At the World Bank’s 2024 Annual Meetings, civil society had an opportunity to exchange opinions with the Bank on key development issues, including Development Policy Financing (DPF), industrial agriculture, and disability-inclusive climate finance.
Civil Society Policy Forums (CSPF)
The CSPF provides an opportunity for civil society to arrange panels on topics of interest. This year, BIC, along with civil society partners, sponsored several panels on topics central to our work.
BIC facilitated a panel discussion on Development Policy Financing, which highlighted the need for the Bank to be more transparent in how it is using DPF as a tool. While DPF accounts for a significant portion of the Bank’s lending, the Bank’s primary set of safeguards, the Environmental and Social Framework (ESF) are not applied to DPF. Instead, governments receiving funding via DPF must adhere to a separate, DPF-specific policy that, unlike the ESF, does not require engagement with stakeholders and affected communities. Panelists shared examples from their experience with the flawed and limited stakeholder engagement processes around DPF in the Philippines and Pakistan, calling on the Bank to bring DPF requirements in line with the bulk of its portfolio where stakeholder engagement is a core requirement.
The lack of a requirement for meaningful consultation with stakeholders is troubling since a large proportion of energy sector investment is in the form of DPF, often under the auspices of climate finance. According to research from one of the panelists, around $13 billion of the $19 billion invested in the energy sector in the first year of the Bank’s commitment to align all public sector finance with the Paris climate agreement was through DPF. Panelists further noted loopholes in DPF that result in support for fossil gas and argued for the World Bank to stop expanding all fossil fuel investments, which lock countries into debt and carbon-intensive technologies.
BIC also organized a CSPF panel on investing in climate-resilient and inclusive infrastructure. Panelists shared their experiences monitoring a World Bank-funded post-disaster reconstruction project in Indonesia and a proposed public transport project in Ghana. They reflected on the importance of investing in infrastructure that is both inclusive and sustainable as the effects of climate change increase. A common issue across the two projects is insufficient stakeholder engagement and the Bank’s failure to meaningfully engage with persons with disabilities. Panelists emphasized the need to engage throughout the project cycle, as investments in infrastructure projects can be funded with good intentions and strong documents, but not everything on the ground can be anticipated. This is where consistent engagement with project-affected persons becomes crucial to a project’s success.
BIC staff moderated a discussion on the Bank’s Recipe for a Livable Planet. The discussion focused on cutting the share of greenhouse gas emissions coming from agriculture and food systems while continuing to feed the world. As the agrifood system is caught in a cycle that consistently increases greenhouse gas emissions, the Bank developed the Recipe to work towards achieving the goals of the Paris Agreement. Panelists argued for the need to decrease global reliance on industrial livestock, noting that 76% of global soy production is used to feed livestock. Industrial Livestock has been a major driver of deforestation globally and has also led to soil degradation, overuse of water, and biodiversity loss. They further asserted that the Bank needs to dedicate more resources to organic, regenerative, and agroecological farming, urging it to stop funding factory farming.
BIC co-sponsored a panel on the effective implementation of management action plans and dispute resolution agreements. Panelists provided examples of challenges they have dealt with when seeking remedies for project harms. The primary complaints included delays in implementing action plans and a lack of communication with affected communities. One panelist remarked on the issues with delays in a project in the Philippines, pointing out that while they waited for remedy, there were new harms, including displacement of people and intimidation of community leaders. The Bank must work to maintain engagement with stakeholders throughout the process and make clear indicators for monitoring progress to provide accountability.
Bank Announcements
During Annual Meetings, the World Bank released its new Corporate Scorecard. The new Corporate Scorecard improves on the previous format by focusing on outcomes over processes, improving disaggregation, and including data that ties outcomes to specific investments. However, the new Corporate Scorecard retains the same issues we noted in the Provisional Scorecard, including insufficient disaggregation by marginalized groups and a lack of focus on adverse impacts from investments. Furthermore, there are currently gaps within the data and methodology that hinder the effectiveness of the new Scorecard. The World Bank also released a new organizational effectiveness and efficiency dashboard, which measures the quality of World Bank processes. We support the inclusion of the new indicator on quality of citizen and civic engagement. However, the relevance of this indicator will depend on the quality of the methodology, which has yet to be released.