The shakeup the World Bank needs

[Celerity]

If Ajay Banga is confirmed as World Bank president he will have to meet the demands of a global south eager for change.

https://www.socialeurope.eu/the-shakeup-the-world-bank-needs



Major changes are afoot at the World Bank but few people seem to be paying attention. Beyond devising a new, greener mission, the bank is undergoing a leadership transition, with important implications for its relationship with the global south and the institution’s long-term relevance.

By the time David Malpass, the World Bank’s president, announced his resignation last month, tensions over the bank’s stance on climate change had been building for months. Chosen for the job by the administration of the former United States president, Donald Trump, Malpass faced considerable pressure when Joe Biden took over, with the US Treasury expressing dissatisfaction with the bank’s failure to show genuine climate leadership.

Criticism of Malpass escalated last September, after he refused to acknowledge the role of human greenhouse-gas emissions in driving climate change. While he subsequently did so, his backpedalling did nothing to diminish accusations that, under his leadership, the World Bank was not doing nearly enough to align its lending with global emissions-reduction goals.

A month later, a group of ten major economies—the G7, plus Australia, the Netherlands and Switzerland—submitted a proposal for a ‘fundamental reform’ of the bank that would lead to greater progress on this front. The bank’s climate action plan remains, according to many western countries, too short on ambition.

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