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Up to $41B in World Bank climate finance unaccounted for, Oxfam finds

billion in World Bank climate finance —nearly 40 percent of all climate funds disbursed by the Bank over the past seven years— is unaccounted for due to poor record-keeping practices, reveals a new Oxfam report published today ahead of the World Bank and IMF Annual Meetings in Washington D.C. An Oxfam audit of the World Bank’s 2017-2023 climate finance portfolio found that between $24 billion and $41 billion in climate finance went unaccounted for between the time projects were approved and when they closed.

It also remains unclear whether these funds were even spent on climate-related initiatives intended to help low- and middle-income countries protect people from the impacts of the climate crisis and invest in clean energy. Oxfam warns that the lack of traceable spending could undermine trust in global climate finance efforts at this critical juncture. The fact that this information is so hard to access and understand is alarming —it shouldn’t take a team of professional researchers to figure out how billions of dollars meant for climate action are being spent.

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