The Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) are financing instruments designed to pilot low-carbon and climate-resilient development through the multilateral development banks (MDBs). They are comprised of two trust funds - the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) and the Strategic Climate Fund (SCF).
Analysis
Rights
Analysis
World Bank on jobs: a "significant departure" or "business as usual"?
The opening sentences of the 2013 World Development Report Jobs, could not be clearer: "Jobs are the cornerstone of economic and social development". Brendan Martin of UK NGO Public World examines the policy implications for developing economies, trade unions and the wider development community.

Environment
Analysis
Working paper: The private sector and climate change adaptation
This paper looks at PPCR projects implemented under the World Bank's private sector lending arm, the International Finance Corporation, highlighting important questions concerning the design, implementation and operation of projects financed from public climate funds using private sector actors. In summary, the analysis suggests that the integration of private sector projects into national planning processes and strategies is crucial.

Environment
Analysis
Climate Investment Funds Monitor 6
The Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) are financing instruments designed to pilot low-carbon and climate-resilient development through the multilateral development banks (MDBs). They are comprised of two trust funds - the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) and the Strategic Climate Fund (SCF).
Accountability
Analysis
The IFIs in 2012: year in review
2012 saw continued crisis in Europe, but also a turning point in the leadership selection of the World Bank. The choice of Dr Jim Yong Kim as new president, who brings a background in public health in developing countries, marked the first ever selection of a development practitioner to lead the institution. However, large bureaucracies are slow to change, as the International Monetary Fund (IMF) found out with its inability to extricate itself from the morass developing in the eurozone.
Infrastructure
Analysis
The World Bank and industrial policy: Hands off or hands on?
Former deputy secretary general of UNCTAD Carlos Fortin, of the Institute of Development Studies, examines the Bank's record on industrial policy over the last 20 years and shows that the Bank's position is more nuanced.
Social services
Analysis
IFIs' new "house of cards" in Central and Eastern Europe
IFIs are renewing their focus on Central and Eastern European states. This comes amidst fears that growth in the region needs to be rekindled. The World Bank has promised more funding for countries at risk of instability. However, IMF loans being negotiated with Romania and Hungary have met with controversy.
Accountability
Background
Climate Investment Funds Monitor survey
The Bretton Woods Project launched the twice-yearly Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) Monitor in 2010 to track the development of the CIFs and highlight concerns. As it approaches our third year, we would like your input into how we can improve the CIFs Monitor to ensure that it remains a valuable resource for civil society and other interested stakeholders of the CIFs.
Social services
Analysis
Infrastructure as an asset class
A forthcoming report on private equity infrastructure funds by Nicholas Hildyard of NGO The Corner House, More than bricks and mortar, looks at the connections between infrastructure funding and international financial markets, and at the wider political project that infrastructure embodies. In this briefing, Hildyard argues that the transformation of infrastructure into an asset class has environmental and social implications far beyond what can be handled by stronger safeguards on investments.
Environment
Analysis
Climate Investment Funds Monitor 5
The Climate Investment Funds (CIFs) are financing instruments designed to pilot low-carbon and climate-resilient development through the multilateral development banks (MDBs). They are comprised of two trust funds - the Clean Technology Fund (CTF) and the Strategic Climate Fund (SCF).
Accountability
Analysis
'Leveraging' private sector finance
The notion that public investments should be used to 'leverage' additional investments from private actors is increasingly used in a variety of development finance forums, including aid, development finance, agriculture and, in particular, climate finance. The World Bank has become one of the leading proponents of this concept, though nowhere has it spelled out clearly what it means by 'leverage' or how it should be measured.
Conditionality
Analysis
IMF policy recommendations
IMF policy recommendations are often criticised for being too restrictive, procyclical and paying little attention to country-specific circumstances. In the aftermath of the 2008 crisis, the Fund showed some policy rethinking, bringing about expectations of change. However, Rathin Roy and Raquel A. Ramos of the UNDP Policy Centre for Inclusive Growth analyse IMF policy recommendations given to developing countries and conclude that headquarters' receptiveness to new approaches has not been trans