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big shift global
Activists Greet New World Bank President With Demands for Global Just Transition
"It's not often we feel hope in the climate movement, but today, with a new World Bank president having publicly committed to taking climate change seriously, we're feeling hopeful," Glasgow Actions Team director Andrew Nazdin said in a statement. "But President Banga doesn't have a moment to lose; the time is now to announce plans to move away from fossil fuels and help the globe transition to clean energy in a just and equitable manner."
Activists hand their "First 100 Days" demands to World Bank staffers in Washington, D.C. on June 2, 2023.(Photo: Eric Kayne/AP Images for Glasgow Actions Team)
Climate advocates cheered in February when former World Bank President David Malpass, nominated to lead the bank by then-U.S. President Donald Trump in 2019, said that he would step down this spring, nearly a year ahead of schedule.
The early resignation announcement followed a sustained pressure campaign against Malpass, who was condemned as a "climate denier" after refusing to acknowledge that burning fossil fuels causes the planet-heating pollution underlying increasingly frequent and intense extreme weather disasters.
U.S. President Joe Biden's ensuing decision to tap Banga for the role angered progressives, who argued that the erstwhile private equity executive and former Mastercard CEO is likely to advance the powerful international financial institution's historically pro-corporate and pro-fossil fuel agenda. When the World Bank's board of governors ratified Banga's presidency in early May—appointing the Biden nominee to a five-year term with a June 2 start date—the bank's new leader suggested that a "climate change shift" was coming.
On the eve of Banga's first day in office, Big Shift Global acknowledged that his stated belief in climate science is an improvement over the status quo. But whether he leads the World Bank in "the right direction on climate" remains an open question, the international campaign noted, reiterating its demands for "a phaseout of fossil fuel finance and support for a just, clean energy transition."
Luisa Abbott Galvao, senior international policy campaigner at Friends of the Earth U.S., pointed out that "Ajay Banga has spent his career chasing profits for shareholders rather than working in the public interest."
"But he could still commit to a different legacy from his climate change-denying predecessor, David Malpass," said Galvao. "We call on Banga to pledge an end to World Bank financing for fossil fuels on his first day in office. When science says new fossil fuel developments are incompatible with the 1.5°C pathway, a failure to act is effectively climate denial."
For its part, the Glasgow Actions Team tweeted, "While Ajay Banga is inside addressing his staff, we're outside showing him how easy it is to truly shift the World Bank to act on climate change!"
"You can't address poverty in a world of climate chaos," the group added. "End fossil fuel finance now!"
Big Shift Global showed in a recent report that the World Bank has directly financed at least $14.8 billion in fossil fuel production since the signing of the Paris agreement in 2015—reneging on its 2017 pledge to stop supporting oil and gas projects within two years.
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the International Energy Agency have made clear that fossil fuel expansion will cause the climate emergency's consequences to grow even deadlier, especially for humanity's poorest members who have done the least to cause the crisis.
Global Citizen noted Friday that impoverished countries on the frontlines of mounting socio-ecological catastrophes "can't tackle climate change when they're drowning in debt" and urged Banga to implement a debt jubilee in addition to subsidizing a green overhaul of the global economy.
The group also took out a full-page ad in The Wall Street Journal, calling on Banga to begin transforming the World Bank into an instrument for genuinely sustainable development on his first day.
"As the new president, what will your legacy be?" the ad asks. "In the face of the triple climate, poverty, and hunger crises, the world's biggest development bank stands at a critical juncture."
"Under your guidance, the World Bank could serve as an invaluable partner for low-income countries and those vulnerable to climate change," it continues. "The solutions are on the table."
"Make your first steps bold," says the ad. "Working alongside other multilateral development banks, help mobilize $1 trillion more in financing to help the world's poorest and most vulnerable countries quicken their transition to clean energy, withstand disasters, and power our planet."
