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World Bank is backing dozens of new coal projects, despite climate pledges

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2 years ago

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New research shows that the International Finance Corporation, part of the World Bank Group, is providing back-door support to at least 39 new coal projects, constituting over 68 gigawatts of new coal-fired power capacity throughout China, Indonesia and Cambodia.

The International Finance Corporation (IFC), the private lending arm of the World Bank Group, is indirectly backing dozens of new coal projects throughout Asia, according to a new report, Blowing Smoke: How Coal Finance is Flowing through the IFC’s Paris Alignment Loopholes. The report, based on research conducted by Inclusive Development International, Recourse and Trend Asia, was published today, in advance of the World Bank Annual Meetings taking place in Marrakech next week.

“We found that the IFC is still backing new coal capacity through its investments in banks and other financial institutions despite its commitments to align those investments with the Paris Agreement,” said David Pred, executive director of Inclusive Development International. “This is the opposite of the sustainable development that IFC purports to promote, and it is having a devastating impact on coal-affected communities throughout Asia and the entire planet in this time of climate peril.”

A planned 700-megawatt coal-fired power plant called Jambi 2, to be located in Indonesia’s Jambi province, is among the new coal projects the IFC is indirectly supporting. The new report focuses on Jambi 2 as a case study for how the IFC’s lending ends up supporting new coal development and the impact that has on local communities. According to local advocates and community members interviewed by Inclusive Development International, Jambi 2 is a project the province doesn’t want and doesn’t need—one that will exacerbate the already devastating impacts of coal development in the area, including air and water pollution and related health issues. Yet Postal Savings Bank of China—an IFC intermediary and a major coal financier in the region—has provided a credit line to Jambi 2’s developer, China Huadian.

“Ongoing coal development in Indonesia, including the Jambi 2 plant, will accelerate climate change and its catastrophic consequences,” said Novita Indri, energy campaigner at Trend Asia. “It’s a slap in the face to Indonesia, an island nation that is uniquely vulnerable to rising sea levels and already suffering from extreme weather events.”

Postal Savings Bank of China is by far the largest financier of coal developers in the IFC’s portfolio. According to data compiled by Inclusive Development International and published alongside the new report, the IFC purchased a $300 million equity stake in Postal Savings Bank in 2015 and the bank has gone on to provide 418 billion RMB ($57.3 billion) in no-strings-attached credit lines and project loans to companies developing dozens of coal-fired power plants in the region. The bank has provided these loans at a time when much of the financial industry is shifting away from coal, implicating the IFC and the World Bank Group in the last vestiges of coal finance and the devastating impacts it has for coal-affected communities and the climate. The authors of the report are calling on the IFC to leverage its influence as a major shareholder to stop Postal Savings Bank from continuing to finance coal development.

“It’s hypocritical for the IFC to allow its banking clients to finance projects like Jambi 2 and other coal development in Asia while at the same time promising to align its lending with the Paris Agreement on Climate Change,” said Kate Geary, co-director of Recourse. “While committing to move away from coal on paper, the World Bank Group is failing to ensure that its investments aren’t  supporting coal power projects that are significant contributors to climate change and that wreak devastation on affected communities.”

These latest revelations come on the heels of reports last month that communities in Indonesia’s Banten province have lodged a formal complaint against the IFC for backing two new massive units in the Suralaya mega-coal complex. Similar complaints have been lodged against the IFC in the past, including regarding its support for coal expansion in the Philippines.

“The IFC has contributed to serious harms related to coal expansion in many countries,” added Pred. “Now it has a responsibility to repair the damage it has done and prevent future harm by requiring that all of its financial intermediary clients, including Postal Savings Bank of China, stop financing coal development immediately.”

Notes for editors:

Regarding IFC’s financial intermediary lending and “no coal” commitments

Inclusive Development International previously followed the money in the IFC’s financial-sector portfolio and published our findings in our Outsourcing Development investigative series, which exposed (among other things) the coal plants and mines the IFC was indirectly backing.

Since then, the World Bank Group has made a series of commitments designed to reform its approach to investing in financial institutions, reduce its exposure to coal and align itself with the Paris Agreement. Most prominently, in 2019 the IFC launched its Green Equity Approach, which requires financial institutions in which it holds shares to halve their coal exposure by 2025 and eliminate it from their portfolios by the end of the decade. In 2023, the IFC closed a major loophole that Inclusive Development International, Recourse and Trend Asia pointed out in the approach by updating the rules to restrict equity clients from financing any new coal projects.

However, the IFC’s flagship approach aligning its indirect lending operations with the Paris Agreement contains other loopholes and gray areas: it still allows equity clients to underwrite bonds for coal developers, and it allows clients to finance industrial projects that are powered by dedicated coal plants, a concept known as captive coal. And it is unclear how and whether the “no new coal” rule is being applied to existing clients’ corporate financing of coal developers. In fact, as our new research and report show, banks in which the IFC holds equity stakes—including Postal Savings Bank of China—have continued to provide financing to the developers of new coal projects.

