ANNOUNCEMENTS, EVENTS, AND CURRENT HAPPENINGS
International Finance Corporation (IFC) Compliance Advisor Ombudsman Report Substantiates BCA's Findings - Says IFC's Climate Change Policies & Their Implementation are Inadequate
Washington D.C., 30 October, 2024 – The IFC Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) today issued an advisory opinion highlighting significant misalignments between IFC’s current policies and their implementation and the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C climate target. The CAO report substantiates findings from Bank Climate Advocates’ (BCA) and raises questions about the IFC’s assertion that 85% of its new investments since July 1, 2023, are aligned with the Paris Agreement, and its commitment to achieve 100% alignment by July 1, 2025. BCA’s audit of 350 IFC investments unveils even more widespread failures by the IFC to adhere to its GHG emissions accounting, alternatives analysis, mitigation, and disclosure requirements prior to its financing decisions for each investment.
Click Here for BCA's Press Release detailing the CAO Report's Finding and BCA's Investigation
International Finance Corporation (IFC) must take expeditious measures to align its finance flows with the 1.5°C warming limitation objective. Join us for this World Bank Group 2024 Annual Board Meetings Civil Society Forum Session addressing what IFC must change in its policies and their implementation for IFC and its Member States to meet their due diligence and harm prevention climate change obligations.
Tune in live here or attend in person at the World Bank Annual Meetings, October, 22 2024 from 2:15- 3:45 PM EST / local time, Washington, D.C. at World Bank I Building Room 2-220 .
Join us for for this World Bank Group 2024 Annual Board Meetings Civil Society Forum Session to discuss the importance and impacts of MIGA’s guarantees in the context of The World Bank's evolution. Bank Climate Advocates will be addressing MIGA’s systematic failures to adhere to its board adopted policies applicable to climate change, and also improvements that must be made to MIGA’s climate change policies for MIGA and its member states to adhere to their human rights and Paris Agreement obligations.
Tune in live here or attend in person at the World Bank Annual Meetings, October 23, 2024 from 1:00- 2:30 PM EST / local time, Washington, D.C. at World Bank I Building Room 2-250 .
Join us for the BCA Co-Sponsored Asian Development Bank Annual Board Meeting Side Event in Tblisi, Georgia on May 4th from 11:00 am-12:30pm @ Museum of Fine Arts
Civil Society is hosting a climate change side event co-sponsored by Bank Climate Advocates (BCA) at the Asian Development Bank's (ADB's) Annual Board Meeting in Tblisi, Georgia. Join CSO panelists to discuss multilateral development bank climate change finance in Asia. Bank Climate Advocates will discuss improvements needed to the climate change aspects of ADB's environmental safeguards to align ADB'S financing and guarantee activities with the 1.5°C global warming goal and its climate change obligations under international law.
Bank Climate Advocates (BCA) to serve as panelist on World Bank Group 2024 Spring Board Meetings Civil Society Forum Session to expose the International Finance Corporation's systematic failures to adhere to its policies' GHG emissions analysis and mitigation disclosure requirements for each of its investments prior to financing decisions, and how these failures preclude IFC's alignment with the 1.5°C global warming limitation objective.
Tune in live here or attend in person at the World Bank Spring Meetings, April 19, 2024 from 4:30- 6:00 PM EST / local time, Washington, D.C. at World Bank I Building Room 2-220 .
Bank Climate Advocates to Serve as Expert Discussant for the International Finance Corporation (IFC) Dispute Resolution Mechanism Roundtable Discussion Regarding IFC's Need to Improve its Climate Change Policies and Practices in Implementation - April 16, 2024, Washington D.C
The Roundtable will bring together experts from research groups, academia, IFC, the CAO (IFC's disputer resolution mechanism), the World Bank Group, civil society organizations (CSOs), and other Multilateral Development Banks/International Financial Institutions. to exchange views on emerging practices in financial institutions related to the mitigation and reporting of GHG emissions at the project and portfolio levels. It will be held in the margins of the WBG-IMF Spring Meetings. The discussion will serve as input to CAO’s (IFC dispute resolution mechanism's) advisory work on strengthening IFC’s performance in implementing its Sustainability Policy and Performance Standards as they relate to addressing the climate crisis, which will also serve to contribute to IFC’s review of its Sustainability Framework and Performance Standards.
