Environment

Managing Director Kristalina Georgieva clasps hands with World Bank President Ajay Banga at the Global Sovereign Debt Roundtable during the 2024 Annual Meetings of the World Bank Group and International Monetary Fund in Washington, DC, on 23 October 2024. Credit: IMF Photo/Allison Shelley

IFI governance

Analysis

Annual Meetings 2024 Wrap-up - Don’t look back: BWIs plough down path of reforms lacking evidence and willingness to engage with broader UN-led reform processes

The 2024 World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings, taking place in the context of the institutions’ 80th anniversary, offered little substantive reform despite multiple ongoing organisational processes and reviews.

30 October 2024

Environment

News

Jamaica’s World Bank-brokered catastrophe bond fails to pay despite devastation of Hurricane Beryl

Bond's 'parametric criteria' were not triggered by powerful storm, despite the entire island being declared a disaster zone.

16 October 2024

Environment

News

BWP’s new briefing finds year one of World Bank’s Paris Agreement alignment in the energy sector deepened 'green conditionalities'

New BWP briefing on the World Bank’s Paris Agreement alignment in the energy sector finds that, in its first year, the focus was on deepening 'green conditionality' and structuring a private sector-led energy transition.

16 October 2024

Environment

News

Civil society raises concerns about Resilience and Sustainability Trust’s green conditionality as Fund conducts interim review

CSOs and experts question the suitability of ‘green' policy conditions attached to RST loans.

9 April 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

Infrastructure

News

Indonesia JETP's promotion of renewable energy privatisation opposed by unions and civil society

Indonesia’s Just Energy Transition Partnership bears the clear handprint of the World Bank’s private-sector led approach to power sectors in the Global South, creating opposition from unions and civil society.

9 April 2024