'Don't leave climate change to the World Bank,' say environmental groups

IPS: Leading environment groups have opposed plans to hand over financing to check climate change to the World Bank. Industrialised countries may be required to provide more than 100 billion dollars for developing countries to build low-carbon economies, according to unofficial estimates. This money should not be handled by the World Bank, 142 organisations fighting for climate justice said in a joint statement Tuesday (Dec. 9) at the UN climate talks under way in the Polish city Poznan.

The talks joined by some 11,000 participants from 192 nations began Dec. 1. They enter a critical phase Thursday (Dec. 11) when environment ministers and senior government officials begin the ministerial segment of the talks, and conclude the marathon gathering the next day. The two-week sessions are a bridge between climate change talks in Bali (December 2007) and Copenhagen, a halfway mark in negotiations on an ambitious and effective global climate change deal due to be concluded in the Danish capital next year.

As discussions continue here on ways to guarantee that developing countries have direct access to mitigation and adaptation funds, the group of non-governmental organisations from around the globe said the World Bank Group was positioning itself to take significant control of climate change financing. In a joint statement they called instead for climate funds and their utilisation to be made fully accountable to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC).

The G-77 group of developing countries and China, together representing 133 developing countries at the UN climate talks, are known to favour climate funds under the UNFCCC. "The World Bank is not a credible institution to play any role in addressing the climate crisis," says Friends of the Earth U.S. international finance campaigner Karen Orenstein. "Its climate investment funds are irreparably flawed and should be shut down….