Beautiful Virgin Islands

Monday, Oct 06, 2025

Slow start on World Bank reform angers climate-hit countries

Slow start on World Bank reform angers climate-hit countries

The World Bank meetings were supposed to be a first step in a new era of affordable loans for developing nations hard hit by climate change like Prime Minister Mia Mottley’s Barbados, one of many Caribbean islands battered by worsening hurricanes.
But if this was a new era, the World Bank meetings that closed Sunday in Washington left Mottley feeling much like she did in the old one — sidelined by wealthy nations that balked at either providing more money themselves or significantly changing the lending rules for existing funds. And increasingly, beyond angry.

“I get really furious,” Mottley said, when hearing “that people are not ready, or people want to kick the ball down the road.”

She spoke at sessions held by the non-profit Rockefeller Foundation in conjunction with the World Bank meetings, where Mottley and some African leaders detailed the growing human and financial cost of natural disasters that are growing more relentless as the climate warms: a record-breaking tropical storm that sat over southern Africa for days last month, killing hundreds; tens of thousands of deaths from years of failed rains in the Horn of Africa; a formal declaration from Italy this month of a refugee emergency.

“How much more must happen?” Mottley asked. “How many more people must lose their lives?“

With a World Bank head appointed by former President Donald Trump on his way out, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen and others have been pledging a World Bank climate overhaul.

Momentum — and demands — have been growing for the World Bank and other powerful global and regional financial institutions to change their lending practices so that less-wealthy nations can afford to harden themselves against rising seas, worsening storms and other extremes of climate change.

Developing nations also need help with the big investments it would take to move their economies away from climate-damaging coal and petroleum.

But so far, the governments with the biggest say, including the US, have been reluctant to put more of their own money into lending. As a group, they’ve also shied away from some of the changes in lending rules encouraged by Yellen and some others, fearing any move that could risk the World Bank’s AAA credit rating and make borrowing more expensive.

And looking ahead, advocates of freeing far more climate funding for countries primarily in the southern hemisphere worry no one is putting together the big tough plan that will turn lending-reform talk into action.

Some climate advocates expressed exasperation at one of the sole concrete steps approved by World Bank member countries at last week’s meetings: reducing the bank’s mandated ratio of equity to loans from 20 percent to 19 percent. That 1 percent percent tweak is expected to free about $4 billion a year for more lending.

The figure pales next to the $2.4 trillion that World Bank officials estimate developing nations need, in public and private funds, each year for the next seven to deal with climate change, pandemics and conflicts.

Developing nations complain — accurately — that the United States, Europe, China and other bigger economies have caused most of the climate damage and are leaving poorer nations to deal with the results.

The cost ranges from the Pacific island of Vanuatu struggling to move dozens of villages to higher ground to Pakistan dealing with sustained floods last year that covered a third of the country.

Global inflation and the strong US dollar have increased the debt burden on global and regional development loans in just the past year. Barbados’ interest rates on existing development loans soared, such as with an IMF loan whose rate went from 1.07 percent to 3.9 percent, Mottley said. She has spearheaded a
World Bank lending-reform agenda, called the Bridgetown Initiative, by developing nations.

The US and other wealthy nations never made good on an old pledge to provide $100 billion a year in climate funding for developing nations by 2020.

US climate envoy John Kerry and other Biden administration officials make clear they see no point in asking a Republican-heavy Congress for that kind of money to give other countries for climate change.

Instead, the administration wanted to see how much money it could free up for developing countries with tweaks like the 1 percent cut in the equity-to-loan ratio, said Scott Morris, a former deputy assistant treasury secretary for development finance, now at the Center for Global Development research group.

Yellen last week called that move “responsibly stretching the balance sheet.” She promised discussions on “many more” procedural moves in the months to come.

There’s an argument, though, that Republicans in Congress would be more receptive to appropriating money for the World Bank, and that the Biden administration “ought to be willing to make the ask of Congress for this,” Morris said. The administration didn’t seem to anticipate “the degree of backlash” from developing countries against the modest steps so far, he said.

The World Bank and IMF spring meetings were the start of a series of upcoming global gatherings that advocates hope will build momentum toward significant action on emissions cuts and climate finance. They culminate with the annual UN climate talks in Dubai in November and December.

But climate is a “crisis that is obviously proving itself hard to adequately describe to people in a way that actually motivates them,” Kerry said at another side event to the World Bank and IMF meetings.

Evoking what international climate bodies say will be increasing flows of climate refugees worldwide, Kerry cited a 2015 refugee crisis in Europe, and the surge of nationalist and far-right political parties that followed.

