Oxfam says $41 billion of the World Bank’s climate spending ‘effectively unaccounted for’

Credit: UKinUSA

The World Bank claims to have invested more than $100 billion in the effort to combat climate change. But a new report found that up to $41 billion of the bank’s spending on climate finance is impossible to track.

The Oxfam report, titled “Climate Finance Unchecked,” alleges that poor record-keeping practices at the World Bank make it “impossible” to verify its expenditures and impact on climate finance. The international lending institution publishes assessments of a project’s budgeted spending on climate finance, not how much money is actually spent. The report estimated the difference between budgeted and actual expenditures amounted to tens of billions of dollars over six years.

A senior World Bank official acknowledged to ICIJ that the institution should move toward calculating actual expenditures on climate finance, describing the current approach as a joint methodology used by all multilateral development banks. But the official disputed Oxfam’s estimate of the variance between budgeted and actual spending, saying that the real difference was far smaller.In recent years, the World Bank has touted its spending on climate finance and its plans to dramatically expand it. World Bank President Ajay Banga said in December that the bank had met its goal to devote 35% of its financing to climate three years ahead of schedule and set a new target of 45% by 2025. That goal is well within reach; the bank announced in September that its climate finance investments reached 44% of total financing, or $42.6 billion, over the past fiscal year. “We’re putting our ambition in overdrive,” Banga said.