New BWP briefing finds the World Bank counted 70 per cent of energy-sector reforms in Development Policy Financing as having 'climate co-benefits' between 2018-2023 - but most of these promoted a private-led energy transition.
Conditionality impacts
IFI governance
Analysis
Spring Meetings 2025 Wrap-up: Don’t look up! Bank and Fund leadership self-censors on climate change and gender issues, as US tariffs rock global economic outlook
US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent indicates US will stay in the Bank and Fund, claiming “America First does not mean America alone,” as tariffs and rising debt vulnerabilities prompt gloomy forecast.
Conditionality
News
The IMF’s 2025 Conditionality Review: a test of reform or repeat?
Despite past acknowledgments of flawed policies, austerity-driven programmes continue to deepen economic hardship, entrench inequality, and prioritise creditors over sustainable development.
Conditionality
Analysis
Who’s afraid of the grassroots? IMF policymaking in the era of social discontent
IMF proposes a grassroots communication strategy to convince the public of the need for further austerity measures as publications reveal fear that social unrest will make reforms ‘unimplementable’.
Conditionality
Analysis
Kenya's growing youth movement for fiscal justice rejects IMF-mandated austerity
Youth-led led protests lead to withdrawal of controversial finance bill by President William Ruto.
Conditionality
Commentary
Economics is political: the IMF’s programme in Egypt can’t succeed without reforming both
More debt without tackling the political sources of Egypt’s economic problems means a deepening of the crisis.
Finance
News
Pakistan’s debt crisis fuelled by more IMF loans
Pakistan on track to receive its 24th loan from the IMF after the lender disbursed the last tranche of the country’s latest $3 billion programme.
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.
Social services
News
The World Bank's water privatisation agenda neglects fundamental human rights
World Bank's water privatisation agenda directly clashes with its poverty alleviation goals, disregarding water as a basic human right.
Environment
Analysis
Gambling with the planet’s future? World Bank Development Policy Finance, ‘green’ conditionality, and the push for a private-led energy transition
BWP's review of energy sector conditionality in World Bank Development Policy Financing from fiscal years 2018 to 2023 reveals the Bank has followed a pattern of promoting neoliberal reforms in many countries' energy sectors, with climate action increasingly being viewed as the rationale for these changes.
Featured briefings
9 June 2025
New data reveal World Bank DPF ‘climate finance’ carries strong private sector bias, undermining a just transition
New BWP briefing finds the World Bank counted 70 per cent of energy-sector reforms in Development Policy Financing as having 'climate co-benefits' between 2018-2023 - but most of these promoted a private-led energy transition.
15 April 2025
The Bretton Woods Observer: Spring 2025
2 April 2025