The World Bank’s Culpability in Climate Change
The World Bank Group’s Carbon Projects in the Asia-Pacific Region (1949-2010)
The World Bank further elbowed its way into the climate change negotiations and infrastructure when in 2010, the 16th Conference of Parties of the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) invited the World Bank to serve as the interim trustee of its Green Climate Fund, the operating entity that will manage the financial mechanisms of the Convention.
Peoples' movements and organizations in many countries of the world, especially in the global South opposed this move, and justifiably so.
The World Bank is tainted by a history of financing projects that produce or heavily use fossil fuels. Over the past 61 years, the Bank financed 745 such projects worth $69.82 billion in 34 nations in the Asia Pacific region.
The World Bank’s Culpability in Climate Change
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Yet, while recognizing that using fossil fuels emit up to 70 percent of climate-destabilizing greenhouse gases today, the World Bank has never explicitly owned up to its share of the current climate crisis and perhaps none is forthcoming.
Coal-fired power generation plant. © The Mindanao Examiner
