include, for example, gender and climate change, and the proliferation of its programmes in the context of increased debt burdens and a challenging global economic environment.

Open letters, statements and press releases

  • IDA21: A missed opportunity for transformative development in the Global South
    MenaFem Movement for Economic, Development and Ecological Justice, 2 December 2024
    The past decades have seen the adoption of policy frameworks prioritising privatization, austerity, and profit-driven models for service delivery. While these approaches are often promoted under the banner of efficiency and growth, their social costs—particularly for marginalized communities—are seldom addressed. In response, this paper offers a feminist critique of current strategies, presenting actionable recommendations that prioritize equity, justice, and sustainability.
  • Civil society feedback to draft World Bank Group’s IDA21 Replenishment Report
    Bretton Woods Project, Eurodad, Oxfam International and Urgewald, 14 November 2024
    A strong policy framework is also critical to ensure a transformative IDA21 replenishment. Proposals in this submission aimed at an adequate replenishment of grant-based resources from wealthy countries and to ensure socio-economic transformation is a core ‘mission’ of IDA21.
  • CSOs call on the IFC to provide remedy for harm
    Recourse, 17 July 2024
    Civil society groups write to the World Bank‘s Committee on Development Effectiveness which is meeting to discuss the IFC’s draft Remedy and Responsible Exit Framework, which is intended to outline how the institution will deliver remedy to communities harmed by projects it finances.
  • Bretton Woods revisited: creating a monetary and economic order fit for the 21st century
    Institute for Economic Justice (South Africa), Centre for Social and Economic Progress (India), Centre for Sustainable Finance at SOAS, University of London (UK), BRICS Policy Center (Brazil), Boston University Global Development Policy Center (USA), and Heinrich Boll Foundation (Germany), 20 June 2024
    Organisations across the world published this statement proposing reforms in eight areas of the international economic and financial architecture.
  • Civil society organizations launch “Principles for a Fair JETP” framework ahead of G7 Leaders Summit
    350.org, 10 June 2024
    A coalition of civil society organisations from South Africa, Indonesia, Vietnam, and Senegal presents guiding principles for global just transitions which highlights the integral need for accountability, transparency, equity, and other principles in climate finance towards addressing the urgent climate crisis, from the perspective of the Global South communities and civil society in line to receive JETP finance.
  • International statement: World Bank out of land!
    International Planning Committee for Food Sovereignty, 13 May 2024
    Organizations of small-scale food producers, Indigenous Peoples, workers, grassroots communities, and civil society denounce the World Bank as a major actor of land grabbing and ecosystem destruction. They call for effective measures to realise the right to land and territories, including agrarian reform

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