Grading the World Bank Group on climate justice principles: A scorecard on the Bank’s 2025 climate finance

The World Bank Group’s climate finance emerged as a de facto pillar of the new global finance goal agreed in 2024 at COP29 to provide a minimum of $300 billion a year for developing countries’ climate action by 2035. In fiscal year 2025 (FY2025) the World Bank delivered $50.8 billion in climate finance, according to its own internal reporting – a record high – demonstrating its growing relevance to the climate finance landscape. 

However, the Bank’s expanding role in providing climate finance to developing countries – finance that, under the Paris Agreement, is meant to flow from wealthy countries in line with the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities – has raised concerns among climate justice advocates. A key issue is whether channelling finance through the Bank’s lending structures, done by tagging existing lending as having ‘climate co-benefits’, is meeting the standard of climate finance that advocates have long called for.

In this context, this scorecard assesses the World Bank’s reported climate finance for FY25 across three criteria: (1) proportion of grant-based support; (2) transparency and accountability; and (3) relative alignment of the Bank’s financial instruments with climate finance that is inclusive and people-focused. Given the key focus on adaptation finance at COP30 in Brazil in 2025 – which announced a tripling of adaptation finance by 2030, albeit against an unclear baseline – a case study on the Bank’s provision of adaptation finance is also included in this scorecard.

Overall grade: C-

This grade reflects the Bank’s performance across these three criteria in FY25, highlighting areas of progress but also key gaps in the design and delivery of its climate finance.

• Grant-based finance remains low – Grade D: only 9 per cent of the Bank’s climate finance during FY25 was delivered as grants. This highlights the importance of grant-equivalent counting to avoid overstating support that exacerbates debt burdens and constrains fiscal space for climate action.
• Transparency remains uneven – Grade C: while the Bank has significantly improved disclosure requirements from April 2025 for the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD; the Bank’s middle-income country lending arm) and the International Development Association (IDA; its low-income country lending arm) projects – by clarifying how climate finance is accounted for in sub-project components – the International Finance Corporation (IFC; the Bank’s private sector arm) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency’s (MIGA; its political risk insurance arm) project-level climate finance disclosures remain lacking, with minimal public information provided on how their climate finance figures are calculated.
• Policy-based lending raises governance concerns – Grade C: over 25 per cent of IBRD and IDA climate finance is delivered through the Bank’s policy-based lending instrument, i.e., Development Policy Financing (DPF). Because DPF supports policy reforms, rather than funding specific projects, this lending involves key decisions about countries’ economic pathways, yet consultation with citizens is not mandatory. This raises broader concerns about country ownership and the inclusivity of reported climate finance.

For more information about this research or BWP’s environmental work more broadly, please contact Jon Sward, Environment Project Manager at jsward@brettonwoodsproject.org