Bretton Woods Project

Our Wrap-Up of The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings 2024 is NOW OUT 🔊: The 2024 World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Washington DC, on the institutions’ 80th anniversary, proved to be another missed opportunity for meaningful reform of the international financial architecture, with the main topics of discussion - the Bank’s Scorecard launch and the IMF’s charges review - showing a palpable gap between talk about reform of the BWIs and the very real struggle to pass incremental changes. The international Financial Institutions are struggling with an identity crisis, with the Bank focused on serving private sector interests and the IMF failing to achieve its mandate of providing an international safety net for its vulnerable members. Read more: https://lnkd.in/df7U-wS4

💡 ActionAid's Wangari Kinoti and Lina Moraa share their thoughts on the role that the International Monetary Fund and The World Bank played in Kenya’s escalating debt and social crises, leading to youth-led protests. "With sovereignty consistently undermined by the policy conditionalities of the IMF and World Bank, we expect that they, and the broader undemocratic global financial architecture, will come under increasing scrutiny from youth protest movements in the months ahead." Read more on Bretton Woods Project https://lnkd.in/dFtEveSB

Human rights must be front and centre in transition minerals value chains, as confirmed by the newly-developed UN Principles on Critical Minerals. The World Bank's private sector arm, the IFC - International Finance Corporation, plays a key role in transition mineral projects, and has an important opportunity to operationalise the Principles when it reviews its social and environmental standards next year. 👇 In this article, Natalie Bugalski of human rights group Inclusive Development International — which has supported numerous communities against harmful development — argues that the IFC must integrate the Principles into its new Performance Standards, to protect communities from the impacts of mining projects. A must read ahead of #WBGmeetings: https://lnkd.in/d8DwgTSD via Bretton Woods Project #WorldBank #JustMinerals #BankOnRenewables

Scaling up development financing is essential for achieving the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals. However, reliance on foreign currency financing increases the financial vulnerability of countries already experiencing—or at risk of—debt distress. Our latest piece in the Bretton Woods Project’s Autumn Observer, co-authored with Bruno Bonizzi and Annina Kaltenbrunner, explains why local currency financing is crucial for sustainable development and explores how multilateral development banks (MDBs) can reduce their dependence on hard currency lending, making local currency financing a core component of their developmental mandate. Watch this space for the final report of our grant project ‘Enhancing MDBs’ Capacity through Local Currency Financing’, which will elaborate extensively on these matters and propose even more innovative policy reforms to increase the capacity of MDBs to provide local currency financing! For further information on our project, visit https://lnkd.in/dpdu-yYg.

"The Bolivia case highlights, once again, the need for The World Bank to deliver real #remedy when its projects harm communities,” notes Carolina Juaneda of BIC. “For #accountability to become a reality, World Bank management must first acknowledge the harm identified in the IP’s reports, and, in consultation with complainants, implement measures to remediate it. The Bank board’s current and ongoing external review of its accountability mechanisms comes at a critical time as it seeks to scale up investments and expand its lending portfolio as part of its Evolution Roadmap." Featured in the Autumn issue of the Bretton Woods Observer, learn more about the the lack of meaningful consultation with the Chiquitano Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia in a road project: https://lnkd.in/eUUPrniy Bretton Woods Project Rachel Nadelman Accountability Research Center

Ahead of the Annual Meetings of The World Bank and the International Monetary Fund next week, the Bretton Woods Project has launched its Dispatch, starting with its Preamble: BWIs’ management and key shareholders stand in the way of transformative governance reforms despite ‘evolution’ rhetoric. The 2024 Annual Meetings occur at a pivotal moment in the future of both institutions, with discussions centring on the results of attempted reform at the World Bank, and the extension of the IMF’s mandate into ‘emerging areas’, notably climate and gender. On their 80th anniversary, the Bretton Woods Institutions face persistent calls from civil society organisations, the UN and the Group of 77 for a transformation of the international financial architecture (IFA) in which they play a crucial role, amid ongoing instability and threats to the multilateral order. Access the complete analysis: https://lnkd.in/dvP6u9Qa

