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

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.

There is no clear public record showing where this money went or how it was used, which makes any assessment of its impacts impossible. 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.

These findings are particularly relevant for the UK following the previous government’s changes to the rules on what counts as international climate finance last year. This included counting climate-related contributions to the World Bank and other multilateral development banks towards the UK climate-finance goals.

Chiara Liguori, Oxfam GB's Senior Climate Justice Policy Advisor said: “The Bank is quick to brag about its climate finance billions —but these numbers are based on what it plans to spend, not on what it actually spends once a project gets rolling. If the World Bank’s picture of its climate finance expenditure is not fully accurate, then the accuracy of the new accounting rules applied by the UK is also questionable.

“In addition, while the UK will count its contributions to multilateral development banks as grants, the banks will mainly pass these on to countries as concessional loans further adding to the injustice.

“The previous Government’s accounting changes are not helpful in providing a genuine picture of what the UK is providing in terms of climate finance - the new Government must now reverse them. The UK should also use its influence as shareholder of the World Bank to request full transparency about what it counts as climate finance.”

The World Bank is the largest multilateral provider of climate finance, accounting for 52 per cent of the total flow from all multilateral development banks combined.

The issue of climate finance will take centre stage at this year’s UN Climate Summit, COP29 in Azerbaijan, next month where countries are set to negotiate a new global climate finance goal, the New Collective Quantified Goal (NCQG). Climate activists are demanding that wealthy countries provide at least $5 trillion a year in public finance "as a down payment towards their climate debt" to low-income countries who are the least responsible for climate breakdown but are the most affected.

Oxfam warns that the lack of traceable spending could undermine trust in global climate finance efforts at this critical juncture.

Liguori said: “Climate finance is scarce, and we know it’s hard to deliver. But not tracking how or where the money actually gets spent is not just some bureaucratic oversight —it’s a fundamental breach of trust that risks derailing the progress we need to make at COP this year. Information should be transparent and accessible to everyone, most importantly communities who are meant to benefit from climate finance. The World Bank needs to act like our future depends on tackling the climate crisis, because it does.”

Notes to editors

Download Oxfam’s new report Climate Finance Unchecked.

In 2022, Oxfam audited the World Bank’s reported $17.2 billion climate finance FY2020 portfolio to discover it could be off by as much as $7 billion.

Climate Action Network International has called on the governments in the Global North to pay up $5 trillion annually as a down payment towards their climate debt.