Climate finance

Barbados finance minister Ryan Straughn chairs V20's ministerial session on 24 April, during the 2025 World Bank and IMF Spring Meetings in Washington DC. Photo: CVF/V20.

IFI governance

Analysis

V20 communiqué analysis Spring Meetings 2025: amid attacks on climate action, climate vulnerable countries once again highlight urgent need to step back from the brink

Faced with deafening silence from Bank and Fund leadership on climate issues at the Spring Meetings, climate vulnerable countries demand urgent changes to global financial architecture.

30 April 2025

IFI governance

Background

Catalyzing climate finance in fragile contexts - What’s being done and what still needs doing?

Notes from the 23 April Civil Society Policy Forum session titled “Catalyzing climate finance in fragile contexts - What’s being done and what still needs doing?”

23 April 2025 | Minutes

Rights

News

Communities demand justice as IFC fails to address coal financing fallout

IFC faces backlash for failing to address social and environmental harms from its financing of coal plants in the Philippines, despite proven health and environmental violations.

15 April 2025

Environment

News

Trump election may add pressure to reverse World Bank’s prohibition on support for nuclear power

Donald Trump’s election may result in a revision of World Bank’s long-standing prohibition of support to nuclear power.

12 December 2024
illustration of the Bretton Woods Observer winter 2024, presenting the World Bank globe sitting on a hidden pile of gold looking at the Wall Street Bull (which represents the financial sector)

Environment

Analysis

COP29 sees MDBs climate finance take centre stage, as civil society brands new climate finance goal a ‘betrayal’

Rich countries agree to provide a paltry $300 billion in public finance by 2035 including funds channelled through MDBs, as Small Island States and Least Developed Countries stage walkout.

12 December 2024
Lethaba Power Station outside Sasolburg in the Free State, 2007. Credit: John Hogg / World Bank

Environment

Analysis

Year one of World Bank Paris Agreement alignment in the energy sector: ‘green conditionality’ dwarfs green investments

New BWP research finds the Word 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.

1 October 2024 | Briefings
cover illustration of the Observer Summer 2024

Finance

Analysis

IMF board’s reluctance leaves Special Drawing Rights as an underused tool in Fund's toolbox

IMF board's lukewarm endorsement of SDR rechanneling through MDBs stands in stark contrast to continued calls from Global South governments for additional SDR allocations, amid growing debt crisis.

3 July 2024

Environment

News

World Bank's $1 billion loan to South Africa risks undermining just transition by doubling down on 'de-risking' private capital

Despite the Just Energy Transition Partnership's failure to attract private investments in South Africa, the World Bank is doubling down on a private sector led approach to the green transition through $1 billion loan contingent on the separation of Eskom’s activities.

3 July 2024

IFI governance

Analysis

Spring Meetings 2024 Wrap Up: Despite mounting crises, persistent lack of political will to match rhetoric with action remains

Urgent BWIs reforms remain hostage to lack of political will in Global North as the G20 failed to deliver on important issues within a fragmented geopolitical situation.

24 April 2024
Protester holding a banner with the message System change, not climate change

Environment

Background

The World Bank and climate finance: Success story or a new era of green ‘structural adjustment’?

This Inside the Institutions analyses the World Bank's climate finance, examining its impact on low- and middle-income countries' climate objectives.

9 April 2024 | Inside the institutions