Today we are happy to announce the launch of our Bretton Woods #ObserverAutumn2024. Ahead of The World Bank & International Monetary Fund Annual Meetings 2024, this edition looks at key developments, including: 🚫 The lack of development indicators in the Bank’s Corporate Scorecard as well as of key elements of its newly launched Gender Strategy in both the Scorecard and #IDA21; 📢 Kenya Generation Z protests in the context of IMF-mandated austerity, by featured guests authors Wangari Kinoti and Lina Moraa, of ActionAid International; 🚧 The need for IFC standards review to respond to UN’s call for rights-based transition mineral value chains, featuring Natalie Bugalski, of Inclusive Development International; 🛑 The lack of meaningful consultation at the Bank, which left Chiquitano Indigenous Peoples in Bolivia with no recourse, and much more... Check it out: https://lnkd.in/dYPWVZDb

On 30 June 2024, The World Bank marked one year of aligning projects financed by its International Development Association and International Bank for Reconstruction and Development with the goals of the Paris Agreement. 🚀 Our latest briefing examines what this Paris alignment means for the Bank’s financing in energy sectors. It reviews all 71 ‘energy & extractives’ projects financed by IDA and IBRD in fiscal year 2024. Here are some of our main findings:  ▪ There has been a shift in the Bank’s energy financing approach where, since FY20, Development Policy Financing (DPF), which offers budget support contingent on policy reforms, has become the primary financing instrument, replacing Investment Policy Financing (IPF) that funds specific energy projects. ▪ The Bank’s approach to Paris alignment is being used to a significant extent to impose ‘green’ conditionalities on its borrowing countries, especially in the Global South. This is mainly done by structuring energy sector conditionalities to facilitate a private sector-led transition, which includes privatising and liberalising energy sectors and modifying regulatory frameworks to de-risk private investments. ▪ Alarmingly, only $2.34 billion was allocated directly to finance renewable energy projects, comprising just 12.3% of total energy financing in the first year of this Paris alignment. The lion’s share ($1 billion) went to finance a controversial hydropower project in Pakistan. ‼️  This raises concerns as the Bank’s private sector strategy is failing to deliver results, with large-scale private investments in renewable energy not materialising in most countries where the Bank operates. Furthermore, given the lower profitability of renewables compared to existing fossil fuels and the increasingly prohibitive capital costs in the Global South, this approach shifts financial liabilities and costs onto citizens and governments in low- and middle-income countries, undermining hopes for a just transition. The briefing recommends: 1️⃣ An external, expert-led review of the Bank’s private sector energy transition approach to facilitate genuine green transformation in the Global South. 2️⃣ Increased civil society participation to give national trade unions and civil society a voice in shaping green transition policies. 3️⃣ Enhanced transparency of the Bank’s energy investments and climate finance, allowing for greater public and parliamentary scrutiny. 👉 Read the full briefing here: https://lnkd.in/dS3UzWm4

Something is cooking at SOAS... 💥 Missed the full-day event deadline due to the ever-present overstimulation and overflowing calendars? Curious about the entanglement of international institutions, geopolitics, and development policy? FOMO no further! You can still join our open Evening Panel on October 11th, 6.30 pm (in person!). Register via the link below and listen to these stellar panelists on the politics behind development policy: ⚪ Jayati Ghosh, UMass Amherst ⚪ José Antonio Ocampo, Columbia University ⚪ Luiz Vieira, Bretton Woods Project ⚪ Pallavi Roy, SOAS ⚪ Sebastian Haug, German Institute of Development and Sustainability See you there! Don’t miss out (again)—register here: https://lnkd.in/eb2wpT_B Supported by: SOAS Department of Economics & INET Institute for New Economic Thinking

Our Gender IFI Summer School 2024 wrapped up last week with an empowering session on Imagining Feminist and Decolonial Development. In case you missed it, we have posted the recordings of all sessions that comprised the Summer School, which included Feminist Approaches to Debt and Women as Workers, Progressive Taxation for the Care Economy, Gender and Financialisation, and Moving Beyond Austerity in the Global South. Access them here: https://lnkd.in/dKDiCsxC #genderequality #womensright #advocacy #IFI