Recourse Annual Report 2024

Read about our activities and impact in the Recourse Annual Report 2024

Looking back on an intense year of advocacy, campaigning, and debates about the future of international public finance: 

Amid ongoing discussions on financial architecture reform and debt relief, we highlighted how the IMF failed to tackle austerity when it launched its climate approaches. As the multilateral development banks (MDBs) proclaimed record levels of climate finance and assumed a key role in resourcing global climate action, we sounded a note of caution about just how credible their stewardship might be. While several MDBs led reviews of the vital mechanisms they have in place to protect people and the planet from harm, Recourse, working closely with our partners, contributed in many fora—from successful efforts to secure a climate safeguard at the ADB, to exposing loopholes in the AIIB’s accountability mechanism, and ensuring that the IFC is held responsible for damages from coal expansion in Indonesia and the Philippines. 

At a time when even the UN Secretary General speaks of a world “literally on fire”, we highlighted how international finance institutions are too slow in supporting a just energy transition, still funding coal and fossil gas, still putting blind faith in the private sector to lead the way, still gender blind. With partners, we put forward a widely-supported positive vision for a just transition to sustainable, accessible energy—“Banking on Renewables“—which we will use to track MDB investments going forward.

In the midst of our work to achieve change in the world, Recourse also started its own internal journey of transformation, under new leadership, with a larger team based across more countries.

We will launch a new five-year strategy in 2025, underpinned by an ongoing focus on organisational development and building on our commitment to justice, evidence-based influencing, and collaboration with valued partners around the world.

After a year of elections and with more to come, the world is experiencing significant geopolitical upheaval. 2025 and beyond will be a massive test of the multilateral system. Recourse remains committed to working with partners and wider movements, to protect and advance on gains made by civil society in recent years, while demanding the necessary reforms. Whether at the Financing for Development conference, in the IFC Sustainability Framework review, on the “Mission 300” African energy initiative, or at COP30, Recourse will keep working to put people and the planet at the heart of development.

— Foreword by Duncan Pruett, Recourse’s Executive Director.

Click here to download the Recourse Annual Report 2024.

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