The annual meeting of the World Bank, October 9–15, 2023, was punctuated by numerous protests and stunts by civil society. The meeting went by without any major incidents, apart from the severe earthquake that hit Marrakesh a couple of weeks prior. However, the Moroccan government did not want to cancel the conference after the long preparations and went through with the event as planned.
Economic Growth and a Bigger Bank Above All Else
Our conclusion after the World Bank Annuals is sobering. While we see that many of our supporters inside and outside the Bank are working hard to keep the Bank accountable and make it more transparent, at this stage we fear that the reform will exacerbate old problems.
The new president Ajay Banga has confidently taken the reins at the World Bank. He knows how to sell his vision of a bigger and better bank. The emphasis was clearly on “bigger” at all meetings. From a human rights and environmental perspective, the “better” remains long ways away. We do not see the World Bank abandoning fossil fuels and aligning with the Paris Agreement. We sharply criticize the fact that large sums continue flowing into fossil fuels via indirect financing instruments
Banga's powers of persuasion will require civil society to argue even more precisely and provide robust evidence. Otherwise, we fear that he will transform the World Bank into an institution bent on privatization and financialization. The risks are borne primarily by the people in the project countries. They will not be helped if it is also announced that environmental and social standards (E&S) will be tightened, the credit volume increased, disbursement accelerated and credit approvals delegated to management. In addition, the review processes of the environmental and social standards of both IBRD/IDA and IFC/MIGA are on the agenda for next year.
The World Bank’s energy policy has brought us great disillusionment. Banga's statements about the Bank no longer financing coal and having only a fractional overall stake in oil and gas is a mockery to all those who publish one case study and portfolio analysis after another that prove the opposite. We are still waiting for the Bank to comment on our trade finance study. We will continue to press strongly because we are convinced that we are pulling the right lever. That is why at the World Bank Action Day we called on the World Bank to stop laundering its dirty money.
We feel even confident in our demands for a political solution. The World Bank’s approach to implementing the Paris Climate Agreement remains a bad joke. Banga did announce, however, that the World Bank will reveal at this year's COP how it intends to measure its future progress on climate policy. Hopefully, as part of one of his five pillars for reforming the Bank, digitization, he will also finally increase the transparency of the financing instruments and improve the quality of the data already available.