BCA Submits Climate Change Comments on the Asian Development Bank Draft Environmental and Social Framework on Behalf of 17 Organizations
The Asian Development Bank is updating its Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), which consists of the policies it has in place to safeguard people’s rights and ensure environmental protection.
On March 14, 2024, Bank Climate Advocates and 16 civil society organizations (CSOs) from the Global South and North submitted this set of climate change comments on the Draft ESF to the ADB and its Member State shareholders that govern the bank.
The improvements to ADB’s draft ESF our letter requests are necessary for ADB’s financing and guarantee activities to come into alignment with the Paris Agreement’s 1.5°C warming limitation objectives. They also must be adopted for the ADB and its global north shareholders to comply with their obligations under international law to stop financing fossil fuels and adhere to their climate change due diligence obligations that apply at the environmental and social assessment stage before ADB's financing decisions.
Moreover, the improvements to ADB's ESF we request are needed for ADB to avoid causing and contributing to irreversible severe harm to communities and millions of people all over the world and in its investment regions, especially those who are differentially or disproportionately affected by changing climate.
BCA and a Coalition of 28 CSOs from the Global South and North Submit Groundbreaking Programmatic Climate Change Request to IFC Compliance Advisor Ombudsman (CAO) - December 11, 2023
The Bank Climate Advocates (BCA) drafted request supported by BCA's legal research and evidentiary database documents IFC's systematic failures across 350 investments from 2012 - present to adhere to its climate change policies and obligations under international law prior to its financing decisions. The Request documenting IFC's failures to adhere to its policy requirements pertaining to GHG emissions quantification, alternatives analysis, mitigation, disclosure, and affected communities impact assessment, and detailing IFC climate change policy shortfalls, asks the CAO to use its discretionary authority to issue an advisory report and undertake a compliance appraisal to help cure IFC's failures and redress harms. BCA submitted the Request to the CAO after IFC Management refused to take corrective action to adhere to the plain meaning requirements of the climate change aspects of its policies in response to BCA's and CSOs requests.
Click here tor 28 CSOs' December 11, 2023 Request to the IFC CAO
Click here for 12 CSO's May 1, 2023 Request to IFC Management
Click here for IFC Management's July 7, 2023 Response
Click here for 14 CSO's September 1, 2023 Reply to IFC Management's July 7, 2023 Response
3 Page Overview Summarizing the Request & IFC's July 7, 2023 Response
BCA to Co-Host ADB Draft Environmental and Social Framework Learning Session - November 29, 2023
The Asian Development Bank (ADB) is updating its Environmental and Social Framework (ESF), which are the policies it has in place to safeguard people’s rights and ensure environmental protection. While the current draft highlights the importance of upholding human rights, inclusive partnerships, and meaningful participation in addressing development challenges and impacts of climate change, it falls short in securing peoples’ rights, lives, livelihoods, and environment from adverse impacts. In order to effectively avoid, mitigate and address threats and risks, demands from affected communities and civil society organizations must be reflected in the ESF.
The Reality of Aid-Asia Pacific, IBON International, Bank Climate Advocates (BCA), Recourse, and Coalition for Human Rights in Development are holding a learning session for CSOs in the Asia-Pacific region on the ADB’s ESF to: (1) Increase awareness and develop capacities of CSOs on the ESF and how these can be utilized to monitor development projects in their own contexts, (2) Collectively draft a critique on the draft ESF in order to forward calls and demands for the bank to uphold a people-centered, rights-based and climate-resilient approach to development, and (3) strategize on how to advance the critique by engaging with ADB officials and staff, governments and civil society.
Join us and register here. BCA will be highlighting the requisite improvements in the ESF necessary to align ADB's financing activities with the 1.5°C warming limitation objective and ABD's and its Member State's climate change obligations under international law.
Bank Climate Advocates to Present on World Bank Group 2023 Annual Board Meetings Civil Society Forum Panel: "Greenhouse Gas Emissions & Climate Change Alternatives Analysis: Ensuring the World Bank Group is Paris Aligned."
