World Bank

The World Bank's $200bn climate investment announcement at the UN Climate Conference COP24 is welcome, but must be new money that can help tackle poverty.

“It is irresponsible for the World Bank to promote the deregulation of labor and the dismantling of the rights that workers have long fought for," said Nadia Daar, head of Oxfam's Washington office.

World Bank's 'Human Capital Index' shines a spotlight on the right priorities: education and health investments are crucial not just for economic growth, but for fighting inequality and securing basic rights.

In “Powering the Transition,” Oxfam details how together, the World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank are investing almost $5 billion in fossil fuels in the 10 Asian countries that belong to the Climate Vulnerable Forum.

This paper examines current and planned IFI energy sector support in Asian climate-vulnerable countries. It shows how this is not yet fit for purpose, and recommends how IFIs can intervene at this critical juncture to give governments the confidence to accelerate the transition to renewable energy for all.

After years of campaigning by Oxfam and others, the International Finance Corporation announced it will require new financial intermediary clients to publicly disclose their links to coal and will work with them to reduce and potentially drop these investments.

“Oxfam welcomes this new commitment; bringing down the price of storage is an important piece in making energy more accessible to poor communities and helps establish clean energy grids that low-carbon economies need," said Sasanka Thilakasiri, Oxfam’s energy policy lead.

Public-private partnerships (PPPs) in education are increasing in profile as countries grapple with serious challenges of educational access and quality. This study seeks to understand the impact of the PPP initiative in Punjab province, Pakistan, on key dimensions of equity, education quality, and democratic and social accountability.

This current draft of the 2019 World Development Report has interesting ideas, but also contains some dangerous proposals and assumptions which Oxfam believes might compromise the World Bank’s mission of eradicating poverty and achieving shared prosperity.

“At the start of the week, we urged the Bank to show it’s serious about ‘“ending poverty and boosting shared prosperity”’ in discussions on additional funding. We’re pleased to see them recommit to this, but it’s now up to the Bank’s programming to put its money where its mouth is," said Nadia Daar, head of Oxfam International's Washington office.