Unaccountable Accounting: The World Bank’s unreliable climate finance reporting
Overview
Despite being the largest multilateral provider of climate finance, the World Bank supplies very little evidence to support its claims about the amount of climate finance it provides. Oxfam has attempted to recreate the Bank’s reported climate finance figures using public information for projects in the Bank’s FY2020.
Oxfam found that the Bank’s current climate finance reporting processes are such that its claimed levels of climate finance cannot be independently verified and could be off by as much as $7bn, or 40%.
Without better disclosure practices, the World Bank is asking us to take much on faith. Climate finance funding is too important for us to do that. The World Bank must be more transparent in its reporting so that it can be held to account.
Supporting documentation for the paper:
Sample data and summary of results (csv)
Project-by-project analysis (pdf)
Comparison of web and summary pdf reporting (csv)
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