The World Bank aims to achieve a liveable planet free of poverty

livemint.com:

World leaders are all too familiar with the global community’s challenges: loss of progress in our fight against poverty, an existential climate crisis, a fledgling pandemic recovery, and a crippling war on the borders of Europe. But beneath the surface, a deep mistrust is quietly pulling the Global North and South apart at a time when we need to be uniting if we are to have any hope of overcoming these intertwined crises. The Global South’s frustration is understandable.

In many ways, these countries are paying the price for the prosperity of others. When they should be ascendant, they’re concerned promised resources will be diverted to Ukraine’s reconstruction; they feel their aspirations are being constrained because energy rules aren’t applied universally, and they’re worried burgeoning youth may get locked into a prison of poverty. But the truth is that we cannot endure another period of emission-intensive growth.

We must find a way to finance a different world, one where climate resilience is strong, pandemics are manageable, food is abundant and fragility and poverty are defeated. Our challenges don’t respect lines on a map and won’t be adequately addressed piecemeal. They are affecting us all, but we are feeling the effects differently.

In the Global North, climate change means emission reductions, but in the South, it is a matter of survival, because hurricanes are stronger, heat-resistant seeds are in short supply, drought is destroying farms and towns, and floods are washing away decades of progress. In the middle is the World Bank. While questioning its relevance, the world is looking to the 78-year-old institution to deliver solutions at scale.