World Bank criticised over climate crisis spending

theguardian.com:

The World Bank has come under fire for failing to show that its claimed spending on the climate crisis is real, in a report suggesting up to 40% of its reported climate-related spending is impossible to account for.

Of $17.2bn that the World Bank reported it spent on climate finance in 2020, up to $7bn cannot be independently verified, according to research by Oxfam.

The findings are the latest blow to the World Bank over its climate finance activities. Last month, the former US vice-president Al Gore led calls for the president of the bank, David Malpass, to resign after he avoided a journalist’s questions on climate science.

Malpass later apologised but his apparent climate denial followed years of concern among governments and NGOs over his leadership of the bank, and the bank’s continued finance for fossil fuels. Malpass was appointed in 2019 by the then US president Donald Trump, under the convention by which the bank’s head is chosen by the US.

Oxfam examined the $21.3bn of climate finance the bank reported in 2020, of which $17.2bn was provided by the bank’s two main lending arms, the International Development Association and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Climate finance is money provided to developing countries in the form of grants and loans, and intended to help them cut greenhouse gas emissions or adapt to the impacts of the climate crisis.

The Oxfam report’s authors took the World Bank’s published information on its climate financing efforts then applied the bank’s own stated methodology to see if it could reproduce the $17.2bn spending figure claimed.

In a report published on Monday, Oxfam found that the bank’s figures could be inaccurate by as much as 40% on either side of $17bn. Oxfam