Regarding our methodology

For this report, Inclusive Development International traced the International Finance Corporation’s money through financial intermediaries to new coal-fired power capacity in Asia. The full results are here.

We define new coal capacity as projects that have become operational since 2019; projects that are under construction; and projects that have been announced by developers. This data does not include projects that are listed as shelved or canceled, although developers regularly reactivate shelved projects after long periods of inactivity.

For all data on coal plants, including project names, generating capacity, development timelines and project owners, we relied on the Global Energy Monitor, which tracks energy infrastructure around the world. For data on project developers, including their current coal-generating capacities, development plans, and issuances of debt securities, we relied on the Global Coal Exit List, which the IFC also uses  to help its clients identify coal exposures in their portfolios.

All other data comes from research conducted by Inclusive Development International, Recourse and Trend Asia into corporate filings, the International Finance Corporation’s project disclosures, and site visits in Indonesia.

Source: inclusivedevelopment.net

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NGO WORK

Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

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2 days ago

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November 13, 2025

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Climate wash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights reveals how the Bank is appropriating climate commitments made at the Conference of the Parties (COP) to justify its multibillion-dollar initiative to “formalize” land tenure across the Global South. While the Bank claims that it is necessary “to access land for climate action,” Climatewash uncovers that its true aim is to open lands to agribusiness, mining of “transition minerals,” and false solutions like carbon credits – fueling dispossession and environmental destruction. Alongside plans to spend US$10 billion on land programs, the World Bank has also pledged to double its agribusiness investments to US$9 billion annually by 2030.

This report details how the Bank’s land programs and policy prescriptions to governments dismantle collective land tenure systems and promote individual titling and land markets as the norm, paving the way for private investment and corporate takeover. These reforms, often financed through loans taken by governments, force countries into debt while pushing a “structural transformation” that displaces smallholder farmers, undermines food sovereignty, and prioritizes industrial agriculture and extractive industries.

Drawing on a thorough analysis of World Bank programs from around the world, including case studies from Indonesia, Malawi, Madagascar, the Philippines, and Argentina, Climatewash documents how the Bank’s interventions are already displacing communities and entrenching land inequality. The report debunks the Bank’s climate action rhetoric. It details how the Bank’s efforts to consolidate land for industrial agriculture, mining, and carbon offsetting directly contradict the recommendations of the IPCC, which emphasizes the protection of lands from conversion and overexploitation and promotes practices such as agroecology as crucial climate solutions.

Read full report: Climatewash: The World Bank’s Fresh Offensive on Land Rights

Source: The Oakland Institute

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NGO WORK

Africa’s Land Is Not Empty: New Report Debunks the Myth of “Unused Land” and Calls for a Just Future for the Continent’s Farmland

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2 days ago

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November 13, 2025

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A new report challenges one of the most persistent and harmful myths shaping Africa’s development agenda — the idea that the continent holds vast expanses of “unused” or “underutilised” land waiting to be transformed into industrial farms or carbon markets.

Titled Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025), the study exposes how this colonial-era narrative continues to justify large-scale land acquisitions, displacements, and ecological destruction in the name of progress.

Drawing on extensive literature reviews, satellite data, and interviews with farmers in Zambia, Mozambique, South Africa, and Zimbabwe, the report systematically dismantles five false assumptions that underpin the “land abundance” narrative:

  1. That Africa has vast quantities of unused arable land available for cultivation

  2. That modern technology can solve Africa’s food crisis

  3. That smallholder farmers are unproductive and incapable of feeding the continent

  4. That markets and higher yields automatically improve food access and nutrition

  5. That industrial agriculture will generate millions of decent jobs

Each of these claims, the report finds, is deeply flawed. Much of the land labelled as “vacant” is, in reality, used for grazing, shifting cultivation, foraging, or sacred and ecological purposes. These multifunctional landscapes sustain millions of people and are far from empty.

The study also shows that Africa’s food systems are already dominated by small-scale farmers, who produce up to 80% of the continent’s food on 80% of its farmland. Rather than being inefficient, their agroecological practices are more resilient, locally adapted, and socially rooted than the industrial models promoted by external donors and corporations.

Meanwhile, the promise that industrial agriculture will lift millions out of poverty has not materialised. Mechanisation and land consolidation have displaced labour, while dependency on imported seeds and fertilisers has trapped farmers in cycles of debt and dependency.

A Continent Under Pressure

Beyond these myths, the report reveals a growing land squeeze as multiple global agendas compete for Africa’s territory: the expansion of mining for critical minerals, large-scale carbon-offset schemes, deforestation for timber and commodities, rapid urbanisation, and population growth.

Between 2010 and 2020, Africa lost more than 3.9 million hectares of forest annually — the highest deforestation rate in the world. Grasslands, vital carbon sinks and grazing ecosystems, are disappearing at similar speed.

