The World Bank is turning its attention to gender equality at the annual meetings today — and so we’re taking a look at the ongoing struggle to get more women in leadership positions at the World Bank.
Also in today’s edition: The World Bank doubles down on agribusiness, and a brewing showdown over reparations.
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The call for greater gender parity in senior positions at the World Bank rises all the way to the top. Only five of the 25 members of the bank’s board of directors are women, my colleague Jesse Chase-Lubitz reports.
And that’s where some of the latest organizing is taking place. At the annual meetings this week, a board working group that was created in 2017 to improve the gender balance launched a new gender declaration to advance the cause. They are calling for 40%-50% representation of female executive directors and alternate executive directors at the board level within the next two election cycles.
“We want to set an example for the organization,” says Nathalie Francken, a World Bank alternate executive director from Belgium and co-chair of the working group.
Within the ranks of the World Bank’s staff, the story of gender parity is one of uneven progress, and sometimes even backsliding, Jesse writes.
“Since I joined the bank, I’ve seen a positive trend,” says Francken. “But it’s not good enough. We should go to parity.”
Read: World Bank makes progress on gender parity, but future remains unclear
Gender is also front and center when it comes to World Bank policy and programs. Earlier this year, the bank released its Gender Strategy 2024-2030 with three key aims:
• Ending gender-based violence.
• Expanding economic opportunities.
• Engaging more women as leaders.
But those are tall orders. For a special episode of the Devex podcast series, my colleague Adva Saldinger sat down with World Bank Global Director for Gender Hana Brixi to understand how this new plan will be implemented and what exactly is changing.
She also chatted with Mary Borrowman from the Center for Global Development about some of the concerns experts have with the new strategy and whether it will actually improve gender parity.
Listen: Will the World Bank's new gender strategy be able to bridge the gap?
+ Explore our coverage of the World Bank-IMF annual meetings.
The World Bank announced Wednesday that it will double its commitments to the agribusiness sector to $9 billion each year by 2030. However, as my colleague Ayenat Mersie reports, that’s likely to prolong the debate over whether support for large-scale agriculture is compatible with efforts to reduce carbon emissions.
World Bank President Ajay Banga said Wednesday that the bank’s plan would involve a “constellation of solutions” using every tool in its arsenal — from guarantees to grants to private sector loans. However, civil society advocates say the bank has a long way to go to ensure it does not exacerbate human-made greenhouse gas emissions, of which agrifood systems are responsible for one-third.
Ruth Segal, policy lead on food systems at the Catholic Agency for Overseas Development called on the bank to be more specific about how it would reduce emissions, arguing that its emphasis on “climate-smart agriculture” was not enough.
“Climate smart agriculture will not create a ‘livable planet,’” says Ange-David Baïmey, who works in the Africa program of GRAIN, an agricultural NGO. “It is just a concept to help agro business industries to continue the business as usual and not to phase out from the fossil fuel model.”
Read: World Bank doubles agribusiness investment to $9B in strategy shift
ICYMI: Inside a new World Bank program to boost food security (Pro)
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If you’ve spent any time around Banga, you know he’s worried about jobs.
He’s run the numbers, and the numbers don’t add up: Over the next decade, 1.2 billion young people in low- and middle-income countries will be looking for a job. Yet only 420 million jobs will be available.
On Wednesday, Banga introduced his new 18-member High-Level Advisory Council on Jobs — launched back in August and co-chaired by former Chilean President Michelle Bachelet and President Tharman Shanmugaratnam of Singapore. Their mission is to come up with policies and programs that can address the looming jobs crisis in the global south.
“A job is not just an income, it's dignity. A job is not just dignity, it fights poverty,” Banga told a capacity crowd in the bank’s atrium. “The best way to put a nail in the coffin of poverty is a job.”
Related: World Bank releases first set of scorecard indicators, data (Pro)
The United Nations climate conference, COP29, in Baku, Azerbaijan, follows hot on the heels of these annual meetings — but according to U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change chief Simon Stiell, it’s the decision-makers in Washington, D.C., this week who “hold the levers” that will determine whether the “finance COP” is a success.
Jesse tells me that while a lot of attention in Baku will focus on the new quantified collective goal, or NQCG — which will replace the hotly contested $100 billion annual climate finance commitment — Stiell is managing expectations.
There is “only so much that can be done” within the NQCG, he said at the International Monetary Fund Wednesday. That leads Stiell to a familiar refrain: To go from billions to trillions of climate finance, multilateral development banks must mobilize private finance.
At the same event, Azerbaijani COP29 President-Designate Mukhtar Babayev was asked about the elephant in the room of this year’s conference — the fact that it’s being hosted in a petrostate. Jesse reports that Babayev gave a vague answer about whether his country will commit to emissions reductions, while allowing that COP29 is a “good chance” for fossil fuel-producing states to demonstrate leadership in the energy transition.
ICYMI: COP29 presidency ‘committed’ to agree on climate finance goal, CEO says
Background reading: What will be on the COP29 agenda? Here are 7 issues to watch (Pro)
David Lammy has vowed that being “descended from the slave trade” will guide his actions as the United Kingdom’s foreign secretary — but Commonwealth leaders will put that pledge to the test at their summit in Samoa this week, my colleague Rob Merrick tells me.
Some former British colonies will use the gathering to renew their push for reparations for both that monstrous crime of the empire and for the U.K.’s share of responsibility for the climate destruction many face.
Philip Davis, the Bahamas prime minister, called the Commonwealth “the ideal forum for making progress on reparations.” All the candidates to be its new secretary-general support some form of payback — though perhaps through more generous concessional aid, rather than a transfer of money.
However, ahead of U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer flying to Samoa, his spokesperson insisted they will be disappointed, stating: “The government’s position on this has not changed; we do not pay reparations.” On calls for an apology for slavery — a step the Netherlands took almost two years ago — he added: “We won’t be offering an apology.”
In April 2023, King Charles III revealed he was supporting research into the royal family’s complicity in the enslavement of African people, after evidence of involvement dating back to the 17th century, but no conclusions have been released.
+ Catch up on all the latest news in the U.K. development sector.
France aims to raise humanitarian and military aid for Lebanon at an international conference today. [AP]
Polio vaccinations for some 120,000 children in northern Gaza have been postponed. [BBC]
At the BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin has proposed the creation of “a grain exchange” to facilitate direct trade among member countries to reduce reliance on Western pricing systems and to strengthen food security. [Reuters]
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