“And the anger that my colleagues here, particularly Mia Mottley, have described is going to grow if we don’t respond,” Kerry said. “You’ve seen nothing compared to what is going to happen if we don’t respond more rapidly.”
Newsletter

Related Articles

Beautiful Virgin Islands
0:00
0:00
Close
Munich Airport Reopens After Second Drone Shutdown
France Names New Government Amid Political Crisis
Trump Stands Firm in Shutdown Showdown and Declares War on Drug Cartels — Turning Crisis into Opportunity
Surge of U.S. Billionaires Transforms London’s Peninsula Apartments into Ultra-Luxury Stronghold
Pro Europe and Anti-War Babiš Poised to Return to Power After Czech Parliamentary Vote
Jeff Bezos Calls AI Surge a ‘Good’ Bubble, Urges Focus on Lasting Innovation
Japan’s Ruling Party Chooses Sanae Takaichi, Clearing Path to First Female Prime Minister
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs Sentenced to Fifty Months in Prison Following Prostitution Conviction
Taylor Swift’s ‘Showgirl’ Launch Extends Billion-Dollar Empire
Trump Administration Launches “TrumpRx” Plan to Enable Direct Drug Sales at Deep Discounts
Trump Announces Intention to Impose 100 Percent Tariff on Foreign-Made Films
Altman Says GPT-5 Already Outpaces Him, Warns AI Could Automate 40% of Work
Singapore and Hong Kong Vie to Dominate Asia’s Rising Gold Trade
Trump Organization Teams with Saudi Developer on $1 Billion Trump Plaza in Jeddah
Manhattan Sees Surge in Office-to-Housing Conversions, Highest Since 2008
Switzerland and U.S. Issue Joint Assurance Against Currency Manipulation
Electronic Arts to Be Taken Private in Historic $55 Billion Buyout
Thomas Jacob Sanford Named as Suspect in Deadly Michigan Church Shooting and Arson
Russian Research Vessel 'Yantar' Tracked Mapping Europe’s Subsea Cables, Raising Security Alarms
New York Man Arrested After On-Air Confession to 2017 Parents’ Murders
U.S. Defense Chief Orders Sudden Summit of Hundreds of Generals and Admirals
Global Cruise Industry Posts Dramatic Comeback with 34.6 Million Passengers in 2024
Trump Claims FBI Planted 274 Agents at Capitol Riot, Citing Unverified Reports
India: Internet Suspended in Bareilly Amid Communal Clashes Between Muslims and Hindus
Supreme Court Extends Freeze on Nearly $5 Billion in U.S. Foreign Aid at Trump’s Request
Archaeologists Recover Statues and Temples from 2,000-Year-Old Sunken City off Alexandria
China Deploys 2,000 Workers to Spain to Build Major EV Battery Factory, Raising European Dependence
Speed Takes Over: How Drive-Through Coffee Chains Are Rewriting U.S. Coffee Culture
U.S. Demands Brussels Scrutinize Digital Rules to Prevent Bias Against American Tech
Ringo Starr Champions Enduring Beatles Legacy While Debuting Las Vegas Art Show
Private Equity’s Fundraising Surge Triggers Concern of European Market Shake-Out
Colombian President Petro Vows to Mobilize Volunteers for Gaza and Joins List of Fighters
FBI Removes Agents Who Kneeled at 2020 Protest, Citing Breach of Professional Conduct
Trump Alleges ‘Triple Sabotage’ at United Nations After Escalator and Teleprompter Failures
Shock in France: 5 Years in Prison for Former President Nicolas Sarkozy
Tokyo’s Jimbōchō Named World’s Coolest Neighbourhood for 2025
European Officials Fear Trump May Shift Blame for Ukraine War onto EU
BNP Paribas Abandons Ban on 'Controversial Weapons' Financing Amid Europe’s Defence Push
Typhoon Ragasa Leaves Trail of Destruction Across East Asia Before Making Landfall in China
The Personality Rights Challenge in India’s AI Era
Big Banks Rebuild in Hong Kong as Deal Volume Surges
Italy Considers Freezing Retirement Age at 67 to Avert Scheduled Hike
Italian City to Impose Tax on Visiting Dogs Starting in 2026
Arnault Denounces Proposed Wealth Tax as Threat to French Economy
Study Finds No Safe Level of Alcohol for Dementia Risk
Denmark Investigates Drone Incursion, Does Not Rule Out Russian Involvement
Lilly CEO Warns UK Is ‘Worst Country in Europe’ for Drug Prices, Pulls Back Investment
Nigel Farage Emerges as Central Force in British Politics with Reform UK Surge
Disney Reinstates ‘Jimmy Kimmel Live!’ after Six-Day Suspension over Charlie Kirk Comments
U.S. Prosecutors Move to Break Up Google’s Advertising Monopoly
×