© WEF
Key points
- The World Bank and IMF sidelined climate at their annual meetings in Bangkok, focusing instead on jobs, private capital and small businesses.
- Campaigners criticised the shift, warning that communities living near polluting projects would bear the cost of weaker climate accountability.
- The World Bank still lends more to fossil fuels than to clean energy, and just 2.4% of multilateral development bank clean energy financing reached low-income countries.
- The bank plans to quintuple its critical minerals business within five years, though campaigners say deals must build local processing industries rather than simply expand extraction.
Climate was pushed to the margins of the World Bank and IMF’s annual meetings in Bangkok this month, as the bank put jobs and private investment ahead of an explicit climate agenda.
“You guys are all back to your typical stuff: climate, oil, energy,” World Bank president Ajay Banga told AFP. “I’m telling you, this meeting is all about jobs, private capital mobilisation and micro- and small- [businesses].”
The shift away from climate drew criticism from campaigners.
Smith Nwokocha, a coordinator at the Quest for Growth and Development Foundation, said climate change was not even on the agenda and instead there was a push for private capital, showing a clear gap.
“For communities like the ones I work with in Nigeria, this is not abstract. It is the difference between a plant that is accountable for its emissions and one that is not,” he said.
The Big Shift coalition, a campaign group pushing for the World Bank to shift investments from fossil fuels to renewables, accused the bank of overlooking the links between fossil fuel dependence, energy insecurity and development.
“The energy transition appeared to be sidelined, while local communities’ rights and needs were notably absent,” said Leandro Gomez of Farn, an Argentinian NGO .
Sunil Acharya of nonprofit Recourse said: “Fossil gas is bad economics; it exposes countries to volatile global markets and debt while locking public resources into costly infrastructure.”
The retreat on climate change is not just at the World Bank. An analysis by Jeremy Mark, a senior fellow at Atlantic Council and former IMF communications specialist, found that while climate change was frequently discussed in IMF reports from 2017, it was barely mentioned in 2026.
The change in rhetoric can largely be attributed to the Bretton Woods institution’s largest shareholder, the US, retreating from climate issues, Mark added. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has criticised the IMF of “mission creep” and urged the World Bank to drop its 45%climate-finance target, which it did in June, even as it kept its wider climate action plan.
Continued financing of fossil fuels and critical minerals
The World Bank lends more to fossil fuels than to clean energy, and far more than any other multilateral development bank, according to Oil Change International and Friends of the Earth US. And it plans to invest in gas projects in some developing countries, according to Climate Home News.
The World Bank Group’s direct fossil fuel financing has tottalled at least US$19bn since 2016. By comparison, clean energy financing averaged $9.6bn annually between 2023 and 2025.
Access to finance remains another concern. Just 2.4% of multilateral development bank clean energy financing reached low-income countries, the research found. Across all recipients, 92% came as loans rather than grants.
Much of the investment push concerned minerals. On 16 October, Banga said the World Bank had set a goal of quintupling its critical minerals business in five years, and identified 20 countries it could partner with on critical minerals development projects.
Eight governments announced partnerships and compacts covering reforms, infrastructure and investment during the annual meetings, with the World Bank saying these would strengthen environmental and social oversight, create jobs and develop local supply chains.
Karabo Mokgonyana, an energy campaigns adviser at Power Shift Africa, wrote that the government-led compacts aim to support national priorities for mineral processing and value addition. Their success should be determined by whether they help African countries develop processing and manufacturing industries, “rather than simply expanding upstream extraction”, she said.
For Nwokocha, the solution is to reform the World Bank’s private investment arm, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). While he’s hopeful the IFC can help finance cleaner industry, that alone will not ensure projects deliver on their climate benefits or address community concerns. Instead, he is calling for a revised investment framework that makes expectations consistent across projects.
“What is missing is a rule that makes the climate commitment binding and checkable, not a pledge to be resolved later,” he said. “When accountability lapses after a project is approved, it is not IFC that absorbs the cost. It is the families living next to these facilities, the ones with the least capacity to adapt to a changing climate.”
This page was last updated October 22, 2026
Written by
Ike Walker, a Green Central Banking contributor since 2023, has a decade's experience in research writing. Ike specialises in transformative justice, green finance, law and systems change. They are an Utrecht University's Bright Minds scholar and previously worked for Cambridge University and various justice-based NGOs.
Moriah Costa is the Editor-in-Chief of Green Central Banking and has over a decade of experience writing about banking and finance. She is an award-winning American journalist based in Paris and has written for major international publications, including Reuters, The Guardian, and S&P Global. Having grown up in water-stressed Arizona, she has always had a strong interest in bringing awareness to climate and environmental issues.