World Bank Annual Meetings, October 13, 2023 from 2:00 - 3:30 PM local time, Marrakech, Morocco
BCA to Participate In World Bank Action Day 2023, in Marrakech, Morocco
To put more pressure on the World Bank Group to stop funding fossil fuels and come into alignment with the Paris Agreement, civil society organizations, including Bank Climate Advocates, are joining forces in critical sessions on panels, meetings with Bank Directors and Management, and in demonstrations at the World Bank 2023 Annual Meetings in Marrakech from October 9-14, 2023
BCA Co-Publishes and Contributes to Climate Change Aspects of Trend Asia Report: "How IFC's Support for Captive Coal in Nickel Industrial Park is Destroying Obi Island"
The Report released October 6, 2023, details how the ongoing mining activity and the operation of captive coal power on Obi Island serves as evidence of International Finance Corporation (IFC) violating its own policies by failing to ensure its Financial Intermediary clients prevent climate change harms, destruction of natural resources, and adverse environmental and social impacts to local communities as IFC's board adopted safeguards require.
In addition to community impacts, the Report exposes that IFC continues to fall short of fulfilling its commitments to stop financing coal power plants, which is one of many critical parts of its promise to align its investments with the Paris Agreement. The Obi Island project IFC is enabling through violations of its policies applicable to its financial intermediary investments (other banks and financial institutions IFC sends funds to for investments), contributes to the climate crisis by generating massive amounts of greenhouse gas emissions, which reached 3,489,944 tons of CO2e per year in 2022 alone. This is six times Timor Leste's emissions in 2021. Click here for the Report.
BCA Submits a Reply to International Finance Corporation (IFC) Management's July 7, 2023 Response to our Request Asking the IFC to Cure its Systematic Failures to Adhere to its Climate Change Policies
On September 1, 2023, Bank Climate Advocates and 13 civil society organizations (CSOs) from the Global South and North submitted this Reply to IFC Management's July 7, 2023 Response to BCA's and 11 CSO's May 1, 2023 Request for Corrective Action.
The Request for Corrective Action asking the IFC to cure its systematic failures to adhere to its climate change policies prior to project financing, extensively documents the IFC's systematic failures from 2012 to the present to adhere to the requirements of its Board adopted policies applicable to GHG emissions quantification, impacts, mitigation, and alternatives analysis before project financing. The corrective action must be accomplished as soon as possible for the IFC to play its part in assuring the 1.5°C warming goal is met, to prevent its projects from harming Affected Communities , and to ensure it will and can implement its policies and Paris Agreement Methodology as applied to both its direct and financial intermediary investments.
Bretton Woods Observer, Environment News, Autumn 2023 Edition, October 4, 2023
Civil society raises concerns of widespread IFC noncompliance with its own Performance Standards on greenhouse gas emissions: New analysis by Bank Climate Advocates of 300 projects found IFC failed to follow its own guide‐lines on ‘emissions quantification, alternatives analysis, mitigation, disclosure and affected communities impact assessment’. Click here for article.
BCA submits Request to International Finance Corporation (IFC) Management for Corrective Action to Cure the IFC's Systematic Failures to Adhere to its Climate Change Policies Prior to Project Financing
On May 1, 2023, Bank Climate Advocates and 11 civil society organizations from around the world submitted this Request to the IFC. The Request extensively documents the IFC's systematic failures from 2012 to the present to adhere to the requirements of its Board adopted policies applicable to GHG emissions quantification, impacts, mitigation, and alternatives analysis before project financing.
This internal IFC reform and corrective action must be accomplished as soon as possible for the IFC to play its part in assuring the 1.5°C warming goal is met, to meet its objectives of coming into alignment with the Paris Agreement and mitigating climate change, to prevent its projects from harming Affected Communities as its policies require, and to ensure it will and can
implement its policies and Paris Agreement Methodology as applied to both its direct and financial intermediary investments.
Bank Climate Advocates to Present on World Bank Group 2023 Spring Board Meetings Civil Society Forum Panel: "Bringing IFC Into Alignment With The Paris Agreement: Ensuring a robust methodology covering financial intermediaries."
World Bank Spring Meetings, April 13, 2023, Washington D.C., USA
BCA to Participate In World Bank Action Day 2023, April 14, Washington D.C.
To put more pressure on the World Bank Group to stop funding fossil fuels and come into alignment with the Paris Agreement, civil society organizations, including Bank Climate Advocates, joined forces in critical sessions on panels at the World Bank 2023 Spring Meetings and took protest to the streets of Washington, D.C.
On April 12, 2023, Bank Climate Advocates participated in the Stop Fossil Gas protest outside the World Bank Headquarters in Washington D.C. organized by Recourse and the Big Shift Global coalition. The protest was timed during the World Bank's Spring 2023 Board Meetings.
BCA's Jason Weiner pictured on the right holding an oil pipeline.