After Dumping $15 Billion Into Fossil Fuels, World Bank Urged to Stop 'Investing in Climate Disaster'
Big Shift Global's report--entitled Investing in Climate Disaster: World Bank Finance for Fossil Fuels--"shows that even after the Paris agreement, climate science, and climate impacts should have been focusing minds" at the World Bank Group "on the need for a transition to clean renewable sources of energy."
Instead, "the group remained in a fossil-funding paradigm, harmful to people, countries, and planet," spending at least $14.8 billion supporting fossil fuel projects and policies since the landmark climate accord was signed.
The report's release coincided with a demonstration by activists with Glasgow Actions Team, who unveiled a banner reading "World Bank = Climate Chaos" outside the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., where the World Bank will hold its annual meetings next week.
The analysis was also published on the same day that U.S. Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen urged the World Bank to do more to combat the climate emergency.
"We agree with Secretary of Treasury Yellen that the development finance system needs to be fit for purpose in order to react to global challenges and crises, such as climate change," Glasgow Actions Team director Andrew Nazdin said in a statement.
"If the World Bank wants to be a part of the solution rather than the problem, it needs to stop funding fossil fuels and unlock billions in order to support the transition to renewable energy across the globe and end poverty and inequality," Nazdin added.
The report also comes amid calls by climate campaigners and U.S. Democratic lawmakers for the World Bank Group to fire its president, David Malpass--who was nominated by former U.S. President Donald Trump--after he refused to acknowledge that burning fossil fuels is heating the planet.
"World Bank President David Malpass recently refused to confirm that he accepts climate science," Big Shift Global said on its website. "While President Malpass has attempted to walk back his remarks, the bank's track record of a lack of climate action under his leadership speaks for itself."
Bronwen Tucker, public finance co-lead at Oil Change International--a member of Big Shift Global--said Thursday that "under Malpass, the World Bank Group is running backward on climate and just development."
"The World Bank Group still funds more fossil fuels" than any other multilateral development bank (MDB), "and they continue to lock Global South countries into expensive and volatile fossil fuel contracts through their heavy-handed policy lending programs," Tucker added. "They are blocking joint MDB Paris alignment efforts. Malpass must go."
The White House condemned Malpass' initial remarks, and according to reporting by Axios, the Biden administration is considering an attempt to remove the World Bank president and replace him, perhaps with former U.S. vice president and early climate champion Al Gore or current Biden climate envoy John Kerry.
Big Shift Global is "calling on all of the world's biggest public development banks to shift all their money out of dirty fossil fuels and into sustainable renewable energy to provide energy access for all."
The coalition added that multilateral development banks "such as the World Bank manage billions of dollars of public money," making them "key to financing the shift to a sustainable renewable global energy system."
Big Shift Global says these international financial institutions must:
- End all direct and indirect finance to fossil fuels and promote a just transition;
- Significantly scale up investment in sustainable renewable energy and ensure everyone has access to clean, safe energy;
- Include strong environmental, social, and governance safeguards relating to fossil fuels and renewable energy; and
- Be transparent and accountable about direct and indirect energy finance and in measuring emissions from the projects they fund.
According to the World Bank's own analysis, "Climate change may push over 130 million into poverty by 2030 and cause over 200 million people to migrate within their own countries by 2050."
The World Bank says it is "the biggest multilateral funder of climate investments in developing countries," and that it intends "to go further in helping countries reduce poverty and rise to the challenges of climate change."
The international financial institution cites the more than $109 billion it says it has invested in climate finance--including a record $21.6 billion for fiscal year 2021--over the past six years.
However, the U.K.-based international charity Oxfam said this week that the World Banks' "reporting practices make it impossible to independently verify their climate finance claims."
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Oxfam Warns World Bank 'Could Be Significantly Overstating' Climate Spending
"The Earth is on fire and the World Bank is one of the biggest arsonists in disguise," German Green politician Ute Koczy, an MDB expert at coalition member Urgewald, said in a statement Thursday.
"To date, this bank supports coal, oil, and gas," she added. "Greedy companies are lucky to have World Bank leaders in back. This has to stop. Exit fossil fuel finance now!"
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