The most unlikely degrowthers
On why the World Bank and other multilaterals should recalibrate their climate projects in low-income countries
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I: Forcing energy-poor low-income countries to disproportionately focus on climate mitigation is anti-development
Charles Kenny, Vijaya Ramachandran and Guido Núñez-Mujica of the Center for Global Development have a nice piece documenting the World Bank’s climate-related financing. About a third of total financing outlays by the Bank in 2023-2024 went to projects tagged as having some climate component.
To be blunt, the data suggests that the World Bank continues to use its financial and advisory leverage to mislead low-income countries into incurring debts to disproportionately finance mitigation projects, rather than climate adaptation and investments in reliable and affordable energy access:
64 percent was directed towards mitigation and 36 percent towards adaptation. The figure below shows that for ever…