Civil society letter to the World Bank Group President on climate action

Nearly 100 civil society organisations who staged a protest outside this year’s World Bank Annual Meetings have written a letter to the World Bank Group President and Executive Directors calling for greater action on climate change.

The letter reads:

“The signs of the unfolding climate emergency are evident: record-breaking forest fires in the Brazilian Amazon and Cerrado biomes; ice-melt in the Arctic; devastating flooding in Mozambique and South Asia; and unprecedented and deadly heatwaves across Europe in just the past year. World leaders and institutions have a responsibility to act now to stop the climate catastrophe. Instead of helping countries make the transition out of fossil fuels, the World Bank Group (WBG), from 2014 to 2018 alone, has facilitated fossil fuel development in 45 countries, either through project finance or development policy finance and technical assistance according to data gathered by environmental group, Urgewald, from the World Bank website.

“During this period, the WBG provided over $12 billion in project finance for 88 fossil fuel projects in 38 countries. In addition, the WBG assisted the development of fossil fuels through policy programs in at least 28 countries, including the development of coal in six countries.

Given this reality, plus the fundamental threat that climate change poses to the Bank’s mission, we call on the World Bank to play a leading role among MDBs by committing to end all support for fossil fuels by the end of 2020, and signal the immediate shift to a carbon neutral world that is necessary to stabilize the global climate. This shift should be accompanied by increased investments in renewable energy access, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, where access rates to electricity and clean cooking remain low.”

Read the full letter here or download it on the right hand side.