Powerful actors — from African governments and Gulf states to Chinese investors, multinational agribusinesses, and climate-finance institutions — are driving this race for land through opaque deals that sideline local communities and ignore customary tenure rights.

A Call for a New Vision

The report calls for a radical shift away from high-tech, market-driven, land-intensive models toward people-centred, ecologically grounded alternatives. Its key policy recommendations include:

  • Promoting agroecology as a pathway for food sovereignty, ecological regeneration, and rural livelihoods.

  • Reducing pressure on land by improving agroecological productivity, cutting food waste, and prioritising equitable distribution.

  • Rejecting carbon market schemes that commodify land and displace communities.

  • Legally recognising customary land rights, particularly for women and Indigenous peoples.

  • Upholding the principle of Free, Prior, and Informed Consent (FPIC) for all land-based investments.

This report makes it clear: Africa’s land is not “empty” — it is lived on, worked on, and cared for. The future of African land must not be dictated by global capital or outdated development theories, but shaped by the people who depend on it.

Download the Report

Read the full report Land Availability and Land-Use Changes in Africa (2025) to explore the evidence and policy recommendations in detail.

Source: Alliance for Food Sovereignty in Africa (AFSA)

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NGO WORK

Discover How Foreign Interests and Resource Extraction Continue to Drive Congo’s Crisis

Published

3 days ago

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November 12, 2025

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Whereas Donald Trump hailed the “peace” agreement between Rwanda and DRC as marking the end of a deadly three-decade war, a new report from the Oakland Institute, Shafted: The Scramble for Critical Minerals in the DRC, exposes it as the latest US maneuver to control Congolese critical minerals.

Under the Guise of Peace

After three decades of deadly wars and atrocities, the June 2025 “peace” deal between Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) lays bare the United States’ role in entrenching the extraction of minerals under the guise of diplomacy. For decades, US backing of Rwanda and Uganda has fueled the violence, which has ripped millions of Congolese lives apart while enabling the looting of the country’s mineral wealth. Today, Washington presents itself as a broker of peace, yet its longstanding support for Rwanda made it possible for M23 to seize territory, capture key mining sites, and forced Kinshasa to the negotiation table with hands tied behind its back. By legitimizing Rwanda’s territorial advances, the US-brokered agreement effectively rewards aggression while sidelining accountability, justice for victims, and the sovereignty of the Congolese people.

The incorporation of “formalized” mineral supply chains from eastern DRC to Rwanda exposes the pact’s true aim: Securing access to and control over minerals under the guise of diplomacy and “regional integration.” Framed as peacemaking, this is part of United States’ broader geopolitical struggle with China for control over critical resources. Far from fostering peace – over a thousand civilians have been killed since the deal was signed while parallel negotiations with Rwanda’s rebel force have collapsed – this arrangement risks deepening Congo’s subjugation. Striking deals with the Trump administration and US firms, the DRC government is surrendering to a new era of exploitation while the raging war continues, driving the unbearable suffering of the Congolese people.

Introduction

The conflict in eastern DRC, which dates back three decades to the aftermath of the 1994 Rwandan genocide and subsequent Congo Wars, has claimed over six million lives, displaced millions more, and inflicted widespread suffering. Since late 2021, Rwanda and its proxy militia, M23, have stormed through mineral-rich lands and regional capitals, inflicting brutal violence and triggering mass displacement. While billions of dollars in natural resources are extracted from the area, Congolese communities toil in extreme poverty.

On June 27, 2025, a “peace” agreement was signed between Rwanda and the DRC under the auspices of the Trump administration, with diplomatic assistance from Qatar.1 The deal included pledges to respect the territorial integrity of both countries, to promote peaceful relations through the disarmament of armed groups, the return of refugees, and the creation of a joint security mechanism. A key clause commits the countries to launch a regional economic integration framework that would entail “mutually beneficial partnerships and investment opportunities,” specifically for the extraction of the DRC’s mineral wealth by US private interests.

Placing the deal in a historical perspective – after three decades of conflict and over seven decades of US chess game around Congolese minerals – this report examines its implications for the Congolese people as well as the interests involved in the plunder of the country’s resources.

The report begins by retracing 30 years of war, fueled by the looting of Congo’s mineral wealth and devastating for the people of eastern DRC. It then examines how US policy in Central Africa, from the Cold War to the present, has been shaped by its interest in Congolese minerals, sustained alliances with Rwanda and Uganda, and a consistent pattern of overlooking atrocities in support of these allies.

The report then analyses the implications of the regional economic integration aspect of the deal, which aims to link mineral supply chains in the DRC and Rwanda with US investors. The last sections examine the prospect for lasting peace and security resulting from the deal and the impact of growing involvement of US private actors in DRC and Rwanda.

Original Source: Oakland Institute

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