Coalition Presses World Bank to End Fossil Investments [Campaign]

A coalition of international climate organizations is turning up the heat on the World Bank this week, urging the massive multilateral institution to redirect its investments from fossil to renewable energy.

One of the highlights of the campaign is a Twitter Thunderclap scheduled for Friday at 9:00 AM EDT—the mid-point in this year’s United Nations General Assembly, the end of Climate Week in New York City, and less than a month before the World Bank’s own annual meeting.

“The World Bank manages and invests huge amounts of public money in development projects. We need them to get all their money out of dirty fossil fuels and into affordable renewable energy to reach and benefit even the most vulnerable and remote communities,” the campaign states. “This would have a huge financial impact, and set a gold standard that other public and private banks would then aspire to.”

As it stands, the Bank “agrees that climate change is affecting the poorest people on the planet,” the campaign website notes. “Its goal is to end extreme poverty globally within a generation. However, it still supports a lot of projects that contribute to climate change.” Which means “the World Bank needs to put its money where its mouth is.”

The site casts Big Shift Global as a “multi-stakeholder, global, open source campaign” that brings together organizations across the Global North and South. “Together, we aim to create public pressure on Multilateral Development Banks (MDBs) and their executive directors (some of who have indicated that they could use the leverage of public opinion in the Bank’s Board meetings), as well as on their member countries’ heads of state and finance ministers, to make the shift to clean, renewable energy.”